[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 74 (Tuesday, June 3, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3263-H3269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DESTROYING ORGANIZED LABOR AND MAKING WORKERS POWERLESS IN THIS COUNTRY
The SPEAKER pro tempore [Mr. Gibbons]. Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to make it clear that my
colleagues are welcome to stay. The issue I am about to discuss is
quite relevant and related to the previous issue.
Mr. Speaker, we are in a situation where, as I said before, there is
a drive on to drive the workers' wages down to the lowest levels, and
the process of globalization is being used to do that, where corporate
powers are moving the jobs and their manufacturing processes to the
areas that have the lowest wages, and there is a continual search that
goes on and on perpetually for the lowest wages.
At the same time, we have a situation in our borders here in America
where every effort is being made to destroy organized labor, to take
away the power of the workers to speak for themselves and to drive the
work force here down to lower levels at the same time you are taking
away their jobs and forcing them to bargain for lower wages because of
the globalization.
{time} 2115
We have with the welfare, so called, reform. It was not welfare
reform. It was welfare liquidation. We destroyed the entitlement, for
that has been in the law for 65 years, that was not reformed. That is
elimination, liquidation.
We gave to the States certain powers, and we give them money, but the
right for a poor person to expect his government to help to keep him
alive is gone. The welfare reform was driven by a call to put people to
work. Work was a necessity in order for human dignity to be encouraged.
Work was desirable and work was available. We insisted that the work
was available in spite of the fact that we had high unemployment in all
of those areas where you had a large welfare case load, large numbers
of people are on welfare in the areas where you have the biggest
unemployment problems.
So now we have a situation where we have pushed and are pushing
people off the welfare rolls. We are insisting that there are jobs, and
as we mobilize to put more and more people to work, what is happening
is that we have created a situation where people are being forced to
work for less than the minimum wage. And when accusations are made that
this is a movement toward slavery, people are upset. They say how dare
you use the word slavery.
Let us stop for a moment and consider the fact that on the plantation
everybody had a job. There was no unemployment on the plantation. You
might have great varieties in terms of fringe benefits in terms of
housing provided or decent food, but everybody had a job. You can have
a situation where everybody has a job, and you can take away the
dignity of people through the job but not paying them a decent wage,
you can drive down the wages to the point where we have a new class of
people, what you might call urban serfs or suburban peasants.
Mr. Speaker, they are in a situation where they are locked into
accepting whatever is given them, but it has nothing to do with the
relationship with what they need and what the standard of living is in
our particular society. So we are driving down wages now by introducing
into the labor market a new class of people, putting them in jobs and
paying them less than even the minimum wage which is totally
inadequate.
We have had previous discussions about how inadequate the minimum
wage is. It is going to go up to 5.15 an hour, it is now at 4.75. If
you look at what it takes to maintain a family, you can make the
minimum wage and work every eligible hour during the year, and still
you are in poverty according to our own standards.
So I want to open the discussion in terms of the new threat, the
additional threat in addition to most-favored-nation status for people
for countries like China in addition to NAFTA and in addition to GATT.
We now have a drive on within our own society to finish the job and it
is not unrelated, what is happening to welfare recipients and workfare
and the movement to try to force people to work for less than the
minimum wage is not unrelated to the
[[Page H3264]]
total Republican attack on organized labor.
Unprecedented, an unprecedented attack has been launched in this
Congress, the 105th Congress, a Congress that prides itself on seeking
some new bipartisan options and wanting to be more civil. In no way is
it acting civilly or behaving in a civil way toward organized labor.
They have come out pushing very hard to destroy organized labor.
There is a thorny campaign on to promote union democracy which would
take away the rights of labor unions to finance the political education
of their own members. There are new ambushes of Davis-Bacon, the
prevailing wage requirements, new ambushes that are being prepared,
riders on bills unrelated to work force issues. There is the whole cash
for overtime swindle where, instead of giving people cash for overtime,
they are going to take it away and give them time off at the boss's
discretion and convenience.
There is a continuing drive to gag the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration. There is a continuing refusal to recognize ergonomics,
what that means in terms of repetitive motion disorders to workers.
There is a new drive to pass the union busting law called the Team Act,
which allows the bosses almost to hand pick the shop stewards. And
there is a new slashing of the budget for the National Labor Relations
Board which is being threatened. And they are harassing the National
Labor Relations Board. And then there is NAFTA, GATT, most-favored-
nation treatment trading status for China that we have been talking
about here previously.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], who
might want to comment on this, which is a continuation of what we were
talking about before, the drive to push the wages of labor, of the
working class down to the very lowest level.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
The issue that he is talking about is the most important issue facing
our society, and that is that never before in American history, at
least the modern history of this country, have the people on top had so
much wealth and have had so much power. What they are doing with that
wealth and power is using it to make themselves ever more rich while
they are squeezing and shrinking the middle class and creating a new
class, urban serfs.
Mr. OWENS. And suburban peasants.
Mr. SANDERS. What you are talking about are the millions and millions
of people who are desperate, who have no place to go and that is what
is going on in this country.
There is one point that I want to add to what my colleague was
saying. And that is my very great fear that the American people are not
reading or seeing on their TV's or hearing on their radios much about
this reality, which is the most important development that has taken
place in modern American history. This is the story of the century,
that the American middle class is shrinking, that the gap between the
rich and the poor is growing wider, that people are working longer
hours for low wages. But somehow when we turn on the TV in the evening,
we do not see that story. We see O.J. Simpson and we see everything
else in the world, but we somehow could not see that story. How come we
do not see that story? It is tied into everything else that we are
talking about.
Who do we think owns the media? When we talk about sweatshops in
desperate Third World countries, when we talk about companies
downsizing and throwing American workers out on the street, we are
talking about companies like Disney who, among other things, owns ABC.
When we are talking about companies going to Mexico to pay people
substandard wages or going to China, we are talking about General
Electric, who happens to own NBC. And Westinghouse happens to own CBS,
and Rupert Murdoch happens to own Fox, multibillionaire who is
extremely right wing.
So it is no great secret that the American people do not see the most
important realities facing their lives on the television. They turn on
the TV, they see everything else in the world except what is going on
in their own lives.
I think one of the issues that I would add to the discussion is the
need to tackle the very important issue of corporate control over the
media. It is not just television. It has to do with newspapers as well.
Let me mention a very wonderful book written several years ago by a
former journalist named Ben Bagdikian, the Media Monopoly. Let me quote
from Mr. Bagdikian or paraphrase what is going on in newspapers in
America.
Eighty percent of the daily newspapers of this country were
independently owned at the end of World War II. They were owned by
people, not huge corporations. Today, 80 percent of daily newspapers
are owned by corporate chains. Just 11 companies control more than half
of the dailies, half of the Nation's daily newspaper circulation. And
then we wonder when we have this NAFTA debate, gee, is it not a great
shock that every major newspaper in America ends up being pro-NAFTA. In
fact, 98 percent of the daily newspapers in America have a monopoly as
the only paper in town. You have a one-newspaper town.
Although there are more than 11,000 magazines published in the United
States, today just two corporations control more than half of all
magazine revenues. When you go to the newspaper stand and you see all
of those magazines, what you end up finding out is that these
magazines, many of them are owned by a relatively small number of
corporations. Although there are 11,000 local cable television systems,
only 7 companies have a majority of the 60 million cable TV
subscribers.
Three companies own more than half the television business, four
companies own more than half of the movie business, five companies rake
in more than half of all book revenues.
So there is a reason why people do not feel engaged in the political
process. There is a reason. My colleague mentioned, I think very
perceptively, what has been going on politically around the world in
the last month. The change in England with the victory of the Labor
Party, the change in France with the victory of the Socialist Party,
the fact that the NDP did very well in Canada. What we are seeing is
people all over the world saying, no, we do not have to deal with the
absurdities of the global economy which lower our wages. But in this
country it is very hard for people to learn about what is going on
because of corporate control over the media. I think that is one of the
reasons why we end up having by far the lowest voter turnout.
In England, I think they were disappointed. Their voter turnout was
perhaps 70 percent. They were disappointed. It was a low turnout.
Canada, it is usually above 70 percent. My guess is in the next
congressional elections, probably 35 percent of the people will vote.
Low-income people, working people have given up on the political
process. One of the reasons I would suggest is that, when they read the
papers and they read the magazines and they see the television, their
lives and the pain of their lives is not being reflected in what they
are observing. I think that is an issue we have to discuss.
Mr. OWENS. I think the fact that the British economy in general was
performing very well, they say we have prosperity. What the common
ordinary people in Britain understood was that more and more people at
the top were getting more and more of that economy, and they were
getting less and less. The great shock was they swept overwhelmingly,
they swept out a party at a time when prosperity, so called, was very
much in motion there.
Mr. SANDERS. If the gentleman will continue to yield, the gentleman
raises an interesting point, because there are strong similarities
between the economy in England and the economy in the United States.
And that is our unemployment. England's unemployment is lower than
western Europe, but what they forgot to tell us was interesting. Do you
know what the wages in England were compared to Western Europe? They
were, according to the New York Times, 40 percent less, 40 percent
lower. So what they sacrificed were decent wages, and they created a
whole lot of low wage jobs, which is what we are doing in this country.
In this country, 20 years ago the United States led the world, we
were No. 1 in terms of the wages and benefits, highest wages in the
world, we were No. 1. I know that we do not see it on CBS too often.
Rupert Murdoch
[[Page H3265]]
does not talk about it too often, but today we are 13th in the world.
German manufacturing workers make 25 percent more than our workers.
These people have 6 weeks paid vacation. They have a national health
care system. Their kids can often go to college for free. We do not
talk about that too much.
Mr. OWENS. We have traded places with Great Britain where the gap
between the rich and poor used to be the greatest. We are now,
democratic America has now the greatest gap between the rich and the
poor. It is the phenomenon that has taken place. It has nothing to do
with capitalism per se. The argument about capitalism and what it does
to an economy is an argument, I think, that is just about over.
It appears that humankind prefers a capitalist system. It seems to be
compatible with the way human beings are built. We are not talking
about capitalism automatically creating this kind of condition.
Capitalism can be compassionate. Capitalism can be more creative. They
have a capitalist system in Sweden. They have a capitalist system in a
number of other places. Norwegian workers do very well. There are a
number of places where they choose to use their resources in certain
ways and they choose to throttle the runaway spirit of greed which
creates more and more billionaires and multibillionaires. We ought to
see ourselves differently.
Mr. Speaker, President Clinton has said that America is the
indispensable Nation in today's global society. I agree. I think
capitalism has, in fact, demonstrated that perhaps capitalism is an
indispensable economic system of humankind. There are all kinds of
capitalism. Chinese capitalism uses slave labor in prisons, and we are
buying into a system with China where we are willing to buy the
products of slave labor.
More and more of those products are flowing into this country. We
have an enormous trade deficit with China. It took over a very short
period of time. The Japanese deficit grew slowly over the years, but
the deficit, by deficit I mean we are buying so much more from China
than China is buying from us. If you want to know what these deficits
are about, a trade deficit is when you are buying so much more from one
country, from a country than they are buying from you. We are buying
many products that should be manufactured in our own country. We are
buying products that our workers here used to make. We are buying those
products from the Chinese. We are doing all of that in terms of the
globalization that we talked about in the previous hour, driving down
the wages by moving from one country to another to find the lowest
wages.
{time} 2130
But here in this country the attack on organized labor is an attack
which seeks to drive down the wages of the workers. And the latest
development is the fact that we have had new low-wage workers
introduced into the labor pool via welfare recipients.
In my city of New York, workfare they call it, is expanding. We have
one of the biggest workfare programs in the country, where welfare
workers go to work for city agencies. Now, we also have one of the
biggest reductions in the number of workers on city payroll at the same
time. They say, well, this is being done by attrition. After all, the
mayor of the city is running for reelection this year. He is not laying
off anybody. But they are not hiring anybody. They have not hired
anybody for the last 3 years. And they had a process of encouraging
workers to retire in various ways, pressing them to take packages to
retire.
So the civil service work force in New York has been reduced while
the workfare work force has gone up. The workfare people, who are
welfare recipients while they are on workfare, are working for less
than minimum wage. They have to work a certain number of hours in order
to get their grant. And if we divide the number of hours into the
grants, we will find the amount of money per hour is lower than minimum
wage. Add to that that there are no fringe benefits attached to that
work. Of course, they are still on welfare so they are fortunate enough
to be able to continue to get Medicaid for health care.
So we have a situation where from within the country pressures are
now on to drive down the wages by forcing more and more low-wage
workers into the market. The White House has reached to call for a
minimum wage in workfare plans. They say we must pay welfare workers a
minimum wage. That set off a whole chain reaction. That chain reaction,
we understand, may culminate in a bill on the floor of this House very
soon.
There is one rumor that Ways and Means is preparing it now, which
will make it clear that by order of this government, people must work
for less than minimum wage. We are going to put that into a law. There
is a great deal of alarm about it. We have been meeting today among
members of the Congressional Black Caucus. We want to call this to the
attention of our fellow members of the Democratic Party, we want to
call it to the attention of all of the Members of the House and to the
attention of the American people.
We want to sound the alarm right now, let us not sit here in
Washington and make laws which will create a new class of workers,
urban serfs, suburban peasants, whatever we want to call it, people
working for less than minimum wage. Minimum wage is already inadequate.
We will not accept anything below the minimum wage.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. The point the gentleman is making is that many people
out there may say, well, that is too bad, but it does not affect me.
But it does affect us, because what is going on, if an employer can
hire somebody for $3 an hour, for $3.50 an hour, that means all wages
will go down as well. That is what this effort is about. It is not only
to save money by hiring people below the minimum wage, it is to push
everybody's wages down in exactly the opposite way that when we raise
the minimum wage working people's wages will go up.
The gentleman before made an interesting point, and I want to pick up
on that because, again, it is an issue that is not discussed very much
on the floor of the House. He said, quite correctly, that the United
States now has the most unfair and unequal distribution of wealth and
income in the entire industrialized world. They used that dubious
distinction that used to accrue to Great Britain, with all their dukes
and queens and kings.
The point is that today the United States has claimed what England
used to have and that we now have, the most unfair distribution of
wealth and income.
When we talk about economics, ultimately, like a football game or a
basketball game, it is about who wins and who loses. And what is going
on in the United States today is that we know who is winning. We know
the wealthiest 1 percent of the population now owns over 40 percent of
the wealth, which is more than the bottom 90 percent. So we have 1
percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
When we hear about the booming economy, we should know that between
1983 and 1989, 62 percent of the increased wealth of this country went
to the top 1 percent and 99 percent of the increased wealth went to the
top 20 percent. Meanwhile, the middle class shrank and poor people were
working at lower wages than for many, many years.
And when we see the unfair distribution of wealth in general, we also
see recently the outrageous situation that CEO's in the United States
of America, the heads of large corporations last year had a 54 percent
increase in their income while many working people saw a decline in
their real wages. And CEO's now earn, on average, more than 200 times
what the worker in their company earns, which is by far the largest
spread in the industrialized world.
So I think when we talk about the state of the economy, it is
important to understand who is winning and who is losing, and the
reality is that the people on top have never had it so good, the middle
class is shrinking, and working people all over this country are
working longer hours for lower wages and barely keeping their heads
above water.
Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman. The story is that we are the
wealthiest nation that ever existed on the face of the Earth. The
wealth of America is
[[Page H3266]]
constantly increasing and the wealth of wealthy people throughout the
world is constantly increasing.
There is no reason why minimum wages cannot be provided. There is no
reason why health care cannot be provided for everybody. There is no
reason why we cannot have a totally different kind of society even
within the structure of capitalism. There is no reason why it cannot
happen. It is the blindness, the shortsightedness of the people in
power and that have the money that continues this condition.
And the fact we went to great lengths to push people off welfare and
with the myth that there were jobs out there, and now we are pushing
them into the work force to undercut the lowest paid workers and
compete with those that have jobs.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Let me first of all thank the gentleman from
New York for yielding. It is certainly a pleasure to join here this
evening with the gentleman from Vermont and the gentlewoman from
California as we discuss what I think is one of the most serious issues
facing America.
It seems to me that right now, as we prepare to implement welfare
reform, as it is being called, or as we prepare to implement the right
for people to go from welfare to work, or the enforcement of people
going from welfare to work, that rules are being changed.
We have just seen the rule changed in the meaning where volunteerism
in one place means mandatory in another place. Now we see an attempt to
change another set of definitions and another set of rules. Individuals
who work have the right to be protected by Federal standards. Now we
are being told, or it is being suggested, that individuals who may be
welfare recipients and have the opportunity or get the chance to work
under some Government-sponsored program, that they will not be defined
as workers, they will not actually be defined as having a job because
they will not have the same protection.
Well, work, to me, seems to be work. And so there is something
sinister happening in America. There is something that is difficult to
define. It seems as though we are bent on moving backwards rather than
moving forward; that there are those who are attempting to take us back
to the dark ages. And I think that if there was ever a message being
sent to low-income people, if ever a message was being sent to
individuals who have need for public resource, if there was ever a
message being sent to the physically challenged, to those who suffer
with disabilities in our society, then that message is to organize, to
come together, to educate, agitate and activate, to stimulate real
movement so that all of the forces that are being attacked will have an
opportunity to protect themselves. There is unity in strength and there
is strength when groups are unified.
So this is a time when all of America really should unify to protect
the rights of those at the very bottom. I thank the gentleman from New
York and yield back to him.
Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman from Illinois and I yield to the
gentlewoman from California.
Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. Mr. Speaker, I thank so much my dear
colleague from New York and also my colleague from Vermont and from
Illinois. I could not help but to come to this floor when I heard the
gentlemen speaking about the issue of minimum wage.
Certainly I was one of those who cast a vote in favor of that last
year, but as I look at an article in The Washington Post, and it speaks
to one of our colleagues, Republican colleagues, who is suggesting that
a solution with reference to persons being paid below the minimum wage
would be to pass legislation that would say the minimum wage would not
apply, and another would be to say that all of the benefits that people
are receiving would count toward calculating the minimum wage.
I think this is absolutely deplorable. As I looked at my colleagues
last year, those who voted on this minimum wage, I was encouraged that
perhaps we were moving forward, as the gentleman from Illinois said.
But then as I went back home to my district of Watts and Willowbrook,
Compton and Lynwood, Wilmington, and had to meet the welfare recipients
of my district to tell them of a welfare bill that was passed that said
that they had to move from welfare to work, though they were
discouraged, they thought, well, maybe, just maybe, jobs can come where
we can get off of welfare. They do not want to be there. Maybe, just
maybe, job training will come that will allow us to go from job
training to jobs and then have a job where the wages will be as such
where we can sustain ourselves and our families.
So last year this body passed and the President signed this welfare
reform bill that commanded welfare recipients to go to work. This bill
did not tell them how to find a job, how to work, where to work, who
would train and hire them, or how to get to work. The bill,
nonetheless, ordered them to get out and seek employment. In essence,
the bill commanded them to swim or sink.
If there was an upside to that legislation, it was the fact that
early in the session, as I said, we voted to raise the minimum wage in
this country from $4.25 an hour to $5.15, giving the low-wage earners
in this country, many of whom are welfare recipients and former welfare
recipients and current welfare recipients, a much needed lift.
When I cast my vote in favor of raising the minimum wage, which was
supported by over 80 percent of the American public, I was under the
impression that I was doing so for all Americans, including welfare
recipients. We are not creating new laws, but rather applying current
laws to those employees who are making the transition from welfare to
work. So how can some Republican Members of this body demand that a
citizen of this country leave the welfare rolls and go to work, then in
the same breath deny them the minimum wage for an hour of work?
Workfare employees not only should but need to be treated the same as
any other employee. To do otherwise is unfair to them and the employees
they work with. Welfare recipients in workfare programs should be
entitled to the same protections under Federal labor and
antidiscrimination laws as other employees. The work participation
rules of the new welfare law require a single parent to be engaged in a
job activity for 20 hours per week in fiscal year 1997.
{time} 2145
For an adult in a two-parent family, 35 hours a week are required,
and a single parent is required to work 25 hours in fiscal year 1999
and 30 hours in fiscal year 2000. How can a mother afford child care
for her children in addition to the basic needs of food, shelter, and
clothing with an income well below the minimum wage?
Mr. Speaker, I think it is deplorable. I ask my colleagues, why are
we doing this to persons who recognize that they must leave welfare to
go to work and yet they are being told that now, if they should find a
job, there is a possibility that they will not get minimum wage?
I do not know where we are going in this country, because the very
fundamental rights are being stripped from the people, not only those
whom I serve, but all of us; and yet, we have some of our Republican
colleagues who do not share our beliefs of opportunity and fairness.
Under the proposal that I have just read, they plan to introduce
workfare participants with a plan that may deny the same minimum wage
that is provided to other workers, may be required to perform the same
work as other employees, including hazardous work, at a lower rate of
pay and without any OSHA protection, have no title 7 protection against
sexual harassment or racial discrimination, and would not be entitled
to the provisions of the Family Medical Leave Act. It is preposterous.
I am concerned about how this proposal will affect the State of
California and my district, the 37th Congressional District. One in
twelve Californians receive welfare benefits, and 10 percent of Los
Angeles residents receive welfare benefits. The only way to make the
transition from welfare to work is through obtaining quality job skills
and minimum wage.
The State grants under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Family
Programs are set at the 1994 levels. Caseloads have fallen to 4.1
million, yet the States receive funding for 5 million families. This
difference creates the opportunity to pay workfare
[[Page H3267]]
workers at the minimum wage they deserve and need.
I say to my colleagues, I am ready for the fight. I cannot believe
that anyone in this body would now try to slip not only the rug from
under people but the very basic principles of fairness and opportunity.
Providing minimum wage to workfare employees is not only the fair and
right thing to do but the necessary step to end welfare dependency.
Mr. Speaker, I am with my colleague on whatever he proposes. I am
here for the fight and the long haul to ensure that fairness to my
constituents and to all constituents throughout this country who are
trying their best to move from welfare to work get the respect, the
fairness, and the opportunity they deserve.
Mr. OWENS. I want to thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from
California [Ms. Millender-McDonald], and say that she is ready to
fight. And I want her to know there are a number of other people in
this country who are now quite alarmed by what is happening and they,
too, are ready to fight.
There has been a recent set of mobilizations proposed by the
religious community. They think this is immoral, that we cannot talk
about welfare reform, meaning the people must go to work and we start
defining jobs as something less than a job.
When we operate in America, we operate under the Fair Labor Standards
Act. A job must pay minimum wage, must provide benefits, must protect
you from discrimination, it must give you safety. Everything under the
Fair Labor Standards Act must be there in order for a job to be a job
in America.
And the people are upset. A coalition of 18 of the Nation's most
prominent civil rights, labor and welfare and civil advocacy groups
have urged President Clinton to grant welfare recipients rights to a
broad array of legal protections against discrimination and unjust
treatment on the job. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and 17
other groups asked President Clinton in a May 15 letter to make the
civil rights and economic security of low-income individuals and
families a higher national priority as States implement the new welfare
law.
The Lutheran services in America have issued a proclamation that in
none of the various organizations where they employ people or that they
are affiliated with that employ people may any organization pay welfare
recipients less than the minimum wage or provide less than fringe
benefits that are provided to other workers.
So we should sound the trumpet. I think the Congressional Black
Caucus have made it quite clear that we intend to appeal to our
colleagues in the Democratic Party here in the Congress, we intend to
make appeals to the entire Congress, Members of both parties.
Remember that the minimum wage was a very popular issue in the last
Congress, that there were people that said they would never permit it
to pass, that it would only pass over their dead body. But the American
people let it be known, they thought it made sense. They thought it was
the right kind of morality for America. They thought it was fair and
just. Eighty percent of the American people said they wanted an
increase in the minimum wage. We got an increase in the minimum wage.
Mr. Speaker, I think what has to happen now is the American people,
the workers out there, the people who belong to the caring majority and
believe in doing the right thing, even though they are all right by
themselves, they do not want to turn their backs on other people who
ought to have a fair opportunity to earn a living under right working
conditions with a minimum wage.
All that is in motion now, and I think we should go forward to see to
it that nothing is passed on the floor of this House that begins to
roll back the clock, that takes away the right of workers who happen to
have been or are present welfare recipients. A worker means that you
are under American FSLA, Fair Standards Labor Act, under all the added
discrimination laws, under the OSHA laws for safety. That is what it
means to be a worker in America.
Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the gentleman from
New York [Mr. Owens] is absolutely right.
I am encouraged, though, as we have read this information and this
proposal is now being put into print, that the religious communities
are coming forth now with us, educators, parents, college students.
They have now seen the disingenuous nature by which this proposal is
being brought forth.
I say to my colleagues that we will not stop the Congressional Black
Caucus, and I am sure the Democratic Caucus and all other fair-minded
people will not stop until we defeat this proposal. If we are going to
insist that people move from welfare to work, we must do so in the
fairest, the most sensitive way that we can.
I again thank my colleague so much for bringing this to the floor so
early so that I can get my quest in and my position on this issue right
up front. I will be meeting with people tomorrow, women's
groups, religious groups, and I will not stop until we defeat such a
very contentious proposal as this.
Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentlewoman from California. We do not know
how late the hour is really. We may have on the floor this week or
early next week an attempt to codify the denial of the payment of
minimum wage and other worker benefits to welfare recipients.
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. I thank my colleague very much, and that is
why I think that the whole concept of eternal vigilance is so
important. That is, we have to be watchful all the time. We also have
to be real about the whole business of how many jobs are there really,
how many jobs are there really for many of the people that we are
talking about, people who in many instances do not have the skills,
have not been trained.
As a matter of fact, I am reminded of an incident that took place the
other day where a fellow that I know went out looking for a job and he
looked every place that he could possibly look. Finally, he ended up at
the zoo. He talked to the zoo keeper, and he said, ``I really do not
have anything.'' Then he remembered. He says, ``You know, my gorilla
got sick. I have got a group of kids coming in. They want to see a
gorilla. I will give you $100 to be the gorilla.'' So the fellow said,
``Look, I am from the west side of Chicago. For $100, I will be
anything you want me to be because I want to work, I want a job.'' He
put the suit on. The kids came in, and he kind of beat his chest a
little bit and the kids clapped. Then he jumped up on a trampoline and
did a flip. The kids clapped again. So he decided to do a double
somersault. And he flipped over into the lions' cage, fell on his back
laying prostrate. The lion starts to come toward him, and he looks over
at the zoo keeper and says, ``Help.''
The guy did not respond. The lion is still coming. He says, ``Help.''
Still no response. The lion decided that he would then take advantage
of the situation, so he got ferocious, began to growl and made a
charge. The guy says, ``Help.'' The lion says, ``Shhh, you are going to
blow both our covers.''
And, so, my point is that the availability of jobs is not nearly what
we are led to believe. I hear us talk about 4.9 percent unemployment.
It is not 4.9 percent unemployment in inner city America. It is not 4.9
percent unemployment in the neighborhood and community where I live.
And, so, we need economic policies that will also create jobs for which
people can actually work and earn a decent wage, a livable wage. And
there is only one way to do it, and that is to keep the action up, keep
the heat on, keep pressing forward, keep moving. I believe that the
American people will, in fact, respond.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that the problem of
putting people to work on welfare and the problem of providing decent
jobs and wages for workers is not unrelated to the overall scene here
in this House.
The budget drives everything. We have certain developments in the
budget which automatically take away job opportunities. We have a great
decrease in the amount of public housing construction and repair. We
have a great decrease in terms of money available for school repair and
renovation. In fact, they took the whole Presidential initiative of $5
billion, which would have gone into repair and renovating and building
new schools, providing jobs for people in inner cities.
We had a big fight over the transportation bill which in the inner
city communities would provide jobs for people
[[Page H3268]]
who work for mass transit and for the construction and repair of
subways and bus systems, et cetera, as well as provide jobs for people
who work on highways. So the job creation part of the budget is given
away to tax cuts.
We have large tax cuts to the same categories of people that the
gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] was talking about earlier. They
are already the richest people in America. Our budget is dedicated to
giving them more to take capital gains cuts and inheritance cuts. They
will get more, while at the other extreme we are cutting down on the
transportation budget that would have provided jobs, on the school
construction budget that would have provided jobs, and we are cutting
programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
So our common sense here has gone out of the window. It is up to the
American people, the voters out there, to bring back the leadership,
bring the leadership here back to their senses. That budget was
negotiated at the White House. I guess we have got to bring the
President back to his senses too and have him stand up to that kind of
negotiation, not agree to make those kinds of cuts in areas which
create jobs, which take care of people, and at the same time you are
bolstering the pocketbooks and the bank accounts of the people who need
it the least.
We got it all topsy-turvy, and that is why this country is the
country that has the greatest gap between the rich and poor. Great
Britain, with all its lords and aristocracy and very rich people and
very poor people in the slums of London and various great cities, Great
Britain used to be the place where you had the greatest gap between the
very rich and the very poor. Now it is America, the home of the brave
and the land of the free, the place where everybody assumed they had
the opportunity to make it, and a lot of the creation of the world's
modern economy was built on the backs of consumers, ordinary people,
who had the money to go out and buy refrigerators and buy cars and buy
homes. All that is being slowly squeezed to death by catering to the
very people at the very top. It begins right here at the House of
Representatives.
{time} 2200
At the same time they are taking the money away from those who need
help the most from their government.
Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. Indeed as my colleague from Illinois just
said, we hear all the time this 4.9 to 5 percent unemployment. They are
not talking about our constituents. The unemployment rate in my
district is close to 50 percent. Yet there are not any jobs. No jobs
are rushing into my district. When this budget came to the floor and
they had taken out the $5 billion for school construction that would
have provided jobs and create the type of climate where children can
learn, that was taken out. It just appears to me that every day we see
a group of Members here who do not wish to foster an agenda that will
help to move people from this welfare to work as so stated in their
budget.
Also, the transportation provision of the budget was underfunded.
That then parlays into the lack of our getting roads and highways built
whereby we can advance international trade that creates the jobs in our
district, that really boosts the economy.
Again, I say to the American people, watch this House. Because this
is not a House that seems to suggest that we are fundamentally trying
to move people from welfare to work in a fair and equitable way. I will
suggest to those who are listening, call us, either the Members you see
on this floor or your own Member, and share your thoughts on the
proposal that is being presented, that persons whom we are asking to
move from welfare to work should get below minimum wage. You call us
and answer to whether that is a fair way and an American way and will
be conducive to opportunities for those who are less fortunate. I think
not. I will fight until we find the justice in this House that is
supposed to be the people's House.
Mr. OWENS. I think it is important to point out that we are not
alone, as the gentlewoman said before. The churches are mobilizing to
take the facts to the American people and to try to get people to
understand the unfairness in this whole attempt to push people out
there, make them work for less than the minimum wage, with no benefits.
The Washington Post and the New York Times and a number of other
newspapers have come out in support of the President's position. I just
want to read a couple of paragraphs from the Washington Post editorial
that appeared on Monday, May 19.
``Wages of Welfare Reform'', it is called.
The President was right to order that welfare recipients
put to work under the terms of last year's welfare bill be
paid the minimum wage. The objecting governors and other
critics are likewise right when they say that his decision
will throw the bill even further out of whack than it already
was. What the President basically proved that in doing the
right thing on the wage was how great a mistake he had made
in caving in to election year pressures, some of them of his
own making, and signing the bill to begin with. The problem
with the welfare part of this legislation as distinct from
the gratuitous cuts that it also imposed in other programs
for the poor is the mismatch that exists between its commands
and the resources it provides to carry them out. The basic
command is that welfare recipients work, but that's not
something that can be achieved by the snap of a finger or the
waving of a wand or it would have happened long ago. A lot of
welfare recipients aren't capable of holding down jobs
without an enormous amount of support. Nor in many cases are
there jobs enough in the private sector to accommodate them
even if they could hold those jobs down.
That is just a section from an editorial that appeared in the
Washington Post. There was one also similar in Newsday in New York
which called for supporting the President as he attempts to enforce the
Fair Labor Standards Act in respect to welfare recipients.
I think I said before that one of the churches that has set an
example is the Lutheran Church where they say that they will not allow
any of their units that employ people to engage welfare workers for
less than the minimum wage. There is a statement they issued on May 1,
at the Workfare Media Conference of the Lutheran Services in America. I
will quote just a few sections from that:
The Lutheran Services in America organizations spend $2.8
billion serving 2 million people and includes over 3,000
locations across the United States. We employ workers at all
levels and seek to serve those who are in need.
When Congress passed welfare reform legislation which was
signed into law on August 22, 1996, we all knew that we would
have to move beyond the rhetoric of personal responsibility
to work opportunity and responsibility by the employer. If
welfare reform is to happen in this country, then work
opportunity that includes at the very least the minimum wage
must happen. Rather than pitting personal responsibility and
structural change against one another, we realize that both
kinds of efforts are needed.
As employers, our umbrella alliance of service
organizations has endorsed the fair work campaign so that
workers have both sufficiency and sustainability in their
lives. We know from our experience that work that is a job
must include sufficiency which means adequate levels of
income support so that people can live dignified lives. It
must also include sustainability. Workers cannot live in fear
of taking other people's jobs nor be treated differently than
others by wages, benefits or personnel policies. Without
sufficiency and sustainability, welfare legislation becomes
nothing more than rhetoric.
Lutheran Services in America organizations face the same
issues that every nonprofit and corporate employer in America
faces. We are working within a budget and providing services
for our clientele. We are well aware of what it means to be
an employer and because of this we believe that workfare
recipients need positive learning and training experiences as
well as new jobs and that workfare recipients perform
important work that should be valued fairly.
We in Lutheran Services in America challenge other
employers to join us to be involved and become responsible in
the opportunities we give to workers. It is reform for all of
us and it requires all of us to become a part of this if we
ever intend to see the face of poverty change.
I think that is a forthright statement by the Lutheran Church and it
is a challenge to all other religious organizations and nonprofit
organizations and to corporate America. If we want to really move
people from a situation of dependency into the mainstream and provide
jobs, then let us define a job as being a thing that pays the minimum
wage and has all the other benefits that go with being a worker in
America.
Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. I might add that the Lutheran Church seems to
be a very new group that is coming aboard now. It is very healthy that
they do this. But I am sure that they see this, as we do, as a really
[[Page H3269]]
moral issue, an issue that smacks in the face of unfairness. We cannot
afford to allow this type of proposal to come to American people who
are trying their best to raise their families, to provide shelter for
their children, and to provide an education for them. To move from a
below-subsistence level to self-sufficiency, we must couch this as the
moral issue it really is. For those who are spiritual-minded Members,
for those who want to do the right thing, well, then fight with us to
defeat this very egregious proposal that does not speak to the
fundamental rights of this country.
Mr. OWENS. I am sure that both of my colleagues know well that phrase
that they have heard repeated often, that in slavery everybody on the
plantation had a job, because a job was then defined as work that the
master wanted you to do. You did not get paid for it. For 232 years
there was free labor. You did not get paid for it, but people had jobs.
They were on the plantation and they had jobs. In order to satisfy
those who again move out of racist motivations, when you say people
should go to work and you create a situation through a bill you call
welfare reform that pushes people off welfare and help from the
government into situations where there are no jobs, no effort is being
made to create those jobs. No effort is being made to create real jobs.
So they want to push people into situations where they will work for
something that is not a job. They will work for less than minimum wage.
They will work under extraordinarily harsh conditions to do something
that other workers were being paid to do before. So we are not only not
creating jobs for welfare recipients, we are displacing workers who had
jobs before.
As I said at the beginning, this is happening in no more evident way
than it is happening in New York City. We have a large workfare
program. The workfare program as it expands, we see the city employees,
the municipal payroll, decreasing at the same rate as the workfare
program is increasing, a definite correlation. You take away the jobs
from the people who were being paid to do them before, with fringe
benefits, with a retirement plan, all the things that go into a real
job, you take that away and you put people to work who have nothing
except to work off the cash value of their welfare grant, you get a lot
of work done for very little. If you can institutionalize that and get
it going full steam, you are back into a condition which is close to
slavery because you are forcing people to work in a situation where it
has no relevance to really what they need, you are not paying them,
they are involuntary servitude. It is that bad. We are not exaggerating
when we say that that is where you are going. If you rule out paying
people what we call minimum wage and providing the benefits that we
call a job, then you are creating something that is not a job. You are
creating servitude and forcing people into that pattern of servitude.
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. When the gentleman mentioned New York, I could
not help but smile to myself and think of how fortunate the people of
New York are that they have the gentleman as their advocate, that they
have the gentleman working in their behalf. I want to thank the
gentleman for organizing this evening and for giving us the opportunity
to share it with the gentleman.
The last thing that I would want to say is the gentleman mentioned
the whole business of slavery. I remember the words of the great
abolitionist Frederick Douglass who suggested that if you would find
the level of oppression that a people will accept, that is exactly what
they will get. I do not believe that the people are going to accept
this level of oppression. I certainly thank the gentleman for the
opportunity.
Ms. MILLENDER-McDONALD. May I please add to those thanks, too.
Because I thank the gentleman for taking the leadership on such a very
important issue as this, early on, before we see this so-called
proposal. But it is suspect to me that this is a proposal that is
coming when I was told at the first of the year that we should not do
anything about this welfare reform bill, to allow it to percolate for 1
year to see whether it really works. And now, before a half year is
gone, here is a so-called proposal to revisit the minimum wage with the
express consent to try to do something to harm those who are trying to
move from welfare to work and to not give them a leg up.
I thank the gentleman. I agree with the gentleman from Illinois that
New Yorkers are all the better because they have the gentleman to tout
for them, to address their needs and to certainly bring very critical
issues like this early on to the forefront. Again, I am ready for the
fight.
Mr. OWENS. I thank my colleague from California and my colleague from
Illinois for joining me.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, let me just say there is an effort to divide
and conquer welfare recipients who are put over here and workers who
are put over there. The workers of America must understand this is a
threat to all of us. If you did not understand it before, I hope you
understand it now, that whatever happens to one group of workers,
welfare workers, is going to have an impact on the quality of life and
standard of living of all workers. We must fight to protect all workers
by stopping this effort to make welfare recipients work in conditions
that are not conditions acceptable to other American workers.
____________________