[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.

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