[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 6, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H1766-H1773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1745
                       INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hutchinson). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. 
Maloney] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, today I am honored to rise with some of my 
colleagues in this special order to celebrate International Women's 
Day. This day is a celebration borne out of the fighting spirit of the 
women's labor movement in the great city that I am honored to 
represent, New York City.
  International Women's Day was born in 1857 when women from the 
garment and textile industry in New York City staged a demonstration 
protesting low wages, 12 hour workdays, and increasing workloads. It is 
the perfect day to call for equal rights for women, equal pay for 
women, equal representation for women, equal treatment for women, and 
expanded health care for women and all Americans.
  I have called this special order today to pay tribute to women, past 
and present, who fight every day for improved working conditions and 
equal rights and treatment for women.
  Mr. Speaker, with this in mind, we come together today to celebrate 
our gains. Already this year we have celebrated the 75th anniversary of 
women gaining the right to vote, the 23d anniversary of Roe versus 
Wade, the coming together of over 30,000 women from 190 different 
countries at the fourth U.N. World Conference for Women in Beijing, and 
the first Women's Expo held here in Washington, DC.
  We celebrate these successes at a time when we face the most hostile, 
antiwoman Congress that I can remember, a Congress more antifamily, 
antichoice, antiurban, antiworker, and antienvironment, than any in 
recent history. In short, this Congress is a disaster for women.
  In the first 6 months, we voted in this House of Representatives and 
passed 12 antichoice bills. But the impact of these actions in this 
Congress really came home in a very personal way recently. I received a 
notice from the Government in the mail. It said that abortion services 
are no longer covered under my health insurance plan. It was one small 
notice in the mail, but one giant step back for reproductive freedom in 
the United States. The letter, marked in a very personal way for 
hundreds and thousands of employees the first widespread practical 
impact of the 104th Congress's multifaceted assault on a woman's right 
to choose. Thanks to extremists in the 104th Congress, U.S. military 
hospitals, both here and overseas, are now prohibited by law from 
performing abortions. In other words, women who are stationed here and 
overseas busily protecting our rights, while in this Congress we have 
been busily removing theirs.
  The House also passed an amendment denying Medicaid-funded abortions 
for victims of rape and incest. For poor women, this would make fathers 
out of rapists. If that were not enough, on March 15, when the current 
continuing resolution will expire, we will effectively zero out funding 
for international family planning programs, denying hundreds of 
thousands of women around the world their only source of health care.
  Conservative estimates show that this reduction is much more than a 
loss of money. It means that over 7 million couples will lost access to 
modern contraceptive methods, and, for many, health care services.
  In other actions, the new majority suspended Federal responsibility 
for the women, infants, and children nutrition program, and eliminated 
$2 billion

[[Page H1767]]

in school lunches and Aid to Families with Dependent Children programs.

  Tomorrow, this Congress will be marking up, or marching backward, the 
affirmative action bill, which has opened tightly held doors to so many 
women and minorities. They will be attempting to roll back affirmative 
action.
  When we consider the losses I have listed and those in our scorecard 
on women's issues, which we will release tomorrow, we might feel better 
served with a wake today instead of a celebration. Today we celebrate 
to remind each other that the obstacles we face are real, but we will 
succeed in enacting legislation which will counter the antiwoman 
actions of the 104th Congress. We will introduce shortly and hopefully 
pass the Women's Health Equity Act and the Economic Equity Act. We will 
restore funding to International Family Planning and the Children 
programs. We will succeed, because we have the power of the vote. Women 
in this country will use their vote in the upcoming elections to turn 
around this antiwoman Congress' actions.
  We do have winning strategies to build on. We need to look back to 
the energy and promise of the 1995 U.N. Fourth World Conference on 
Women in Beijing. Over 6,000 Americans and 30,000 women attended this 
conference--190 countries ratified the platform for action. Although it 
was not legally binding, it is certainly politically binding and 
important that so many governments spoke in support of women's rights 
and a specific plan to achieve equality.
  Along with 53 of my colleagues, I have introduced House Resolution 
119, which supports the seven United States commitments as introduced 
by Ambassador Madeleine Albright. The time has come to mobilize and 
energize. We must enact the U.S. commitments and the platform for 
action into law to put women in the winning column.
  Included in the commitments are initiatives which would launch a 
powerful program to end domestic violence and crimes against women with 
full funding, and an all-out assault on the threats to the health and 
well-being of women. Today we introduced H.R. 2893, the Kennedy-
Kassebaum-Roukema bill, which represents the minimum that can be done 
to provide additional health security to all American people. It would 
cover preexisting conditions and provide for portability of health 
care, making increased availability of health care to all Americans. 
Today we gained 170 cosponsors for the legislation, and we are hopeful 
that it will pass.
  Third, a strong commitment to protecting women's reproductive health 
and the right to choose; grassroots programs to assure that women make 
much more than the 72 cents to every dollar a man earns today by 
fighting for equal pay and assistance in balancing family and work; 
plans to enhance economic empowerment and economic equality for women; 
and, finally, enforcement of women's legal rights and a drive to 
increase women's political participation.
  I must say that in this Congress we have heard a lot of talk about 
quotas and the need to end affirmative action, but I would like to talk 
about one quota, and that is the representation of women. Although we 
are well over 50 percent of the population, we are still only 10 
percent of this elected body and only 6 percent of management positions 
in the private industry. This needs to be changed.
  In response to the Beijing conference, President Clinton established 
the Interagency Task Force on Women, which, along with other advocacy 
groups, including Bella Abzug's group, WEDO, are working hard to 
implement the platform for action. The 12 planks in the platform for 
action, combined with the seven U.S. commitments, could succeed in 
counteracting the new majority's all-out assault on American women. The 
platform for action was agreed to by 190 countries, and it is a strong 
statement when 190 countries and their governments endorse this 
platform.

  The platform will unify women at all levels and move forward with 
positive change. The platform goes further than the U.S. commitments by 
calling for the empowerment of women, sharing of family 
responsibilities, ending the burden of poverty for women and children, 
high-quality affordable health care, sexual and reproductive rights, 
workplace rights, educational equity, ending violence, protecting a 
healthy environment, women as peacemakers, ratifying the convention to 
end all forms of discrimination against women, and a long-term platform 
for achieving equality.
  Mr. Speaker, today we commemorate the International Women's Day. We 
celebrate because the same thing the new majority fears, women's 
potential power, will help us to succeed. In honor of International 
Women's Day, we will reintroduce and reissue the scorecard on women's 
issues tomorrow to inform the public on how people have voted in this 
Congress on women's issues and family issues and children issues, and 
we must hold those in power more accountable for their antiwomen 
actions.
  We intend to have score cards produced and given out on every single 
Member of Congress on how they have voted on women and children issues. 
We stand together tonight and we will come together tomorrow, and we 
will work each and every day to remind the extremist majority that 
women are neither marginal nor a minority. The rights we have gained 
are significant, but they are only steps in a long march toward 
equality of rights for all women.
  Today we celebrate International Women's Day. I would like to end 
with the words of Eleanor Roosevelt when she talked about change, when 
she talked about getting things done for women, children, and families. 
She said, ``It is up to the women.''
  Mr. Speaker, I recognize the gentlewoman from California [Ms. 
Woolsey], who is the author of many important bills in the Woman's 
Equity Act and the Women's Empowerment Act, and many other areas we 
have been working on.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for 
yielding this time and for organizing this special order. She has done 
a wonderful job in supporting women internationally, and will continue 
to speak out around the globe and here in our own country.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Carolyn Maloney, for yielding 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, this Friday is ``International Women's Day.'' I come 
before you today to celebrate one-half of the world's population. I 
come to pay tribute to women of every nation who care for their 
families, contribute to their work places, and make their communities 
stronger. They are true heroes, and deserve our recognition.
   Mr. Speaker, it has been over 6 months since the U.N. Sixth World 
Conference on Women took place in Beijing. At this conference, leaders 
from around the globe laid out a plan of action for improving the 
economic, social, educational, health, and political status of women 
worldwide.
  A key plank of that document is ratification of the United Nations' 
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against 
Women, or CEDAW, as this treaty is commonly known.
  CEDAW, which was drafted at the first women's conference in Mexico 
City in 1975, holds governments responsible for working to eliminate 
all forms of discrimination against all women.
  To date, CEDAW has been ratified by 144 countries, with one notable 
exception--the United States. Can you believe it?
  The United States, the world's greatest superpower and staunchest 
defender of human rights, continues to represent the only 
industrialized democracy failing to take this important stand for 
women's rights.
  On behalf of all women around the world--in Africa, Europe, Asia, and 
in the Americas--I invite my colleagues to join over 60 other Members 
of the House in support of House Resolution 220, which urges the Senate 
to pass CEDAW this Congress.
  Let's make the 21st century the first century free from state 
sanctioned discrimination against women. Let's make International 
Women's Day meaningful. Let's pass CEDAW now.

                              {time}  1800

  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize one of our 
Nation's leading experts on constitutional rights, the gentlewoman from 
the District of Columbia, Ms. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

[[Page H1768]]

  Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Maloney] for 
her kind words. I especially thank her for her leadership in calling 
our attention and summoning us to the floor this evening in celebration 
of Women's History Month and of International Women's Day on Friday.
  We are obligated, Mr. Speaker, I believe, to use these occasions not 
just as opportunities to talk. We need, I think, to use them to re-
energize ourselves about issues that are important to us that can be 
solved and that, at least in the 104th Congress, have been stalled. 
There is still time to keep the 104th Congress from being known as the 
unfeminist Congress or the antifeminist Congress where the losses will 
be recorded by history over the wins.
  More than 30 years after women's consciousness took hold in this 
country, I continue to believe on either side of the aisle that is 
where Members want to be. Yet if we look closely, we will find what I 
call take-backs, because they certainly aren't give-backs, losses from 
where we had come and where we must head.
  I am very appreciative that so many Members have signed onto the 
omnibus bill to carry out the seven U.S. commitments at the Beijing 
conference and that so many have signed onto the individual bills 
sponsored by individual Members. This tradition now in the House from 
among women especially of combining women's legislation into a single 
bill has the advantage of focusing us on where the greatest need is and 
offering Members and the public an opportunity to see what we must do 
and what legislation is most pressing at a given moment in time.
  I am pleased that in this country we celebrate International Women's 
Day, as well. There must be solidarity among women across the world. In 
every country, women occupy the second place, not the equal place, even 
in this country where women have made tremendous strides for more than 
30 years. We take note of those strides, even as we note also that 
there is real backsliding today and that women simply must halt it, 
must reestablish the momentum that is associated with women's rights in 
this country.
  Only 33 years ago, we got the first women's rights legislation in the 
20th century, the Equal Pay Act. As a former chair of the Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission, I have seen in great detail how the 
law has worked to the advantage of women in the United States. I note 
that the law has had less, a lesser effect in other countries, because 
the law is not as often associated with vehicles to bring progress. 
Yet, we are grateful for what has happened with affirmative action, 
with title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, with the interpretation of 
courts. We are still living in the period when the courts for the first 
time have indicated that the 14th amendment requirement of equal 
protection of the law applies to women.
  If you were alive in the 1960's, you lived to see or were a part of a 
country that for the first time indicated that women had to be treated 
equally under law. We are still living, therefore, in a breakthrough 
era for women in this country. There have been big, big take-backs in 
this Congress. Some of the worst have been in an area that is most 
vital to women, their personal reproductive rights.
  I mourn what we have done in the area of abortion. I can only mourn 
it. I will not chronicle it, because it is a long list, indeed.
  I regret that women in the military lose the protection of their 
country if they become pregnant and desire to have an abortion at the 
hand of the 104th Congress. Surely we must regret it, as well, for 
women who are serving their country. I regret that women in prisons at 
the hand of the 104th Congress, may not have an abortion unless they 
have funds to pay for it. I regret the withholding of funds for 
international family planning, which has virtually destroyed those 
programs. I regret the criminalizing of partial birth abortions and 
what a huge step that measures from where we had come on choice.
  I regret the proposal that the States no longer provide Medicaid for 
victims of rape and incest. These seem to me to be unusually cruel 
provisions, and I hope they are an indication in this Women's History 
month that no right acquired is permanent without permanent vigilance. 
These are rights we will reacquire, but surely International Women's 
Day and Women's History Month must energize us so that we are not left 
at the end of the 104th Congress with less than we came in with.
  Included in the omnibus bill is one of my bills, the Fair Pay Act. 
This bill could not be more germane today. Indeed, I invite Members to 
note that on March 13, I am conducting a special order on women's 
wages. There has been a focus on angry white men and, indeed, on angry 
men because of what has happened to men's wages in an era when 
manufacturing has shifted offshore, where men are increasingly outside 
of the labor force, and where women are at work not only because many 
desire to work, but because they are either critical to the family 
income or the only family income.
  We would do well then, as well, to focus on what has happened to the 
income of women. We note with pride that there is a narrowing of the 
gap in wages between men and women until we look closely at how that 
gap has narrowed. We find that the gap has narrowed largely for 
professional women and women who are highly skilled, at the entry 
level, and at the entry level only. As we go up the ranks, the gap 
widens and reappears, and we note that the average woman is right where 
she was. A very large part of the gap has narrowed because men have 
fallen, not because women have risen, because men have lost income, 
because men are outside of the labor force. Women do not want to narrow 
the gap in that way.
  It is interesting to note that the Equal Pay Act itself, which 
requires that women doing the same or similar work be paid the same as 
men, does not allow an employer to equalize men and women's wages by 
bringing down men's wages. So if one goes into a business and finds 
that there is unequal pay of men and women doing the same job, the 
employer has to bring up the pay of women, rather than bring down the 
pay of men.
  Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues, the way in which women have 
gained over the last 30 years has been in very large part because the 
pay of men has come down, not by operation of law but by operation of 
the economy. What that means for the average woman in the work force is 
that the gap is right where it was and that the Equal Pay Act has done 
just about all it can do. The rest will require a sharper remedy.
  In my Fair Pay Act, I offer that sharper remedy where a woman doing 
comparable work would have to be paid the same as a man doing 
comparable work. The burden would be on the woman to demonstrate that 
the difference in wage between her and the man is due to discrimination 
and not to ordinary market forces. That is a heavy burden. But the 
burden of proving discrimination is always on the complainant, and 
here it must be on the complainant as well.

  My colleagues will note that the fact that the woman has to establish 
that the wage differences between herself and a man doing comparable 
work is because of discriminations and not because of market forces 
means that my bill will not interfere with the ordinary operation of 
the market. I discuss my bill only as the one I know best and as one of 
the many excellent bills in our omnibus bill.
  While there is still time, while the 104th Congress is still making 
history, I call upon my colleagues to make sure that it does not make 
negative history; to make sure that women and men and families will not 
remember the 104th for take-backs but for gains; to make sure that the 
104th has something positive to say to American families about half of 
the family, or in the very many instances, the family itself that has a 
wage earner that is a woman.
  Even where there has been consensus among us on women's issues, we 
often have not made the progress that I believe all of us surely 
intended, for example, on domestic violence. There is a consensus on 
both sides of the aisle that this ancient issue finally is ripe for 
mitigation and elimination. While indeed we were able to get an 
appropriation that is respectable, the fact is that all of us who have 
worked hard on this issue are saddened that we have not made the great 
leap forward, that this most basic of issues requires.
  So in this Women's History Month and the year 1996, the year of the 
104th

[[Page H1769]]

Congress, may we leave it with more to celebrate than we find on March 
8, International Women's Day. May we remember that we have days only 
for issues or almost only or largely for issues that need special 
exposure because of special problems that obtain that we, therefore, 
dedicate this International Woman's Day to women all over the world and 
to the forward gains and momentum promised in Beijing and our own 
country. We who are Members of this body use this day and this month to 
move forward women's issues at a time when we still can make the 104th 
Congress truly memorable and truly bipartisan on women's issues.
  I very much thank the gentlewoman for her leadership and for yielding 
to me.
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I would now like to recognize the former 
Governor of Puerto Rico, the gentleman from Puerto Rico [Mr. Romero-
Barcelo].

                              {time}  1815

  Mr. ROMERO-BARCELO. Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to salute 
women as we commemorate the International Women's Day and the Women's 
History Month.
  Since the United Nations held the first world conference on women 20 
years ago, significant progress has been made towards achieving 
equality between women and men. Women's access to education and proper 
health care has increased, their participation in the paid labor force 
has grown and legislation that promises equal opportunities for women 
and respect for their human rights has been adopted in more countries. 
All these endeavors contributed to the improvement of women's rights 
and important changes have occurred in the relationship between women 
and men.
  Yet, despite these efforts, the discrimination women have suffered 
solely because of their gender has been pervasive. Violence against 
women remains a global problem. Women's equal access to resources is 
still restricted and their opportunities for higher education and 
training are concentrate din limited fields. Decisions that affect 
women continue to be made largely by men.
  Unfortunately, in some instances, our legal system has entrenched the 
subordinate status of women. These attitudes have contributed to the 
perpetuation of stereotypes which must be eliminated for they only 
contribute to all types of violence against women. Today I invite you 
to join women in their request to live in peace and to be recognized as 
equal citizens with equal rights and opportunities.
  As we all know, women fought a long and difficult battle to achieve 
universal suffrage; a basic tenet of democracy. For the past 97 years, 
Puerto Rico has been and still is a territory, or a colony, of the 
United States. The island is home to 3.7 million U.S. citizens, of whom 
more than half are women, who are disenfranchised and deprived of 
participating in the democratic process of this Nation. Universal 
suffrage does not exist in Puerto Rico. While we preach the virtues of 
democracy throughout the world, the United States still maintains the 
largest colony in the world. U.S. citizens who are excluded from our 
Nation's democratic process and who are denied the right to vote and 
the right to representation.
  The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted unanimously 
at the Fourth World Conference on Women by representatives from 189 
countries, reflects a new international commitment to the goals of 
equality, development and peach for all women everywhere.
  As a result, the world now has a comprehensive action plan to enhance 
the social, economic and political empowerment of women, improve their 
education and training.
  The platform for action, a 362-paragraph document that recommends 
actions on 12 critical areas of concern considered the main obstacles 
to women's advancement and builds on the accomplishments made since the 
first U.N. Conference on Women.
  Today, I exhort women to rise and demand equality. Today I urge 
Congress to sustain our commitment to women. Today, I remind nations of 
the world to keep on struggling to build a gender respectful society.
  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I would now like to yield to the 
gentlewoman from Ohio, Ms. Marcy Kaptur, who has been a strong fighter 
for increased wages, increased job opportunities for all working women 
and men.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from New 
York [Mrs. Maloney] for taking the leadership today in commemoration of 
International Women's Day, which is March 8, this Friday, and also 
during this month of March, Women's History Month.
  So often, I guess, I have to think back to the whole history of the 
country. There have only been about 165 women that have ever served in 
the Congress of the United States out of over 11,700 persons that have 
been elected to the Congress of the United States. So it has not been 
but until very recently that women have been able to discuss not just 
the plight of men in this country and children but also of themselves, 
the issues of concern to working women here in our country, which is 
the vast majority of women of all ages, as well as women around the 
world.
  I want to thank the Congresswoman from the great city of New York for 
taking the leadership on this and helping us put on the record on 
behalf of women everywhere helping us be a voice for them. I must begin 
with entering into the Record an article from the New York Times of 
February 21 of this year called Squeezing the Textile Workers. It is 
just an excellent story by John Holusha, and it is situated in Pisgah, 
AL, P-I-S-G-A-H. I have never visited there.
  It talks and it has a magnificent picture, compelling picture of two 
women, Martha Smith, saying goodbye to her fellow coworker in that town 
at a plant called Andover Togs, where she and approximately 100 other 
workers, largely women, lost their jobs sewing children's clothing.
  If I could describe this picture to you, I am sure that most 
Americans who have gone through this understand. They were saying 
goodbye to one another and facing a very unknown future. She was quoted 
as saying, ``There are no more textile jobs around here, they are all 
going to Mexico and overseas.'' Ms. Smith, who has lost 3 jobs due to 
plant closings, seems to have the evidence on her side. Two other 
sewing mills in this region of northern Alabama closed at about the 
same time, sending 550 people, mostly women, into the local labor 
market.
  In many of these towns, there just are not any other jobs to go to. 
So often we hear, these jobs are low skill jobs; these are not the high 
technology jobs of the future. If anyone has ever made a dress or have 
done it by hand or if you have done it with a machine or if you have 
ever sewn pearls on a wedding dress in a pattern, I would like to see 
the President of the United States do that. I would like to see most of 
the Members of this body do that. There is not any job that takes more 
skill, more concentration, more attention to detail than the sewing 
arts, because in fact they are the arts.
  And for those people that work on machines, which many of these women 
do, the speed at which they have to work with piece work in order to 
get paid is a speed beyond which most people in this society have never 
had to work. And they work very, very hard for a living. Many of them 
get carpel tunnel just in that one industry because they work so hard. 
Many of them being immigrants, many women it is their first job that 
they have really had after high school or after going through school. 
And many of them are the sole support of their families.
  So tonight we pay tribute to them and we say to them that we know who 
you are. And we understand the important jobs that you have done for 
the people of this country, and we think it is very wrong that those 
jobs are being outsourced elsewhere by corporations that do not value 
you as much as we value you in this country. And really, it is not your 
fault. A lot of women go home at the end of the day and think, gee, I 
lost my job because I did not try hard enough. Yet they have very good 
work records. Many of them have children at home. They have husbands. 
They have houses to keep. And yet they go to work every day, many times 
when they do not feel well, and they have done this throughout the 
history of this country.
  If you look at what has been happening over the last 20 years, what 
has

[[Page H1770]]

been happening to them is so unfair, so unfair. The last 20 years, the 
entry level wages of women with high school educations has gone down 20 
percent. That means the harder they work, the fact that they are 
providing many times the income that makes the difference between that 
family being able to survive or not survive, they are getting paid less 
for it. And even women who have gone to college are now earning 7 
percent less than their counterparts did 20 years ago.
  So the stress that families feel and particularly women who still 
largely have the child rearing responsibilities, taking care of the 
home when they get home from work, even though that responsibility is 
more shared now, there is just a great deal of pressure on them.
  If it had not been for women going into the workplace, even though 
many of them do not want to be there today but they have to be, family 
incomes would have gone right through the floor. And now they are 
barely treading water just keeping even. If you look at where women 
have had the most pressure on them, where they have been losing jobs to 
international trade because of unfair trade laws, they are in fields 
like electrical machinery and electronics, apparel, which I have just 
talked about, the food processing industry like the women workers in 
Watsonville, CA, who worked so very hard for Green Giant. They then put 
all those women out of work and replaced them with very cheap labor in 
Mexico, where the women do not earn enough to buy the frozen foods that 
they manufacture. And in fact they cannot even afford a small 
refrigerator in their homes. Many of them do not have electricity. Yet 
those women are being exploited in Mexico while our women lose their 
jobs here in this country.

  If you look at NAFTA, since the passage of NAFTA, of the hundreds and 
hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in our country, about a third of 
those were held by women, many in the apparel industries.
  We know, just because of GATT and NAFTA, we have had upwards of 
85,000 women lost their jobs in apparel and 30,000 women in textiles. 
And it is not because people in this country are not working hard. 
Americans work harder than any other people in the world, including 
overtime. We have the fewest vacation days. I think only one other 
nation, the Japanese, work a few more hours a week than we do. So it is 
not that people here are not trying very hard.
  I want to thank Congresswoman Maloney. I just will end with this 
statement: That among the laws of our country that are so important in 
giving women equal pay for equal work and the wage and hour laws that 
control overtime compensation and how many hours people can work, those 
laws were passed during the 1930's. There was a great women 
Congresswoman from New Jersey, from Jersey City, NJ, Mary Norton, who 
served here was responsible.
  She actually chaired what was then called the Education and Labor 
Committee. So it was a woman from you part of the country, who grew up 
in very humble circumstances, who was responsible during those years 
for coming here to Congress, waiting her turn to serve as committee 
chair, and responsible for the most important labor laws that have 
helped working women and working men across this country for the better 
part of the century. So we owe a lot to the east coast. We owe a lot to 
the Manhattan-Jersey City nexus and to the great Congresswoman from 
Jersey City, Mary Norton, for helping us build a middle class in this 
country.
  Congresswoman Maloney, you walk in her footsteps, and I thank you 
tonight for allowing me to participate in this special order.
  Mrs. MALONEY. I thank the gentlewoman very much. I would like to 
bring to your attention that Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez is working 
on many of the issues that you raised and in fact will be hosting a 
public hearing on March 11 in New York City with Secretary of Labor 
Robert Reich. I hope that you will be able to attend, as well as other 
Members of Congress, as we explore ways to protect jobs in the textile 
industry and expand wages for workers in America.
  Ms. KAPTUR. I would very much like to be there. I want to compliment 
the First Lady, Hillary Clinton. I understand today she was in New York 
City somewhere sewing on a label, I hope it was a made in the USA 
label, to a garment in New York City. And we look forward to welcoming 
Secretary Reich to that very important hearing on sweatshops and what 
is happening to women workers in New York City who sew so many of the 
garments still made in this country that are worn by women across this 
country.
  Thank you so very much for being a part of that and for the kind 
invitation.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the article to which I 
referred.

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 21, 1996]

                      Squeezing the Textile Worker

                           (By John Holusha)

       Pisgah, AL.--Martha Smith cried as she left the Dover Mills 
     plant of Andover Togs Inc. on a Wednesday afternoon late in 
     January. Along with approximately 100 other people, she had 
     lost her job sewing children's clothing.
       Now she is enrolled in a state-sponsored program to learn 
     clerical skills. ``There's no more textile jobs around 
     here,'' she said. ``They are all going to Mexico and 
     overseas.''
       Ms. Smith, who has lost three jobs due to plant closings, 
     seems to have the evidence on her side. Two other sewing 
     mills in this region of northern Alabama closed at about the 
     same time, sending 550 people, most of them women, into the 
     local labor market.
       The layoffs are not just a regional phenomenon. After four 
     years of stability, employment in the apparel industry took a 
     sudden plunge last year, falling by more than 10 percent, to 
     846,000, from 945,000 at the end of 1994. An additional 
     42,000 jobs vanished in the fabrics industry, which produces 
     the raw material to make clothing, for a total shrinkage of 
     141,000 jobs--40 percent of all manufacturing jobs lost in 
     the United States last year.
       Job losses like these provide grist to politicians with 
     protectionist messages, especially in an election year. So 
     while dismantling trade barriers benefits most consumers by 
     lowering prices, it also deepens blue-collar anxieties in 
     industries that are vulnerable to foreign competition.
       The new wave of job losses in the apparel industry, coming 
     as they did soon after the passage of the North American Free 
     Trade Agreement and the latest global trade accord, benefits 
     candidates who say they want to save jobs and protect 
     workers. Four years ago it was Ross Perot railing against 
     free trade accords, and this year, the Republican populist, 
     Patrick J. Buchanan, has enjoyed a surge in the polls with 
     his attacks on free trade as a sellout of American labor.
       And while textile-plant closings have been a fixture of the 
     economic scene in the small towns of the South and Northeast 
     for nearly a quarter-century, the recent hemorrhage of jobs, 
     though predicted by many economists, is devastating some 
     areas. It is driven by two forces--government policy, which 
     encourages free trade with low-cost apparel exporters like 
     Mexico and Malaysia, and high technology, which helps big, 
     profitable textile companies produce more cloth with fewer 
     workers.
       ``We have lost on the order of 500,000 jobs in apparel in 
     the past 23 years and we will probably lose another 40,000 to 
     50,000 this year,'' said Carl Priestland, an economist with 
     the American Apparel Manufacturers Association.
       Most of the pain will be felt in small towns like Pisgah, 
     named after the mountain that Moses climbed to get his first 
     glimpse of the Promised Land. Locals fear that Andover Togs, 
     Pisgah's biggest employer, will shut down its remaining 
     operations, including lithography and engineering, in 
     addition to the sewing plant it just closed. If that happens, 
     400 more jobs will disappear--and with them, the town's hopes 
     for an economic recovery.
       ``I do a good business with people at the mill, so this is 
     going to slow down the economy big time,'' said R.D. 
     Mitchell, a former mayor who runs a Chevron service station 
     that is one of the town's unofficial gathering spots. ``There 
     are a lot of people being pushed out of jobs within a 20-mile 
     radius of here,'' he added. ``People can't spend money they 
     don't have.''
       For all the financial turmoil in textile workers' lives 
     these days, the industry itself remains a huge and profitable 
     sector of the American economy. Output has grown steadily, 
     from $32.8 billion in 1974, to $56.3 billion in 1984 and to 
     $74.2 billion in 1994, the last year for which figures are 
     available. Even after adjusting for inflation, the increase 
     over the last two decades has been more than 33 percent. 
     Profits in 1994 totaled $1.74 billion, or 2.7 percent of 
     sales, half the 5.4 profit margin for all manufacturing.
       Broadly speaking, the textile trade consists of three 
     sectors. Fiber manufacturers, the smallest of the three, spin 
     cotton and other raw materials into threads for the fabric 
     makers, which weave the threads into cloth for apparel 
     producers to make into clothing.
       While it is profitable, the continued prosperity of the 
     industry hinges in large part on its ability to squeeze out 
     as many American jobs as possible from the production 
     process. The two main sectors--raw fabrics and finished 
     clothing--achieve that goal in two very different ways, 
     cutting labor costs and automation. And industry experts say 
     that outside attempts to stanch the bleeding may do more harm 
     than good.

[[Page H1771]]

       Clothing manufacturers, swamped by a flood of cheap imports 
     from Asia and elsewhere that have grabbed 50 percent of the 
     American market, up from 20 percent two decades ago, stay 
     profitable by exporting jobs to low-wage Latin American 
     countries like Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
       These companies have been unable to exploit America's 
     vaunted technological superiority to offset their foreign 
     rivals' wage advantage because no one has been able to 
     develop an economical alternative to the old-fashioned sewing 
     machine. Automated machines have a hard time handling soft, 
     floppy cloth, and the vision-recognition systems needed to 
     match patterns at seams, collars and cuffs are far too 
     expensive for the low-margin apparel business.
       In an integrated apparel factory, one that converts raw 
     fabric to finished clothes, 50 percent of the jobs are sewing 
     machine operators, 86 percent of whom are women. ``You can 
     automate design, you can automate pattern setting and 
     cutting, but sooner or later you have to push fabric through 
     a sewing machine,'' Mr. Priestland said. ``That's still the 
     bottleneck.''
       And that is where governmental policy comes in. 
     Congressional approval of the North American and world trade 
     accords in 1994 and 1995 made it much easier for American 
     corporations to bring in goods from factories in third world 
     countries, notably Mexico, by moving to eliminate quotas on 
     imported apparel.
       The search for cheap labor is nothing new. Many of the 
     mills that are closing now migrated to impoverished regions 
     of the rural South decades ago from the relatively prosperous 
     Northeast. Even today, says David Thornell, director of the 
     economic development authority of Jackson County, an 
     economically depressed region that includes Pisgah, many of 
     the factory workers here till the fields part time to make 
     ends meet.
       But with the factory idle, farming alone will not pay all 
     the bills, and residents are bitter. ``They pay those people 
     down there a dollar and a nickel an hour,'' said Jim 
     Mabry, another Pisgah resident. ``Then they ship the 
     clothes back here for finishing so they can call them 
     American-made.
       Andover Togs, which is based in New York, says it had 
     little choice but to open its factory in the Dominican 
     Republic. ``I don't think we have ever seen a retail 
     environment this sour,'' said Alan Kanis, the company's chief 
     financial officer. He added that the company's major 
     customers, discount chains like Wal-Mart and Kmart, were 
     major importers, forcing the company to keep a tight rein on 
     its costs.
       David Buchanan, associate dean of the college of textiles 
     at North Carolina State University, predicted more mills 
     would shut down. The trend could turn out-of-the-way places 
     like Pisgah into ghost towns, just as many farms villages in 
     the upper Midwest faded into history when farming became 
     mechanized.
       ``Historically, the role of the textile and apparel 
     industry has been to provide employment for the otherwise 
     unemployable,'' Mr. Buchanan said. ``But that has been 
     changing. If there is no work, the sons and daughters will 
     move away, the way they did in farming. If there is no reason 
     for a town to exist, it will go away.''
       If American apparel makers are surviving by hiring cheap 
     labor overseas, the other big component of the textile 
     industry, the companies that weave the cloth and fabric, is 
     thriving by applying the latest technology at home.
       A visit to the Cone Mills Corporation plant in Greensboro, 
     N.C., shows the strides in productivity that American fabric 
     makers have made in recent years. In the weaving room, a 
     total of 416 looms pump out 12,000 square yards of denim 
     every hour, nearly 50 percent more than the 1,000 older 
     machines that they replaced. Yet they are so much easier to 
     operate that only about 20 workers are needed to tend them, 
     about one for every 21 looms and a tiny fraction of the 
     400 or so workers that handled the previous generation.
       Not only that, but weaving technology is about to take a 
     major step forward. The projectile looms in use now can 
     insert 258 threads a minute; new air-jet machines just now 
     coming onto factory floors can process 745 a minute, nearly 
     three times as many.
       Cone plans to replace its older machines with the more 
     advanced models but will not increase its production 
     capacity, since little growth is seen in the American market. 
     ``We'll just have fewer looms and fewer people,'' said 
     Patrick Danahy, Cone's president.
       The combination of faster machines and fewer people 
     explains the decline in employment in the fabric industry 
     from more than 700,000 in the late 1980's to 625,700 in 
     January, even as fabric output increased.
       Although the people in Pisgah are unhappy when their jobs 
     depart for Caribbean nations like the Dominican Republic, the 
     location is good news for the American fabric industry 
     because the new factories there are more likely to buy cloth 
     from them rather than their Asian competitors.
       ``Eighty percent of clothing imports from Mexico and the 
     Caribbean are made of American fabric,'' Carlos Moore, 
     executive vice president of the American Textile 
     Manufacturers institute, said. ``That explains why we have 
     been able to supply a lot of fabric in the face of slow 
     growth and imports.''
       And though the recent liberalization of world trade seems 
     to be accelerating the exodus of apparel jobs from the United 
     States, Mr. Moore said it might also provide an opportunity 
     to increase American raw-textile exports. ``Most countries 
     have traditionally protected their textile industries, but 
     now they may be forced to open up,'' he said.
       Moreover, some people question whether the North American 
     Free Trade Agreement and other trade pacts should be blamed 
     for the flight of jobs abroad. Without the trade agreement, 
     Mr. Danahy of Cone Mills said, ``Both the apparel and textile 
     jobs would have gone to Bangladesh and elsewhere in the Far 
     East.
       ``With Nafta in place,'' he added, ``the textile complex on 
     this continent is more competitive.''

  Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize one of our newly 
elected Members of Congress from Texas, Sheila Jackson-Lee, who has 
been a strong advocate on so many important issues for this body.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentlewoman 
for her leadership and also her diligence on a myriad of issues that 
have added to the enhancement of women and their lives and their 
families in this Nation and how important it is. And we thank you for 
your organization of this special order to pay tribute to women both in 
terms of honoring them for this month and as well as recognizing the 
International Women's Day which will be celebrated on March 8, 1996.
  It is interesting, I would imagine that there might be those who 
would be listening to this special order and argue that we are all one 
family, one America. And I applaud that, and I certainly encourage the 
recognition that we are one Nation under God. But it is important, as 
we recognize the oneness of this country, that we celebrate African-
American history month and Asian-American history month and Hispanic-
American history month, and in my community, Fiestis Patris, as we also 
celebrate Women's History Month along with many of the myriad of 
wonderful ethnic groups throughout this Nation.
  We happen this month to be celebrating and commemorating the 
importance of women, and certainly it is important to recognize women 
internationally.
  Mr. Speaker, this month we are celebrating Women's History Month and 
this Friday we will celebrate International Women's Day. In 1910, the 
German labor leader Clara Zetkin proposed that March 8 be proclaimed 
International Women's Day in memory of those earlier struggles of women 
to better their lives. Working women in the home and work place have 
fought to make a difference. In recent years, it has become a widely 
celebrated day for many women's organizations and groups. Rallies, 
forums, panels, conferences, demonstrations, radio programs, media 
shows, and school programs have become a part of these celebrations of 
women's contributions to the history and culture of the world.
  I rise today, however, not in celebration but with great concern for 
women everywhere, overseas and here at home. With the January 26 
enactment of the current Continuing Resolution [CR], a handful of 
antichoice lawmakers in the house scored a far-reaching victory against 
women's reproductive health and rights--they have effectively 
eliminated all funding for the U.S. International Family Planning 
Program.
  The legislation passed by the House and Senate will decrease by 35 
percent the amount of money available to spend on international family-
planning programs--that is, it will cut the budget by nearly $200 
million.The Agency for International Development [AID] will not be 
permitted to spend any of its appropriation for family planning until 
July 1, 1996, 9 months after the start of the fiscal year. Since AID 
has been unable to release any population funds since October 1995, the 
beginning of the fiscal year, this means that the program will be 
deprived of support, altogether, for three quarters of fiscal 1996. For 
the remainder of this fiscal year, and for fiscal 1997 in its entirety, 
the funds can only be allocated month by month and on an equal-amount 
basis. The net effect is a reduction in the family planning/
reproductive health budget from $547 million in 1995 to $72 million in 
1996.
  Most of the campaign against family planning has been carried out 
under the guise of preventing U.S. foreign aid funds from paying for 
abortions, a practice that has been banned since 1973. Ironically, the 
effots of my antichoice colleagues will lead to even

[[Page H1772]]

more abortions. Nils Daulaire, deputy assistant administrator for 
policy at the U.S. Agency for International Development, has said that 
an additional 200,000 illegal and unsafe abortions will result from 
this action. Daulaire projects that as many as 5,000 more women will 
die over the next year as a result of unsafe abortions and mistimed 
pregnancies, and that roughly 500,000 additional births will result, 
putting further stress on already strained child-survival programs. By 
gutting funds for family planning, which enables women to avoid 
abortion in the first place, this Congress has sentenced women in the 
developing world to more unwanted pregnancies and consequently, more 
abortions.

  This assault on family planning is an attack on women everywhere, at 
home and overseas. In the most fundamental way, it seeks to undermine 
women's ability to take charge of their own lives, their families, and 
their health care needs.
  Enabling couples to plan when to have children and how many is at the 
very core of promoting personal responsibility and family values. By 
enacting deep cuts in the program, my antichoice, and so-called pro-
family, colleagues have increased the likelihood that more families 
will experience the tragedy of maternal of infant death due to a lack 
of reproductive health care.
  I would like to quote Senate Appropriations Chairman Mark Hatfield, a 
pro-life Senator, who has expressed his outrage over the gutting of 
international family planning.

       What we did is bar access to family planning services to 
     approximately 17 million couples, most of them living in 
     unimaginable poverty. We opened the door to the probability 
     of at least 14 million unintended pregnancies every year, 
     tens of thousands of deaths among women * * * and the 
     probability of at least 4 million more abortions that could 
     have been averted if access to voluntary family planning 
     services had been maintained.

  Senator Hatfield is correct in saying that,

       The family planning language in [the CR] is not pro-life, 
     it is not pro-woman, it is not pro-child, it is not pro-
     health, and it is not pro-family planning. It inflicts the 
     harm of a profound misconception on very poor families 
     oversees who only ask for help in spacing their children 
     through contraception, not abortion.

  My colleagues, I urge you, in honor of International Women's Day and 
Women's History Month, to help reverse this policy. Please, let us not 
turn back the clock on women's rights, let us not return to the days 
when women did not have the freedom to choose what they would or would 
not do with their own bodies and when couples could not determine what 
was best for their families.

                              {time}  1830

  Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you very much. I would now recognize the 
gentlewoman from California [Ms. Waters], a leader on women's issues 
and the newly elected ranking member on the Committee on Banking and 
Financial Services for Oversight. Thank you for joining us.
  Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much. I would like to thank you for 
providing leadership for all of us as we join together to recognize 
International Women's Day, which is Friday, March 8. I thank you for 
providing leadership for us of focus and give some attention to who we 
are, what we are doing, what we are accomplishing and what we must do 
to further the cause of women, not only in this country, but in this 
Nation. We have held a powerful and highly successful World Conference 
on Women in Beijing, and I suppose we discovered something maybe others 
knew, but not all of us. We discovered that women all over the world 
are struggling for freedom, struggling for justice and equality, and 
while we have made some serious and profound advancements, we still 
have a long way to go.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a long way to go because there are those in this 
Nation, some in very high places, who simply refuse to see us as 
equals, who will deny us the opportunity to serve in the many diverse 
ways that men serve in this Nation and in this world, and because we 
have those who would deny us opportunity, those who will fight very 
hard to ensure that we do not get a chance to realize our full 
potential, we must continue to struggle.
  We do not like the idea that we have to be here this evening even, 
talking about the struggle that women are still involved with in this 
world to ensure justice, equality, and freedom, but we must do that.
  One of the things that we all recognize, most women, and most women 
who are elected to the House of Representatives recognize, that until 
and unless we are free to determine what happens with our bodies, we 
are not free. It is the most basic of those freedoms that we are able 
to say what we want in relationship to our health concerns. We must be 
able to say without equivocation, without fear, without concern for 
what anybody else thinks, we must be able to say and make decisions 
about our bodies.
  We have been in this struggle for a long time. It has been a long 
time since Roe versus Wade. But we find ourselves having to defend our 
right to make decisions about our own bodies right here in this House 
because there are those, men for the most part, who will take every 
opportunity to try and take back the rights that we have garnered 
through the courts in this country.

  And so we struggle month in and month out, year in and year out, and 
we are still confronted with those obstacles that are created by some 
of the men in this House, even as we look toward our work over the next 
few months, and so I say to all of those who are listening that this is 
a struggle that we may have to be in for some time to come. But I think 
that if women really do believe and they really do understand that this 
is the most basic of all freedoms, the right to determine what happens 
to your body, then we will rise to the level that we must rise to in 
order to ensure that we have such a freedom.
  This evening I would like, in addition to talking about the freedom 
of choice, to talk about an issue that really concerns me, and that is 
women's economic empowerment.

                              {time}  1845

  Women throughout the world continue to struggle to raise and provide 
for their families. We have fought hard for the right to work, the 
opportunity to participate in government, the ability to access 
capital, to start our own businesses, and the right to attain a higher 
education and reliable child care.
  All of our strides toward affirmative advancement are halted when our 
own leaders talk about dismantling programs under affirmative action 
that help women establish a level playing field with men. I come from a 
State where we must be involved in the struggle to try and save 
opportunities for women because there has been advanced something 
called the California Civil Rights Initiative, that would eliminate 
affirmative action programs in public employment, education, and public 
contracting.
  Women have only begun to climb the corporate ladder and to shake up 
the glass ceiling. While women account for 52 percent of all Americans, 
yet we still comprise only 3 to 5 percent of senior level positions in 
major companies. We represent only 11.8 percent of college presidents, 
10 percent of the House of Representatives, and only 8 percent of the 
U.S. Senate. Even with affirmative action, women are still paid less 
for the same work. Women make only 72 cents to a man's dollar.
  In 1993, female managers earned 33 percent less than male managers. 
Female college professors earned 23 percent less than male professors, 
and female elementary school teachers earned 22 percent less than male 
elementary teachers.
  I cannot continue to give you all of the dismal statistics. All I can 
say is, as we focus this evening, let us recognize that we are not near 
the equality that this country and this Nation and this world deserves.
  Mr. TORRES. When I step onto the House floor every day, I am never 
certain what I will face: Will the agenda promote progress and growth? 
Or will the House encourage policies that deliver an America of 
inequality?
  Unfortunately, inequality is often the answer and women are often the 
targets. Whether the issue is opportunity on the corporate ladder or 
the freedom to make choices, this Congress has sought to strip away and 
demolish the rights of women.
  At the top of the hit list is: limiting access to abortion and 
abolishing affirmative action. But

[[Page H1773]]

what worries me most is the theme of these efforts: These themes are 
not about helping women.
  If helping women was the intent, we would acknowledge the fact that 
women earn only 72 cents for every man's dollar, and we would enforce 
equal pay for equal work.
  We would not question a woman's judgment when she needs a medically 
necessary procedure; we would work toward perfecting the safest method.
  If this Congress is serious about women's issues, let's focus on what 
we can do for women, not what we can take away.

                          ____________________