[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 59 (Thursday, May 2, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H4400]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            RESPONSIBLE CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP AND MITSUBISHI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I am here to talk about a press 
conference that I had with many fellow Congresswomen yesterday. It was 
not a happy topic. We were talking about the need for responsible 
corporate citizenship in this country and the problem with the 
impending case on the Mitsubishi factory in Normal, IL.
  Many people have read about this case, and the last thing the 
Congresswomen meant to do was try the facts of the case. That is for 
the court and for the EEOC. But where responsible citizenship comes in 
is understanding what your role is when an American has come forward 
and filed this type of action, and that seems to be where the 
corporation has totally fallen down.
  Of course the corporation can spend all the money it wants defending 
itself in the forums, and it is going to be considered innocent until 
proven guilty. But what the corporation has done instead is an all-out 
classic retaliatory action like I have never seen.
  Let me just document some of the things that we are so concerned 
about. We have seen the company asking women for their medical records 
and women for their credit records that filed these suits. These women 
have received death threats on the job and they have received rape 
threats on the job, and yet the company refuses to protect them. They 
have watched the perpetrators or the alleged perpetrators be promoted 
to supervise them.
  There is a real message for us. The clear message is these rights are 
not going to be able to be accommodated if that kind of environment 
continues on.
  Furthermore, the company has given some very, very strong speeches 
talking about how if these things come to be, there may no longer be 
any jobs, the company may be closed down, all sorts of things. That 
type of thing is also group retaliation, because it creates a whole 
atmosphere of panic, an atmosphere where suddenly employees come 
running to the company saying, ``What can we do? What can we do?'' and 
the company says, ``Oh, well, you can go to Chicago, organize great 
things against the EEOC, lobby outside there,'' and the company pays 
for the bus. It is a free day off. They provide the lunches, they 
provide free phone calls, hand them Members of Congress' phone numbers 
and say, ``Here, phone them and go on.''
  Rather than deal with this as a legal case, which the company has the 
right to do, and hopefully they are doing that part. But they are also 
spending a whole lot of resources trying to make this a political case, 
trying to say that they are going to go out there and take on the 
entire Federal Government, and anybody who stands up for this case or 
thinks that they are going to file some kind of an action or thinks 
they have any employee rights, guess what, they will be destroying the 
plant and destroying the community because of this, and so forth.
  That is not to be tolerated. That is not responsible corporate 
citizenship, and that is what we are talking about. So we will be 
sending a letter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, trying 
to find out what we can do to see that the people who have these 
legitimate complaints and legal rights can pursue them without fearing 
for their life, fearing they are going to be raped, or fearing for 
anything else.
  This is an absolute reign of terror going on in this plant at this 
moment. I must say, one has to wonder, if these types of actions are 
going on in Normal, IL, we kind of wonder what is going on in Abnormal, 
Illinois. I must say, as one who has worked in labor law before I came 
here, I have never seen a case with factual statements like this, nor 
have I seen such a history like this.
  I think one of the things that is responsible for all of this has 
been some of the rhetoric we have seen in this city, where people 
talked about, ``We don't need the EEOC anymore. We don't need these 
standards. Everything is fine, everything is wonderful.'' Maybe 
somebody in corporate America misread that to think they did not have 
to play by the rules anymore and there was no Equal Employment 
Opportunity Commission anymore.
  Well, it is smaller and it is crippled, but it is still here. Thank 
goodness those rights have not been repealed--yet. So we stood firm 
yesterday with the workers who were trying to exercise their rights, 
and we are saying to the corporation they must try to change this reign 
of terror going on there and treat those people with the dignity and 
the respect they deserve.

                          ____________________