[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 44 (Tuesday, April 21, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2100-H2106]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ATTACK ON WORKING FAMILIES MUST CEASE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, we have just returned from a recess, the 
Easter recess, and I think the period between now and the 4th of July 
will be a very busy period where the Congress has some business that 
has to be conducted, and I hope that we will be able to make room on 
this very busy agenda for some items that I think are of great 
necessity.
  I hope that in the next few months we can see an end to one feature 
of this Congress that is highly undesirable, and that is the attack on 
working-class families. The attack on working families must cease. It 
is counterproductive. It does no good. It is out of step with the 
present situation in America where we are enjoying unlimited 
prosperity.
  The stock market, the Dow Jones average has jumped to the 9,000 
level. It is double what it was 2 years ago. Unprecedented prosperity 
we are enjoying, and yet at a time like this, the war on working 
families has been intensified by the Republican majority.
  I can speak from intimate experience about this war on working 
families, because I serve as the ranking member on the Subcommittee on 
Workforce Protections of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. 
So we are having hearings; we are having markups; and I know intimately 
how this war is intensifying, and it has become a kind of a 
microguerrilla warfare.

  The Republicans did a very strange thing in 1994 when they authored a 
Contract with America. It had nothing in there about attacking working 
families. It had nothing in there about attacking unions. There were no 
antilabor platforms parts of the contract. That was the overt contract.
  Obviously, they had a covert contract, because immediately after the 
Republicans won the majority, in addition to pushing their overt 
Contract with America, there was an attack started in 1994 on the 
working families, a steady attack.
  That was an attack which was sort of open warfare, out in the open, 
and with heavy armor. The public could clearly see what was happening; 
the workers could see what was happening clearly, and we rallied our 
forces against those people who wanted to end, at one point wipe out 
the Department of Labor, and then wanted to wipe out the National

[[Page H2101]]

Labor Relations Board. They wanted to bring OSHA to a standstill.
  There were numerous kinds of activities that were undertaken in 1994 
that were beaten back. They basically lost their first set of assaults. 
But now we have a kind of microguerrilla warfare where they are going 
to chip away at the foundations of the protections for the working 
families of America. They have come with all kinds of camouflaged 
attacks.
  Now, frequently we have bills that only take one small part of a 
major piece of labor regulations and law and begin to attack that, chip 
away at that, in the hope that they will be able to slowly erode and 
maybe gain some momentum later on for bigger attacks.
  So I think that it is time to call a halt to the attack on working 
families. It should cease at this point. You lost the first phase of 
the war in the last Congress, so why not let that be a lesson. The new 
strategy of tactics, I do not think it will work, because if we 
maintain an open society, if we continue to debate the discussion, the 
common sense of the American people, the American voters will rise up 
and pass judgment on those who insist on repeatedly attacking working 
families.
  In this atmosphere of prosperity, where unprecedented amounts of 
money are being made, and certainly the people in the top 10 percent, 
the top 20 percent, are doing very well, why even allow ourselves to be 
consumed with a discussion of how to make the pie smaller for working 
families? How to oppress working families in terms of their working 
conditions? How to block benefits from working families?
  Why do we not have a more expansive attitude by both parties. Let us 
have a bipartisan initiative whereby we seek ways to spread the 
prosperity that we now enjoy to all of the American people, including 
the workers? We have got the wrong war going, the wrong set of energies 
being expended at this point. We should focus our energies on how to 
spread the prosperity, how to use this to make a better, a fairer 
playing field for workers.
  We need a terrain where everybody in America can reasonably pursue 
happiness, the pursuit of happiness that is mentioned in the 
Declaration of Independence. It should still be our goal, and everybody 
should not just have the right to pursue happiness, but we ought to 
have a fair playing field, a terrain that allows that to happen.
  We can do it. It is possible now. No society ever in the history of 
the world has enjoyed the kind of resources that we have at hand now. 
So instead of attacking working families, let us look at working 
families as being a major resource. Our human capital is our major 
resource.
  In this very complex, modern society of ours, it is what happens to 
the human capital, the people and their minds, and the way they 
operate, which will determine where our society goes.
  So I want to talk tonight about the attack on working-class families 
and how that ought to cease, and we ought to direct our energies 
instead towards spreading the resources to guarantee that working 
families participate in the present prosperity.
  There are a number of areas in which the attack on working families 
does continue. It is quite obvious not too many weeks ago, a few weeks 
ago, we had one bold initiative brought to the floor here, the Paycheck 
Protection Act. The Paycheck Protection Act is one of the most 
dangerous pieces of legislation ever introduced in America. It has not 
been talked about in the proper context.
  What the Paycheck Protection Act is seeking to do is to cut the 
throat of the working families, cut the throat, the voice, end the 
voice, completely shut them out of the dialogue, circumscribe our open 
society, which is so invaluable.
  One element, one very strong element, the labor movement, the 
organized workers, would be destroyed if the Paycheck Protection Act 
was passed.
  The Paycheck Protection Act boldly states that we are going to put 
unions in a position where they will not be able to function. We will 
give them so much democracy they will choke to death.

                              {time}  2200

  Now, I am going to take some time to talk about this, because it 
seems to have appeal to some people, whereas the chances of it going 
anywhere here on Capitol Hill, we would beat it back and the likelihood 
that it would get passed here is slim.
  But the effort by the Republican majority has taken a guerilla 
warfare approach and spread out, and it now comes through all the 
States. Many States have introduced legislation very similar to the 
Federal legislation that was introduced here in Washington, paycheck 
protection, meaning silence the unions.
  We can summarize it by saying it is a bill that says unions have to 
consult with all the members before they make major decisions. They 
have to have the approval of all the members on every decision. That 
kind of democracy is a democracy of death.
  Even in a small unit like the family, if you told the person who is 
going out to shop for groceries, you will need to get approval from us 
on how you are going to spend this week's grocery money, on all the 
decisions, you would wipe out the process of being able to have anybody 
do the shopping. It is that simple.
  If you want to destroy America, tell the voters that they have a 
right to demand from every congressman that they once a year check with 
them and no decisions can go forward, no actions can be taken, unless 
they approve it a year in advance.
  Any institution can be brought to its knees that way. That is not 
honoring democracy. That is not exalting democracy. That is using 
democracy as a weapon. That is going to extremes in order to destroy 
it.
  That is basically what the Paycheck Protection Act says, that unions, 
unlike corporations or any club that you ever belonged to, there is no 
institution that operates in a way where it has to get the approval of 
its members ahead of time for any basic decision. It is impossible to 
function that way, and yet unions are going to be required to do that.
  Unions are already under great restrictions in that they have the 
Beck decision which, in essence, says a union member has a right to 
demand that his money not be spent on activities other than those 
connected with collective bargaining and the benefits that they receive 
and the administration of those benefits. So they can demand that their 
particular dues money be separated out in a way which allows it not to 
be spent for anything except the direct activities related to 
collective bargaining.
  Already, that is almost impossible to administer. There is a whole 
lot of paperwork. Most unions, of course, are doing that already.
  To go one step farther with a Paycheck Protection Act which demands 
that they lay out their plans, and certainly any positions that they 
are going to take with respect to public policy must be taken ahead of 
time, the union members have a right to do that. So we have that bold 
step taken which is going for the jugular vein of the union movement, 
which is an example of how that attempt to oppress working families has 
taken a new turn. It is more intense than ever.
  There are still great problems with Davis-Bacon being still a 
candidate for ambush behind the scenes. In every major bill related to 
construction expenditure, on Federal funds on construction, you have 
the Davis-Bacon ambush waiting, an attempt to put into law something to 
curb Davis-Bacon or even not allowing certain things to go forward and 
move.
  One of the problems with the school construction initiative is that 
there are too many of the Republican majority who would, rather than 
see no schools built, if they have to be built under the Davis-Bacon 
provisions, they would rather not go forward.
  It is really a blind approach, like the woman who came before King 
Solomon claiming to be the mother of a child, and yet she was willing 
to see the child cut in half. And Solomon, of course, immediately 
identified her as not possibly being the mother of the child. How can 
you be the mother of a child and want to see it cut in half? How can 
you care about education and worry about the problem of using Davis-
Bacon regulations in the construction of schools?
  We have a minimum wage problem that nobody wants to discuss. We 
passed a minimum wage bill 2 years

[[Page H2102]]

ago. Some people said it would be over their dead bodies, but we 
managed to do it, and nobody died. Nobody in the Congress had to pay 
that final price, give the last measure. It passed. Nobody died.
  We have gone two steps now. It is unto $5.15 an hour. It is time to 
increase the minimum wage again, if for no other than reason than to 
share the wealth.
  But there are much better reasons because, as far as working people 
are concerned, the minimum wage still has not caught up with the years 
of inflation. We are still behind in terms of the buying power of the 
dollars that workers receive, so the minimum wage needs to be increased 
just to bring us one step closer to where the buying power of the 
dollar is today.
  There are some moderate proposals on the table to increase it merely 
by 50 cents per year for the next 2 years, which would bring the 
minimum wage up to $6.15. Most workers are way ahead of that already. 
There are a good number that still need the floor of the minimum wage, 
but most are ahead of that already. It is only fitting and proper in a 
time of great prosperity that we increase the minimum wage. At least we 
can do that.
  There are many, many ways to share the present prosperity we enjoy. 
We could go for a universal health system, a universal health system 
which guarantees everybody a decent health plan, and stop this kind of 
approach that we have now, a piecemeal approach which in the end may be 
costing us more, giving us worse health care and costing us more, to 
really having a universal, single-payer health plan. That is one way we 
could spread the prosperity and help us to guarantee the pursuit of 
happiness on a fair playing field for everybody. But if we do not want 
to go that far, the minimum, the least we can do, is to guarantee that 
working people receive a little more money for the hours they put in.
  So the minimum wage, Davis-Bacon. We should stop the war on 
occupational safety and health issues. That still goes on. OSHA is 
being attacked every day from new angles, chipping away. The attempt to 
sort of bring OSHA to a standstill and paralyze the agency completely 
failed.
  They did cut the budget. They have a trophy. They drastically cut the 
budget. They cut the budget of NLRB. They have some trophies to take 
home in this dangerous war against working families, but it still 
exists. OSHA is there and needs to be left alone to provide more safety 
for workers.
  We still have a problem of more than 6,000 workers dying in the 
workplace. We still have a problem with more than 50,000 workers being 
injured in the workplace. It is not moving rapidly enough. Preventable 
deaths are still happening as a result of inadequate occupational 
safety and health procedures.
  Migrant and seasonal agricultural workers, they are still trying to 
chip away at the small protections that they have.
  I came back today for a hearing at 2 o'clock related to migrant and 
seasonal workers, where they are trying to take away the very measly, 
minimum protections that we have there. Those are the most exploited 
workers in America.

  The fact that they do not give contributions to any party, the fact 
that a lot of them are immigrants as well as migrants, also lessens 
their political effectiveness. But a great country does not worry about 
human beings' capability of making contributions; a great country seeks 
to protect all of its citizens.
  I am certainly glad that Abraham Lincoln did not worry about the fact 
that the slaves did not have any PACs. They could not give any 
contributions. The slaves had no political influence. In fact, the 
career of Abraham Lincoln might have been guaranteed as a rosy career, 
going on and on with the least amount of stress, if he had just 
forgotten about the slaves.
  I am glad there was something in his American blood that made him 
care about those who could do nothing for him politically, and he set 
the slaves free. Migrant workers and a lot of people at the bottom of 
the rungs deserve that kind of protection, as do all of us.
  The Federal Employees' Compensation Act, like Workmen's Compensation 
at the State level, we have a Federal Employees' Compensation Act which 
is not very different, but there are assaults on that as being too 
expensive and too costly. We had a hearing on that about a month ago, 
the Federal Employees' Compensation Act; FECA, it is called.
  What came out of the hearing? That there are large amounts of 
payments going to workers who have now retired. Twenty-five percent of 
the payments are going to them, and a large part of that expense that 
is disturbing so many people is going to the older workers.
  Why are there are so many older workers who are getting FECA? Because 
they had no occupational health and safety provisions years ago when 
those people were in the workplace, and large numbers became injured 
with serious injuries.
  Preventive measures taken many years ago would have saved us untold 
numbers of dollars, millions and millions of dollars. But instead of 
taking those steps years ago to implement the kind of occupational 
safety and health procedures in the Federal workplace that we should 
have done, we did not do it, and we have these people now, and we want 
to prey upon the weak. We want to take away some of their benefits. We 
want to get very technical and talk about the fact that they should not 
be getting the money they would have received if they had not been 
injured, and a whole number of arguments are offered which run against 
the grain of the American legal system.
  If each one of these people who were injured in the Federal workplace 
had been able, because there was no workmen's compensation, no 
restrictions on them, been able to go and sue in court, they would have 
gotten far more money for these injuries, probably far more.
  They do very well in these cases. Many are open-and-shut kinds of 
cases, because the Federal Government has not been so generous. They 
challenge people who say they have injuries, and they challenge people 
who have disabilities, and it is not easy to get the compensation. But 
that attack on old workers who have gone out of the work force, who 
worked for the Federal Government, that attack is one of those attacks 
that is most despicable, but it goes on.
  So I am here to talk about that, and I mentioned the Paycheck 
Protection Act first because it is important that we understand what is 
involved.
  They are able to oppress the workers and squeeze them tighter, 
although why we should squeeze workers more I do not know. Now with 
unprecedented prosperity, a Dow Jones average of 9,000, and the stock 
market roaring ahead, why we are preoccupied with squeezing workers? 
But whatever facets of human nature are driving this effort to oppress 
working families, it is there.
  In order to do that, they feel they have to have a closed society. 
They have to get rid of the one voice out there that is able to keep 
pace with the Republican contributors. The Republican contributors are 
predominantly corporations, big business, people who may be misguided 
enough to believe that they have to squeeze more out of the workers.
  How do the workers get to be the enemy, when the evidence and the 
facts show that the workers are not the enemy, they are part of the 
success of the American system? Why that cannot get through, we do not 
know, but that is the case.
  They want to silence the one element that in the last election was 
able to stand up and challenge the multi-billion dollar electioneering 
process of the Republican party. Only organized labor could produce 
money out there to put issue ads in front of people and make them think 
about what was happening with Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage or 
any vital issue that had to be discussed in a way which required 
maximum visual exposure on television or radio. It was organized labor 
that was the one opposition voice that across the country could be 
mounted against the Republican majority's open-ended expenditures.
  So the decision has been made to go after them, to cut off their 
voice, to end our open society.
  The debate will be far more one-sided than it is now. Even with 
labor, organized labor, able to expend $1 million to get the other 
point out there, it is still a lopsided argument. The expenditures of 
soft money with respect to the

[[Page H2103]]

Republican party versus the Democrats, who were supported by labor 
unions, was at least more than 20 to 1, the soft money. The rest of the 
money, it was like between 7 and 10 to 1 on the hard money. So it is 
way out of kilter in terms of the kind of money being spent. They want 
it to go even further. Let us wipe out any well-financed opposition 
totally.
  George Soros, who happens to be a billionaire, and I commend him 
because I do not think that this discussion has to be stratified in 
terms of here are the rich here, and the poor over here, and all rich 
people are foolish enough to believe that they have to wage war against 
working people. I do not think all rich people are foolish enough to 
believe they have to wage war against working people. I do not think 
all corporations are foolish enough or misguided enough to think they 
have to wage war against working people.
  In fact, the biggest corporations that make the most money have 
unions. They have not gone to great lengths to prevent the formation 
and continuation of unions. Unions are shrinking in size, and it is 
interesting that the American economy now, you know, is more and more a 
smaller set of entities.

                              {time}  2215

  The businesses are in smaller units and that is part of what is 
happening with respect to the decreasing number of people who organize. 
We also have not kept pace with our labor laws and our National Labor 
Relations Board. It is too difficult to organize in these smaller 
units, and there are various reasons that I do not want to go into 
tonight why we have fewer unionized workers, but certainly we do not 
want a situation where the kind of opposition and strong national voice 
that unions can mount will be silenced.
  George Soros talks about nothing is more important at this point in 
American history. We are so prosperous and so successful and there is 
no competing superpower. Nothing is more important than keeping an open 
society, whatever has to be done to keep an open society where we have 
a large number of newspapers and we have got a voice there, we have 
voices there that compete with each other, we have voices on television 
and radio that compete with each other. We have a society where the 
dialogue is not all forced to go one way.
  Of course, we say we have freedom of speech. That is part of the 
Constitution. So why are we worried about that? It so happens that 
despite freedom of speech and despite the Bill of Rights, if one does 
not have money or resources, constitutional rights begin to get very 
weak. The fact of modern society is that we are going to have to take a 
look at the relationship between money and resources and rights, and 
one of the rights is freedom of speech.
  George Soros says one of the great problems in totalitarian 
societies, and certainly in the case of the Soviet Union, was that it 
was a closed society. The Soviet Union has probably a higher literacy 
rate than America and most countries in the world. The Soviet Union, 
which put Sputnik up before we had a thing up there in space and put up 
a space station and had great rocket power and the power to land 
ballistic missiles, we think to mount intercontinental missiles and 
have them land, be deployed in Russia and land here, all of that great, 
very well-organized, very competent, scientifically competent society 
came crashing down. It came crashing down.
  I agree with the analysis that says it is primarily because it was a 
closed society. Even if there are brilliant people, if they are making 
decisions in a closed circle and something goes wrong, and they all 
begin to go in the same direction and there is nothing to come in from 
the outside to make them get the perspective or correct it, then there 
is a problem.
  Certainly when political decisions are overwhelming everything else, 
the scientists begin to look stupid. The financial masterminds, they 
are overridden. No matter what science, evidence, reason says, if the 
decision-makers at the political level are going wrong and there is 
nothing to correct them, no force will make them correct themselves, 
then that closed society becomes the engine for doom because the 
blundering and the decision-making will carry them downward and 
downward in a faster spiral.
  Ridiculous things were being done, and still are to some degree, by a 
great Soviet society, a closed society. I will not say whether it was 
communism or socialism that brought them down. Closed capitalist 
societies suffer the same problem, and we have totalitarian societies 
that have also been closed, and some still are. They are capitalists 
but they are Fascists or they are totalitarian. They suffer the same 
problems.
  And we have some semi-democratic societies. There is a rash now of 
problems in the Asian countries. The great Asian economic miracle, 
there is a problem now. Part of it is because they have so many 
dictators and patriarchs and old ways of doing things that will not 
allow other voices to come in which could challenge that closed 
society.
  So labor should not be silenced. We are an indispensable Nation, the 
President says, and I think in order to remain an indispensable Nation 
with great resources we are going to have to keep the society open. And 
the last thing we want to see is a Republican majority victory over 
labor which puts the voices of the working families in chains.
  We are an indispensable Nation and we must see workers as being 
indispensable, an indispensable part of our indispensable Nation. This 
term ``indispensable Nation'' was used by President Clinton, and I 
heartily agree that America at this point is an indispensable Nation.
  We have to make up our minds about how we want to behave as an 
indispensable Nation. But the Roman Empire was merely a village 
compared to the American colossus. What we are now would make the Roman 
Empire look like a village. The American colossus is something that has 
never existed before on the face of the earth. It is a totally new 
phenomenon.
  We do not have an empire which we maintain with bullets and guards 
and tanks. We are not oppressing anybody anywhere in the world in order 
to make them accept our influence, our systems. We have a great deal of 
influence without that.
  Our popular culture probably is the most widespread phenomenon on the 
earth. That has no bullets and no tanks behind it. The American 
colossus as a successful economic system is now being emulated and 
imitated. And because it is so successful, and not all of the things 
that have been done would I endorse in this process of being 
successful, but it is a successful economic system compared to the 
other economic systems now, so dollars are going to flow at greater and 
greater rates into the American coffers.
  Our stock market is up primarily because we are not demanding tribute 
from the rest of the world. The nations of the rest of the world, at 
least their investors and their capitalists, are bringing their 
tribute, are bringing their dollars to invest in our economic system. 
The Wall Street phenomenon, the stock market rise, the Dow Jones 
average increase, all of that is being driven by large amounts of money 
flowing in from all over the world. All roads used to lead to Rome. All 
roads now lead to Wall Street and the stock exchange, All money and all 
investment, because this is the place to put it. That is one part of 
our prosperity.
  This American colossus ought to become for the working families a new 
phenomenon where we can guarantee that everybody will have a right to 
pursue happiness on a terrain that is reasonable. We do not want a 
worker's paradise. We do not want to use terms like that. When the 
rhetoric gets carried away by politicians and economists or we jump 
into the Bible, beware. Do not listen to anybody that says they are 
going to create a paradise. We are not going to create heaven on earth 
through a secular process. We are not going to create a paradise, but 
the least we can do is have a playing field where working families have 
a chance to make it.
  We are a pivotal generation with an abundant supply of resources, and 
we ought to be thinking in terms of how can we use those resources to 
guarantee the most good for the most people.
  We could mount big initiatives of many kinds. I do not have a list of 
initiatives that I would propose, but one thing I would propose is that 
we at least consider how can people who go

[[Page H2104]]

out to work every day get a greater share of the pie? How can people 
that go out to work every day be rewarded for their labor in a way 
commensurate with the kind of money being made at the top, with the 
kind of prosperity being generated by the overall economy?

  The Romans, and I have heard this example used at least twice over 
the last weekend. I think somebody has written a book on taxes and I do 
not unfortunately have the name of the person. I apologize to them.
  But they use an example in the book that the Romans at one point had 
so much tribute being paid to them, that Rome decided that they had so 
much money coming in that they would just give a certain amount of 
money to every Roman family. They did not include the immigrants, 
maybe. They had to be a real Roman, and every Roman family got a set 
amount of money regardless of what they did. They did not have to do 
any work for it, and there was something like 200,000 Romans at that 
point who lived in Rome and who qualified for the money and they 
distributed it.
  It was like a positive subsidy program. It could not be called 
welfare because it was a considerable amount of money. They did not 
have to work anymore. I suppose they had servants and slaves and others 
who were not Roman citizens.
  But according to this example, the Romans in the surrounding 
countryside heard about Rome giving out the money and they began all to 
come into Rome and demand similar subsidies, and that broke the bank 
and broke the system. But it is kind of an example used to ridicule 
subsidy, ridicule the distribution-of-wealth theory, ridicule any kind 
of social system which sought to spread the prosperity of the Nation to 
the most people.
  I do not think it is ridiculous. I do not think we should give 
subsidies to people and tell them every family deserves this money and 
they can take it and not have to work. I think the Saudi Arabians had 
so much money that that kind of thing was happening in Saudi Arabia. I 
do not think that is a wise step, but we certainly could spread the 
resources some other way. We could spread it through universal health 
care, and certainly through minimum wage increases, and we could stop 
oppressing workers in their working conditions.
  The Romans also were great builders. They invented the science of 
engineering and they invented concrete. They were also depraved in many 
ways, and one of the great concrete monuments that they built was the 
Colosseum, which was built as a place where animals fought human 
beings. Gladiators fought each other and that was too boring, so they 
started having animals devour human beings, and there was something 
sick there. We know about how a society can be very advanced on the one 
hand scientifically and be very savage and backwards in many other 
ways.
  We saw what the very well-organized and scientifically equipped 
Wehrmacht of Hitler did. We saw what a very civilized group of people, 
civilized in the usual sense of the word, did in World War II, and we 
have seen many examples of that in many places before. The fact that 
they were great builders and engineers did not mean that they knew how 
to make choices about the fact that they were indispensable and get a 
sense of mission that would make them rise above certain weaknesses.
  Building for them was an indispensable activity, and our public 
buildings also will be the first evidence that we have for future 
generations to measure us by. We may have great poets and dramatists, 
but in the future the thing that is going to be most highly visible is 
our buildings and our public buildings are very important.
  Which brings us back to the fact that it is a great shame that the 
war against working families leads to a situation where there is such a 
preoccupation with trying to prevent Davis-Bacon regulations from being 
utilized that we are stifling and inhibiting the process of building 
more public schools. There are a lot of other public buildings we need, 
but public schools we need most of all. $120 billion, according to the 
General Accounting Office, $120 billion is needed to just bring the 
infrastructure of public schools across America up to date.
  The fact most of those buildings at this point would have to be under 
the Davis-Bacon regulations if they had Federal funding leads many 
Members of the Republican majority say, no, we will not do it. We would 
rather have no schools than to have them built under Davis-Bacon 
regulation.
  It is very interesting that the Republican majority wages war on 
Davis-Bacon, and I have said this before and I must use it again and 
again to remind the Republican Majority of how ridiculous what they are 
doing is. Davis-Bacon is a Republican creation. Davis-Bacon was 
enacted, was really sponsored and supported by the Hoover 
administration. And that is one of the ironies.
  Just to refresh the memory, Davis and Bacon were both Republicans. It 
was in 1927, in a time of economic prosperity, particularly in the 
construction industry, when representative Robert L. Bacon, who was 
from New York, a Republican from New York who was also a former banker. 
Davis-Bacon originated in the head of a banker. He introduced the 
forerunner of what would become the Federal Davis-Bacon Act.
  Alarmed by increasing incidents of cutthroat bidding for Federal 
contracts by itinerant contractors, itinerant contractors using low-
wage labor and as a result producing shoddy construction, Robert Bacon 
moved to protect Federal construction contracts. At that time shoddy 
construction was a major threat to a massive Federal building program 
that Members of Congress had just authorized. They had authorized a 
massive building program. And it was not the workers, the only thing 
they were concerned about, the wages of the workers at local level was 
a concern, that being undercut by the itinerant contractors, but also 
shoddy construction. Remember that.

                              {time}  2230

  With the help of Senator James Davis of Pennsylvania, a former 
Secretary of Labor under three Republican Presidents, James Davis, 
Senator James Davis had been a Secretary of Labor under three 
Republican Presidents, the bill was passed. And in 1931 Republican 
President Hoover, Herbert Hoover signed the Davis-Bacon into law. 
Convinced of the law's benefits, Congress went on to incorporate Davis-
Bacon labor standards into more than 60 Federal statutes. That is where 
it all originated.
  There was a time when the Republican Party did not feel a great 
compulsion, some kind of blind passion to wage war on workers. There 
was a time when this was not the case. At this point in history, it is 
not the case. Every piece of legislation which has an opportunity for 
Federal funds to be appropriated for building is immediately subjected 
to scrutiny, and the possibility of a Republican ambush.
  School construction, as I said before, is one of the casualties. 
School construction has been used as an example. It costs more to build 
schools if you use Davis-Bacon, if you build them under Davis-Bacon, 
which requires prevailing wages. Prevailing wages are not necessarily 
union wages.
  Prevailing wages, in some instances, in some States, are really 
minimum wages. It has gone down to that in a few States; that the 
minimum wage in cases of some people, beginning laborers and even 
bricklayers in one State, were close to the minimum wage. That was the 
prevailing wage. So it is not something fixed in stone. It is not 
something unreasonable and irrational and wasteful, but Davis-Bacon 
does maintain some kind of standards.
  Two sets of studies done by a professor at the University of Utah 
quite a number of years apart have come up with the same results; that 
Davis-Bacon regulations prevailing wages, whether the prevailing wages 
are under Davis-Bacon Federal statutes or under local State prevailing 
wage statutes, they do not drive up the cost of school construction.
  What they found is that when you take away the prevailing wages 
statutes, whether you, at the State level they have taken away, several 
States have repealed their State prevailing wage statutes where if 
State money was being utilized and no Federal money was being utilized, 
they would not be subjected to the prevailing wage requirement. That 
has happened.
  What has happened is that the workers wages have always gone down. 
But

[[Page H2105]]

the cost of construction has either remained the same or gone up. What 
you have is the contractors walk away with a bigger profit. That is 
what the great war against Davis-Bacon is all about. There are 
contractors, large numbers of them, very powerful who want to make 
quick kills. They want to go in and make as much money as possible and 
get out. They know that untrained workers, people who are not receiving 
Davis-Bacon prevailing wages, often do shoddy work, but they do not 
care. They are willing to take their chances on litigation.
  There has been so much of that, so many contractors out there who 
fight Davis-Bacon; who fight prevailing wages; who want a jungle. They 
want to be able to go in a wild situation, and be able to work their 
will and get maximum profits. So many of them out there have ruined the 
atmosphere and the environment for construction to the point where 
there are now large numbers of business people, including the Business 
Roundtable, who have concluded that they would rather deal with Davis-
Bacon contractors.
  Davis-Bacon contractors who work under Davis-Bacon regulations and 
are willing to do it, not fighting it, they have set up systems for 
training workers. They have done more to combat discrimination in the 
construction industry than any other set of forces or laws have done.
  Yes; there is still construction industry discrimination in many 
places. I will not argue there is not. But the Davis-Bacon workers, 
with their training programs working with the government, stabilizing 
situations have made a great number of gains in terms of ending 
discrimination for people who are in those training programs, and 
allowing them to rise through the ranks, as well as creating a well-
trained, stable force.
  We are going to find ourselves in a situation where we do not have 
enough trained sheet metal workers, plumbers and bricklayers. We are 
going to find ourselves in a serious situation if we do not do a better 
job of training. Of course, the contractors, the itinerant contractors, 
the guys who want to make the quick kill, they do not care about the 
future. They only care about making a quick kill. We have had buildings 
fall down, school walls fall down as a result of sloppy work.
  New York City, we had, in the middle of the city, we had enormous 
traffic jams for almost a month because the bricks were falling off the 
side of a building. The quick-kill artists, the itinerant contractors 
had done such a good job of covering up who they were, they could not 
find out who was responsible for the bricks that were falling out so 
they could sue them or make them put it back up. It was just the whole 
game that certain parts of the contracting industry play; whether they 
go out of business, go bankrupt, appear under some other name, all the 
games are easier to play when you are not among the more responsible 
contractors who are willing to participate in the Federal program that 
is going to train workers and cooperate with Davis-Bacon.
  So the Business Roundtable came to the conclusion that they were 
going to consider, even though they were private contractors and not 
obligated to use Davis-Bacon contracts, they were going to consider 
setting the standard whereby as they bid on, they put out the bids, 
they were going to call for contractors to be participating in the 
Davis-Bacon program.
  Each construction project should be considered a monument for the 
future, not so much because we are worried about being in the future 
generations looking back on us as Greeks or Romans and praising us for 
our great buildings. But the buildings have to be safe; they have to be 
functional. There are many large residences, co-ops, condominiums where 
people have had to pay large amounts of money, big prices and still 
find themselves suffering from leaking roofs and plumbing that does not 
work, all kinds of phenomena that arise as a result of the wild cat, 
quick-kill contractors who have no standards.
  But the Republican majority refuses to accept the evidence. They want 
to make war on Davis-Bacon and they continue. We have had hearings in 
the last 2 or 3 years, several hearings on Davis-Bacon. We had an 
attempt to smear Davis-Bacon as an inevitably crooked operation. Take 
the Oklahoma example and make it apply all over the country. We have 
refused in our hearings, I will not say we because I am just a 
Democrat. The Republican majority, which controls the subcommittee and 
the committee, they refuse to listen to responsible representatives of 
the contracting industry.
  Yes; of course they will not listen to workers. They do not want to 
listen to unions. They want to silence unions. But here are 
businessmen, the Mechanical Electrical Sheet Metal Alliance is one of 
them. They begged our committee to allow it to testify; let us come and 
talk to you. It did not happen.

  In fact, I have a letter here which I would like to enter into the 
Record, and it is a letter from the Mechanical Electrical Sheet Metal 
Alliance where they say, on behalf of the Mechanical Electrical Sheet 
Metal Alliance, a coalition of more than 12,000 construction 
contracting corporations in the specialty sector of the construction 
industry, I want to propose a number of administrative improvements to 
the Davis-Bacon Act. We believe these administrative initiatives, if 
implemented, would significantly improve the quality, accuracy and 
timeliness of the prevailing wage determination process.
  The Mechanical Electrical Sheet Metal Alliance is a coalition of 
members of the Mechanical Contractors Association of America and the 
National Electrical Contractors Association and the Sheet Metal and Air 
Conditioning Contractors' National Association. It represents more than 
12,000 construction contracting firms nationwide which exclusively 
employ more than 540,000 union trades people with state-of-the-art 
technical abilities.
  I will include this letter for the Record:
                                         The Mechanical Electrical


                                          Sheet Metal Alliance

                                                   March 20, 1998.
     Mr. Bill Gross,
     Employment Standards Division, U.S. Department of Labor, 
         Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Gross: On behalf of the Mechanical Electrical 
     Sheet Metal Alliance, a coalition of more than 12,000 
     construction contracting corporations in the specialty sector 
     of the construction industry, I want to propose a number of 
     administrative improvements to the Davis-Bacon Act. We 
     believe these administrative initiatives, if implemented, 
     would significantly improve the quality, accuracy and 
     timeliness of the prevailing wage determination process.
       The Mechanical Electrical Sheet Metal Alliance is a 
     coalition of members of the Mechanical Contractors 
     Association of America (MCAA), the National Electrical 
     Contractors Association (NECA) and the Sheet Metal and Air 
     Conditioning Contractors' National Association (SMACNA). It 
     represents more than 12,000 construction contracting firms 
     nationwide which exclusively employ more than 540,000 union 
     trades people with state-of-the-art technical abilities. 
     Alliance contractors hold a growing market share of more than 
     60 percent of the nation's non-residential construction 
     activity. Alliance contractors annually train over 90,000 
     apprentice and journey persons upgrade training at a cost 
     exceeding $175 million. These union contractor firms and 
     their local association chapters sponsor over 1,000 local 
     training programs staffed by approximately 5,600 instructions 
     utilizing equipment and facilities owned by the training 
     programs valued at more than $500 million.
       The Alliance fully supports Employment Standards 
     Administration (ESA) efforts to improve the wage 
     determination process and the quality, accuracy, and 
     timeliness of the wage rates. We support efforts to find new 
     ways to administer the process with greater efficiency so 
     that the resources saved can be used on increased compliance 
     measures.
       Mechanical Contractors Association of America, Inc., 
     National Electrical Contractors Association, Sheet Metal and 
     Air Conditioning Contractors' National Association, Inc.

  One example of business and labor, business and working families who 
are not afraid to work together, and as a result of working together 
under a government regulation, a government regulation which, by the 
way, was constructed by Republicans, Herbert Hoover, Bacon, Davis, all 
Republicans. It made sense then; it makes sense now.
  Republicans, call off your war on Davis-Bacon. Do not make war on 
Davis-Bacon. It does not make sense. It is out of step with reality. It 
is out of step with the present situation where we have unprecedented 
prosperity, and we should be seeking ways to spread that prosperity. 
Republicans, call off your war against the minimum wage increase.
  Let us go forward and get behind the more, the most reasonable bill. 
I really think we should increase the minimum

[[Page H2106]]

wage to the level of the livable wage. In New York, we have a provision 
now for all people who contract with the city of New York. They must 
pay a livable wage, which is above the minimum wage. We ought to go for 
that, but the realities of the situation are that the President and 
Senator Kennedy in the Senate and Mr. Bonior, minority leader here, 
they all agree that we can take, and it is doable now, more modest 
steps at 50 cents an hour in two steps over the next 2 years.
  So 50 cents an hour increase on January 1, 1999, is proposed, and 
another 50 cents an hour increase on January 1, 2000. That means that 
in the year 2000 workers will be earning $6.15 an hour. In this 
indispensable Nation where the Dow Jones average is at 9000 and 
philanthropists are making billion-dollar contributions now, why can we 
not at least without too much discussion or further delay and more 
fighting by the Republican majority go on to increase the minimum wage 
by a dollar over a 2-year period?
  Three polls taken in January of 1998 show that the American people 
overwhelmingly support an increase in the minimum wage. The Washington 
Post, Los Angeles Times and Peter Hart research poll showed support for 
raising the minimum wage ranging from 76 to 78 percent. Seventy-eight 
percent of the American people want an increase in the minimum wage. It 
is political; you cannot lose, Republican majority. Join us for a 
minimum wage increase.
  The last increase in the minimum wage has not cost jobs. According to 
a new study released by economists David Card and Alan Krueger, 
employment in the fast food industry in eastern Pennsylvania actually 
went up by 11 percent after the 1996 minimum wage increase.
  The Economic Policy Institute recently released a study entitled, 
``The Sky Hasn't Fallen,'' which determined that employment was not 
adversely affected by the last increase. They had a study, Pennsylvania 
did not have a State minimum wage higher than the Federal minimum wage. 
New Jersey had a minimum wage already, a State minimum wage higher than 
the Federal minimum wage.
  When the Federal minimum wage went up, New Jersey was not affected 
because it was already above that level. But Pennsylvania, the 
industries in Pennsylvania had to raise their minimum wage. They 
studied the fast food industry in Pennsylvania and the fast food 
industry in New Jersey, and they found that Pennsylvania industry did 
not suffer any loss of profits at all compared to the New Jersey 
situation where they already were there. It was equal. There was no 
difference. Pennsylvania did not suffer as a result of having its fast 
food workers begin to earn more pay via the minimum wage.
  Consider the fact that today a single mother with two children 
working full time at a minimum wage job earns $10,700 a year. That is 
$2,600 below the poverty line as defined by the Federal Government. An 
increase of $1 an hour only partially restores some of the lost buying 
power of this person. On and on it goes.
  There are studies that show that the minimum wage does not hurt the 
economy even in times of normal economic growth. In a time like this 
when our GPI, the other measures of prosperity, Dow Jones average, 
leaping forward, surely we can at least spread the wealth by increasing 
the minimum wage.
  There are many other labor issues, which I mentioned before that 
should be considered as we call upon the Republicans to end what I call 
now a microguerilla warfare. They are chipping away behind the scenes. 
Remember in January of 1997, we passed a bill on this floor which took 
away cash overtime. Fortunately, it has not gone any further. The other 
House has not considered it. But it is out there. This Congress passed 
it. It is still alive in this session. We took away the overtime and 
replaced it with comp time. That war on workers may hurt most of all, 
and people cannot get cash.
  I remember I offered on this floor an amendment which said, okay, if 
you want to compromise, let us offer your compromise where people who 
are in the highest strata earning salaries, and they want more time to 
spend with their kids instead of more money, let them. Those who earn a 
certain amount of money above the minimum wage level, I think the 
figure was something like $11,000, everybody who earned less than 
$11,000 a year should be exempt from that requirement that they take 
their overtime in comp time instead of cash because they need the cash.
  Can you consider people making $11-$12,000, how much they need the 
cash? That exemption made so much sense, but it was not permitted. It 
was voted down on the floor and we passed the bill anyhow. It is out 
there somewhere. The guerilla tactics means that one day as the session 
approaches the end, we may have the Republican majority offering that 
again here on the floor.
  I close by saying that that is just one of the many microattacks; 
that is one of the many ambushes we have to fear. The bigger attack is 
still proposition 226 in California. That is what is similar to the 
Paycheck Protection Act here. California has the Paycheck Protection 
Act out there in a proposition.

                              {time}  2245

  California has done a lot of damage with propositions lately. And the 
referendum proposition 226 will require unions to get annual approval 
of individual members before they can use any dues money for political 
purposes. If approved, the California proposal will become law in July 
and will greatly limit labor's role in November's pivotal gubernatorial 
election.
  Here is the political process directly being affected. If that 
proposition passes, labor gets crippled. Backers of the California 
initiative said they plan to spend at least $10 million. Polls show 
that 70 percent of the voters support the proposal.
  A lot of people are misguided and think this is democracy. They think 
we should have more democracy, unions should be more democratic. I say 
this is the kind of democracy that we choke on, this is the kind of 
democracy designed to destroy and kill organizations.
  Similar proposals have been introduced in 30 other States and are 
actively being pushed by conservative and business groups. Supporters 
say these groups expect to spend $20 million outside of California this 
year.
  This is the threat. This is the guerilla attack now coming up through 
the States. They will not win here this year. But if they can generate 
enough momentum through the States, we will have in the not-too-distant 
future a bill which gags working families. The voice of the working 
family would be shut out of the dialogue and the debate. America would 
no longer be an open society. It would be an endangered society.

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