[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 82 (Monday, June 22, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H4953-H4959]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by my colleagues, the
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) who just spoke, the chief deputy
whip of our party, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Barbara Lee), and the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Lynn Woolsey), as well.
We are here this evening, Mr. Speaker, to talk about unions. We say
that word with pride. Earlier this year, many of us heard powerful,
real life experience stories by Betty Dumas, Cathy Sharp, and Juan
Mazylmian about the challenges they faced when they tried to organize
their workplace; a basic right, to organize your workplace for wages,
for benefits.
For Juan, he and his fellow asbestos removal workers in New York won
union recognition and a shot at a better life. For Cathy Sharp, she
struggled in a hospital system where she worked in San Diego and she
won union recognition, and a contract that gives nurses more input into
the care of their patients.
For Betty Dumas and her fellow workers at the Avondale shipyard in
New Orleans, their fight goes on. It is a brave fight, but their
resolve remains stronger than ever. They will win that fight, because
they are standing up for folks who they work beside every day who are
deprived of decent wages and decent benefits and the things that many
of us take for granted today at the workplace.
These three individuals touched us in a very special, fundamental way
when they spoke to us at our conference in Virginia. We understood
their fights were for basic human respect and for basic human dignity.
This week, and particularly on the 24th of June this week, many of us
are lending our voices and our support to working men and women around
the country. We will be speaking out about their efforts to improve
their future. On the 24th, a day to make our voices heard, workers will
be showcasing their ambitions and their visions and their successes,
and yes, even their heartaches, in their effort to come together to
form a union.
It is not easy to do. I will talk about that in a second. There are
activities planned in over 70 communities to highlight workers' basic,
fundamental rights to organize. From Seattle to Miami and from
Burlington to San Diego there will be activities to celebrate past
victories, and to remind us of the work that is yet to be done.
Some will say, how difficult is it to join a union? To give you some
idea of how hard it is for workers to join together to form a union,
let me try to offer an analogy. Imagine waking up the morning after the
November election and reading the headlines: Challengers win;
challenger wins. Incumbent files objection to the way the election was
conducted. The court will issue a decision within 2 to 5 years.
Incumbent to hold office pending outcome of litigation. End of
headline.
This sounds absurd and profoundly undemocratic, but that is what is
happening. That is what is happening to workers in our country whenever
they win an NLRB election. That is the National Labor Relations Board's
election.
Just winning takes tremendous courage and resolve. Employers and
their sophisticated anti-union consultants commonly launch campaigns of
terror and fear against workers who try to form a union. Once a worker
steps onto their employer's property, their basic human rights of free
speech and freedom of assembly and free press, they get left at the
curbside.
Workers face union-busting tactics such as threats of being fired or
taking away their health insurance; or being forced to attend a
compulsory anti-union meeting, either in large groups or in one-on-one
shakedown sessions; or threats of moving the plant to Mexico or other
countries.
There is in this country, and I am sad to report this, but there is
in the country today a multi-million dollar industry that is
established just to quash organizing drives in America. Against these
odds, workers need all the help they can get.
That is why more and more organizing drives have become community
campaigns. Religious and community leaders are speaking out more and
more to improve the quality of life of their families and friends and
neighbors. There is greater recognition that these drives are part of a
larger cause, the fight for human rights and for basic justice.
Organizing not only improves the lives of individual workers, but
also the entire community. When those wages go up because workers can
come together and band together and bargain for a good contract and
good wages, that money gets circulated throughout the community and
everyone benefits. It does not stay in a few pockets.
Organized workers get contracts and salaries which set the standard
for other workers in the community who may not be unionized, so they
bring up everybody's wages, not just union workers.
There is a huge wage gap in this country today. I think everybody
realizes that that gap is growing, and it is as wide as it has been in
decades. It is wider than any other western democratic society,
capitalist society, today. Today the struggle to reduce the ever-
expanding wage gap between the top 20 percent and the rest of us is an
important struggle, and it will be the struggle that will be waged over
the next decade.
The only way to restore some semblance of economic justice to this
country is if the labor movement grows. When the labor movement grew
after the Second World War, the pie for America was shared by all. When
productivity grew 90 percent, wages grew 90 percent during the 1950s.
But during the 1960s and the 1970s and 80s and 90s, we saw that
productivity continue to grow but the wage level for workers continued
to decline. It declined significantly. That is why we have this huge
wage gap.
One of the reasons it declined is because membership in unions across
the country, which was at a high of about 40 percent in the 1950s, has
slipped to about 15 percent today, and about 10 percent among the
private sector.
The workers' struggle for union representation and free association
is deeply interlinked with overall economic disparity and participation
in our democracy. In order to win, we need to build an alliance between
union members, churches, progressive organizations, and public
officials who care about workers.
If we can do that, if we can shed some light on union-busting
activities going on in the workplace, we can win this battle. Winning
takes a good deal of teamwork. Members of Congress I believe have a
responsibility to speak out.
That is why about a week ago, at my alma mater, the University of
Iowa, I was saddened to see that the university's hospital system is
fighting the right of 2,000 registered nurses and professionals to
organize with the Service Employees International Union. Not only are
they fighting it, the university has hired a known union-busting firm,
Management Service Associates, MSA, to try to defeat the organizing
drive.
So I called several officials at the university to ask them to
terminate
[[Page H4954]]
their association with MSA, and to take a neutral stance in the
organizing drive to allow workers to determine for themselves, in a
free and open and a democratic way, if in fact they wanted to band
together to bargain collectively for their wages and their benefits and
their work.
It is my understanding that Senator Harkin has done the same thing.
{time} 2130
The situation in Iowa is just one of the organizing drives that is
being highlighted this week. There are many truly remarkable success
stories throughout the country that are part of what we call ``A Day to
Make Our Voices Heard.'' I just want to mention a couple of them now,
and then I will be happy to yield to my colleagues.
In Detroit, some 2,000 employees at the Detroit Medical Center won an
agreement that states when a majority of workers sign cards in support
of a union, the employer will recognize the union. So they will not
have to go to the NLRB and wait 2 years, and 3 years, and 4 years, and
5 years to be recognized. That is the way to break unions, by not
recognizing what the people democratically have voted for.
The card check, which is basically people standing up and saying, ``I
want it,'' will cut through all of that red tape and restore the
economic democratic feature of union organizing.
In Dallas, 9,000 teachers won representation by the American
Federation of Teachers, partially because they worked hard to elect a
sympathetic school board.
In Cincinnati, 350 school bus drivers gained representation by the
Amalgamated Transit Union with the help of the clergy, the NAACP, and
elected school board members and other unions. They all banded together
as community and said we think this is important, that people ought to
have a right to come together democratically to bargain for the sweat
and the work that they perform for our community.
In Washington, D.C., 700 parking lot attendants won representation by
the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees and a first contract by
gaining support from the leaders in the Ethiopian community. They went
to the community that had a stake in this. Parking lot customers,
property owners, the Ethiopian community all came together and said
there ought to be economic justice for these people.
The list continues from Brookline, Massachusetts, to New Haven,
Connecticut, to Watsonville, California, and all across the country.
And that is why many of us are gathered here tonight and will
participate in other activities throughout the week.
When organizing drives are successful, they empower communities in
ways we cannot imagine. For workers throughout the country the fight
for dignity and respect is truly a fight about basic democratic rights.
So tonight we stand with those workers who have stood together to
make a difference in their communities. And we also stand with those
workers who are still fighting to organize. The challenges are great
and the courage that it takes so often is just mind-boggling. People
standing up and saying they want to fight, knowing that in fact their
wages could be gone the next day, their benefits taken away. They could
be fined like Betty Dumas was fired over at Avondale.
People who rely on that check to take care of their kids every week,
knowing that they are going out on a limb for economic democracy
knowing the consequences. And many suffer the consequences. It takes
great courage. The challenges are great, but it is worth it. Workers
who build community coalitions and go through organizing drives are
fundamentally participating in our democracy, taking pride in their
work and building a better place to live, not only for them and their
children but for future generations to come.
I think about my community in the Detroit metropolitan area, and I
remember the struggle of the autoworkers back in 1936 and 1937 in the
sit-down strikes in Flint and Detroit. My grandfather participated in
those sit-down strikes. My father is a union man too. I remember him
telling me he used to throw sandwiches into the autoworker yards to
those who were sitting down and would not move until they got their
bargaining rights.
What does that mean for us today? It means that that struggle that
went on in 1936 and 1937 provided us with a buoyant, resourceful,
strong middle-class and provided good wages and health care benefits
and built the middle class in this country. What it did was that
movement provided us with a decent work hour, the 8-hour day, overtime
pay, workers' comp, unemployment comp, health insurance. All of these
benefits, pension benefits, cost of living increases that we take for
granted today, they were built by the struggle of people who had the
courage to say we have the right to bargain for our work, for our
sweat, as a democratic right.
It seems like every week we see another headline about this million
dollar merger or that billion dollar buyout. They keep getting bigger
and bigger all the time. And in the process, a handful of people at the
top, the CEOs who seem to get golden parachutes just for jumping out of
bed in the morning, they become less and less accountable to our
country and to our communities.
That is why unions are so important. Unions give working men and
women a voice. They help level the playing field. Unions build a
stronger democracy by giving people a say in the decisions that affect
their jobs and their future. They honor the values of loyalty,
commitment, pride, and community.
So it is with deep pleasure, Mr. Speaker, that I am here with my dear
friends tonight talking about this effort, and this week and I would be
delighted to yield to them for any comments that they would care to
make this evening. I thank them for their indulgence.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms.
Woolsey), my friend.
Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for
yielding, and I would like to thank our wonderful minority whip for
pulling this evening together and being so absolutely passionate about
workers of this country. I thank him for leading the way.
Mr. Speaker, I knew the American workers were in trouble when one of
the first changes that the Republicans made as the new majority was to
completely eliminate, to remove the word ``labor'' from the committee
that I served on. It was called the House Committee on Education and
Labor. First they called it the Committee on Education and Economic
Opportunities. Absolutely removing the word ``labor.'' Then 2 years
later, even the Republicans had trouble totally ignoring American
workers so they changed the name again. This time it was to the
Committee on Education and the Workforce. Again, no mention of labor.
The new name they tried to make them look softer, of course. But it
did not. It did not change their negative attitude an iota. In fact,
one Member of the new majority on the committee kept probing and
pushing and insulting workers and those of us who supported American
workers. One meeting, one hearing we had, and I will never forget it,
this Member on the other side of the aisle referred to the Secretary of
Labor, Robert Reich, as he was testifying before us, the Secretary of
Labor, he referred to him as a Marxist and told him that he had read
all of Carl Marx's writings and he had read all of Secretary Reich's
writings and he saw no difference. This is the same Member who referred
to me on the committee as a Communist because I was defending organized
labor.
So that was a heads-up, and let me know what kind of year we were
going to have and how hard we had to work, because working Americans
were not going to be represented by the majority at this time in our
House of Representatives.
Mr. Speaker, well, it was all right for me. He can call me anything
he wants, because I want to tell my colleagues, I am one person who is
very proud to speak out for organized labor, for the working men and
women of this country. It is because of organized labor that we have a
middle class in the United States. That is why we are the country that
we are. That is why we are this great Nation. It is because of
organized labor that American workers have been able to afford to work
and raise a family on their wages. And they get benefits, if it is part
of organized labor, pensions as part of organized labor.
[[Page H4955]]
Today, some of these expectations that people have that they were
able to count on are eroding. We need labor unions more today than ever
before. In the ``Education and Anti-labor Committee'' that I sit on, we
are marking up a series of OSHA reform bills that will weaken the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. If these bills were to
become law, American workers would be at a greater risk of on-the-job
injuries and health effects and death than ever before. Well, not ever
before, but since we have had OSHA in place.
Mr. BONIOR. And, Mr. Speaker, we still have today, it is my
understanding, 50,000 Americans who lose their lives on the job every
year. Fifty thousand.
Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, that is right. But since OSHA was passed in
1970, the job fatality rate has been cut in half and injury rates have
also declined significantly. That ought to be example enough that we do
not weaken it. If anything, we strengthen and learn from mistakes and
we fix errors and we go forward and make sure that more people are safe
than fewer. But Republicans in both the House and the Senate are
pushing legislation that will make it more difficult for OSHA to issue
protective standards; that will limit OSHA's ability to enforce our
current standards, particularly in case of willful or criminal
violations. Their legislation would weaken workers' right to know about
unsafe workplace conditions, and would make it harder for them to
address their own safety concerns within the workplace.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to think that
American workers have too many safety and health protections. Last
year, 6,112 workers were killed by traumatic injuries, and that is a
Bureau of Labor Statistics figure. Another 50,000 workers died, as the
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) said, from occupational diseases.
And that is a National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health,
NIOSH, statistic. And more than 6.2 million workers in the private
sector were injured on the job. That is an AFL-CIO statistic.
Thank goodness workers have unions to help them fight the
Republicans' effort to turn back the clock on worker safety. These
bills should be called ``OSHA deform.'' It should not be called reform.
They are trying to undo the progress we have made instead of build on
the progress and go forward.
Unions are also speaking up for American workers against legislation
that would diminish workers' wage and hour protection under the Fair
Labor Standards Act. We have comp time legislation. We have sales
incentive compensation acts that have been passed out of this House.
Both of them would be all right if the worker had a choice. If they
wanted to participate in a comp time program, then it would be their
choice, not the employer's. If the worker wanted to go without overtime
pay to work in a less than $20,000 a year job, that would be the
worker's choice. But, no, it will be the employer's choice.
They are also working on legislation that would legalize company-
formed and controlled unions, and that is called the TEAM Act.
Legislation would make it impossible for unions to speak for workers in
the public arena. And that is the Paycheck Fairness Act and campaign
finance reform.
The gentleman spoke about the wage disparity between American workers
and their bosses. He said that this disparity has never been greater.
In 1960, we will go there first, the average pay for a chief executive
officer of the largest U.S. corporations was 12 times greater than the
average wage of a factory worker. That was in 1960. Today those CEOs
receive wages and compensations worth more than 135 times the wages and
benefits of the average employee at the same corporation.
In 1960, it was 12 times greater. In 1998, it is more than 135 times
greater. We wonder what is happening to our middle class. It is all
going to the top and the working poor are getting greater and greater.
Today, millions of Americans came to work. They came on time. They
did a good job. They worked in the workplace to the very best of their
ability. And they did not earn enough money to bring themselves and
their families above the poverty level. These workers and millions of
others all across America need to join together, need to organize so
that they can have better lives and so that the lives of their families
will be more secure.
{time} 2145
They join labor unions so that they can improve their wages, their
working conditions, their benefits, their safety conditions and their
future pensions.
I am proud, because I am supported and I do support nurses and
teachers, firefighters, truck drivers, waitresses, carpenters,
electricians and all the other working men and women of this country,
and those who belong to labor unions.
Union members work every day to keep America strong and to keep
America safe. I am proud to work here in the Congress for them and for
all working men and women in this country.
I thank the gentleman, again, for pulling this evening together.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her eloquent
statement, a statement with passion.
I just wanted to pick up on one point that the gentlewoman from
California made. That is the disparity that has been created because of
the lack of union representation in this country today. We have a
minimum wage in this country that pays $5.15 an hour. We have 12
million people working in America who earn the minimum wage, 12 million
people. We have another 8 million just above the minimum wage, about 20
million people working at that minimum wage level.
For a single mom with two kids, do you know what that minimum wage
wage pays? It pays less than $11,000 a year. That is $2,600, as the
gentlewoman said, below the poverty level today for a family of three.
And when we talk about unions, unions do not have folks in their
organizations that make the minimum wage. Very few do. They make a good
wage, but they argue for the minimum wage because they understand the
moral responsibility to make sure that people live on a living wage
today. So they help not only folks who belong to those organizations,
union organizations, but they help others as well.
We can do a much, much better job in our country today in moving
forward with decent wages and benefits than we have. So I thank my
colleague from California for her comments tonight.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield,
when we talk about the minimum wage, when we were voting to pass and
raise the minimum wage a year or so ago, my very favorite delicatessen
in Petaluma where I get my coffee, because it is the best any place,
the owner came to me and said, ``Oh, Woolsey, don't raise the minimum
wage. How am I going to stay in business?'' And all his workers were
very quiet, and I said, Steve, just think how many more people could
come in and afford your coffee lattes if they earned enough money so
that they could have this privilege to come in here like I do. And all
of his workers cheered.
Mr. BONIOR. That is a good story. It is not just the people in
restaurants and coffee shops, it is the people who take care of our
children at day care, take care of our parents and our grandparents in
elder care and nursing homes, the folks who clean our offices, who are
cleaning them right now, a lot of folks are making wages, and they have
no recourse in terms of getting a better wage or getting the benefits
they need, the health care for their family or kids, because they do
not have anybody representing them.
That is what unions do, they pool the resources of people together
and they say, basically, we are going to work with you to help you get
represented at the bargaining table for a decent wage and decent
benefits.
When we had strong unions in this country that matched productivity,
we had a healthy, very healthy economy. And we have watched that erode
now, as union membership and other things have transpired, our trade
policy and other things that have eroded the leverage of workers in our
society today. I thank my colleague for her comments.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut
(Ms. DeLauro).
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I am just delighted to be a part of this
effort tonight to join with my colleagues and
[[Page H4956]]
to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) for organizing this
special order and particularly the conversation, the dialogue between
yourself and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) in a
reminder about the early history of the labor movement, what it has
created and your words, it created the middle class.
It created the place where the bulk of this country is coming from,
the people who are the backbone of the United States. And what it
accomplished in terms of safety in the workplace, fair and decent
wages, the benefits that people enjoy today and oftentimes we forget,
we forget what it was like, and we take so much for granted. That is
why the notion of a June 24 and Americans honoring working men and
women and helping others to remember and to organize and to get out
there to help people who are trying to take some difficult first steps
in trying to, one, hold on to what we have and to create new and better
opportunities for working men and women in the country through unions,
through a wonderful institution, the heart and soul of what the United
States is about.
It is the thought of workers joining together to look at improving
their living standards, their communities, their companies and making
them better places. Oftentimes, as I said, we forget that, when we are
together and we argue and fight, what a tremendous balancing force
against runaway corporate power in this country and, again, one of your
terms, economic justice. That is what the fight, that is what it is all
about.
Mr. BONIOR. And also the economic democracy piece, I think people
often overlook that aspect of organized workers of unions, of organized
labor. What they brought to the democracy table of America. They
infused America with a new group of people who were interested in
government, in making sure that the city council worked, the school
board worked, the State legislature worked, the Federal Government had
representation that shared their views.
I think people often forget that it was a labor union movement in
Poland that broke the back of Communism. It was Solidarity. Unions
bring texture in many, many different ways. I think the gentlewoman
from Connecticut has touched on one that moved me to respond.
Ms. DeLAURO. My mother worked in a sweatshop.
Mr. BONIOR. I know she did.
Ms. DeLAURO. In a sweatshop. It was because of the union movement,
there are still problems, there are still sweatshops. We do not like to
think about that, but that is the case. But we broke the back of that
kind of work for people in this country and in this instance, in these
industries, particularly for women, working for two pennies a collar or
for 50 cents for making a whole dress and just slave labor. That is the
guts of this.
I want to mention, you mentioned New Haven, Connecticut because we
talk about what has happened in the past. We want to talk about modern
day organizing and what we are about.
There was a recent, real big victory in New Haven, the labor
movement, in organizing at the new Omni, the New Haven Omni hotel just
this past April. The 230 employees, they won the right to openly choose
their own union through a card check, union cards signed by a majority
of the employees.
It was a real victory over the longstanding insistence of the
corporation for a secret ballot. How did this occur in essence? It is,
again, the new organizing, through community efforts, having local
government, the Federal Government. I was proud to work with the union
folks, civil rights groups, clergy, academics, students who worked
together. They had hearings. They met with hotel managers. They
threatened boycotts. But more than that, they participated in a
dialogue.
It was a communitywide dialogue about why we needed for local 217 to
be able to sign these cards to determine whether or not there would be
a union there. That is the kind of engagement we need today. That is
what is going on. And as you have said so often, we should not be
afraid, as public servants, as public officials, to engage in this
process, because it is not going to be something that is happening in
isolation over here, where no one is paying attention, because the
movement today, the union movement today is as relevant to people's
lives for all the reasons that you gave and our colleague from
California gave and so that it has got to be alive. It has got to be
vibrant, and it has to be strong.
It is only through the engagement of those of us who oftentimes have
a microphone and can serve with others that we can help to better the
livelihood of those in our society today who, in fact, have seen their
wages either stay the same or to go down over the last couple of
decades. When we have seen the top of the scale, the CEOs, seeing their
salaries increase and their stock options increase and people laid off
in this country.
There are lots of other Members who want to engage in this effort. I
am just truly proud to join here today, and it should not be only June
24. We ought to be speaking out. We ought to be organizing and helping
to make sure that we have people with decent living wages better than
that and that they have the kinds of workplace conditions that they are
entitled to for their daily labor.
Mr. BONIOR. I thank my colleague for her comments. They are very apt
and very well and passionately delivered.
I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. As I listened to you and the gentlewoman, you
just sort of sparked some memories of mine. And especially as we talked
about how much a part of our democracy union organizing and the
development of labor unions is. I am reminded that Benjamin Franklin,
one of the fathers of the country, father of the Constitution, Franklin
organized the printer's union and one of the very first unions that
existed. I mean Benjamin Franklin, even then, understanding the need
for people to come together.
Then we go down the line, Franklin Delano Roosevelt etched the right
to organize into the legal component of our country, of our country.
Martin Luther King was actually organizing sanitation workers in
Memphis when he was killed. So there has always been a relationship
between the quest for overall freedom and development of all people in
this country and the organization of labor unions.
Actually, Benjamin Franklin was also an abolitionist, so there was an
easing merging of the recognition of both.
One of the reasons, I think, that other nations with all of our
problems, with all of our needs, but one of the reasons that other
nations often seek to emulate us is because we have this ongoing
component of struggle, never ending, always becoming, always
recognizing, yes, we have made a lot of progress, we have come a long
way, but there is still great distances to go.
{time} 2200
We see plant closings all over America. We see individuals who have
been displaced by the hundreds and thousands. An interesting statistic,
the individuals who are displaced, generally, many of them never ever
reach the point of earning the same amount of money afterwards that
they were earning before they lost their basic job.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, can I share a story with the gentleman on
that very point? I did not mean to interrupt, but I wanted to tell a
little story that hits that very point.
I was on a bus trip down to Atlanta, Georgia with the gentleman from
Georgia (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt)
and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak), a few of my colleagues.
We visited Lucent Industries. They made telephones. This company had
lured people from all over the country to come to work in this sort of
center gathering factory outside of Atlanta. After a while, they closed
their shops and went to Mexico to make these phones.
I remember meeting a woman in the parking lot, because 300 of them
showed up to greet us to talk about how they all lost their jobs. This
woman by the name of, I think it was Annie Harris, told us she was
being paid $13.50 an hour. She was a member of the Communication
Workers. She had a pension. She had health care. She had a good job;
$13.50 an hour to make these telephones.
When they closed up shop, she lost her job. They went to Mexico and
paid
[[Page H4957]]
their workers $1 an hour to make their phones. She got, as the
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) pointed out, another job. She
worked a cash register at Target department store. She sold that same
phone that she used to make for prices that are the same or more than
they were being sold when she was making $13.50 an hour.
So it is right, people are working in this country. The unemployment
rate has come down, but often, as the gentleman just pointed out,
people who do not belong to unions today are working at levels far
below what they were making when they had jobs where they were being
represented by unions.
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. The gentleman mentioned SEIU organizing, and I
am reminded of an incident that recently happened in my community where
I was just totally saddened.
There was an effort to organize a group of hospital workers. Some
members of the African American community took the position that why
should blacks join a labor union. They sort of launched a campaign by
saying, well, the unions have not done anything for African Americans.
I was pained, because I was saying to myself, ``How little you actually
know. How little you really understand.''
A. Philip Randolph, who put together the Sleeping Car Porters, who
became a group of very dignified individuals who traveled all over
America taking not only information, not only doing their work, but
oftentimes taking black newspapers to parts of the country where there
were not any, taking the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, the
Chronicle, papers and information.
So I just want to commend you, again, for putting together this
opportunity for us to continue to raise our voices, to continue to
recognize the need to implement those men and women who are on the
firing lines every day, working to raise the quality of life and the
level of living not only for themselves, but for all of America.
I certainly am pleased to join with the gentleman. I want to see the
minimum wage raised to what becomes what we call a livable wage. I
think America will flourish as we continue to organize and develop our
people.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for his
thoughtful statements and his historical perspective on one of our
Founding Fathers.
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman from California
(Ms. Lee).
Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, first, I want to express my appreciation for
the leadership that the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr.
Bonior), the Democratic whip, has consistently given on the
difficulties that working people experience in this country.
The gentleman's deep commitment to economic justice for wage earners
is reflected in the work that he has done in this House, of which the
special order on ``A Day To Make Our Voice Heard'' is a part. This is
my first time, really, that I have participated in a special order
since being elected to the House of Representatives.
Mr. BONIOR. We welcome the gentlewoman, and we appreciate her
participating and speaking out on this issue.
Ms. LEE. Yes. I am proud that my first time out is about the
importance of labor unions and working men and women and how they have
enhanced and continue to struggle to enhance the quality of life for
all Americans.
On June 24, working women and men all over this country will rise to
speak out about their efforts to improve their and their families'
lives. Many of these working people have joined with others in unions
to strengthen their individual efforts to better their lives.
In organizing as groups of workers, there are many stories of
successes, but there are also tragic stories of heartaches in these
attempts. Some of us forget, and younger ones have not been taught,
that part of the American economic miracle of our country is the value
placed on labor.
With the enormous exception of the labor forced from captured,
enslaved Africans and indentured labor from Asia and other continents,
the price of labor in the United States, as compared to the rest of the
world, was high.
African Americans have a proud history of organizing. We know that
early labor organizers suffered broken bones and death on the picket
line. As difficult as these battles were, we know that it was even more
trying for African Americans.
We can be proud of brother C. L. Dellums, the uncle of my
predecessor, Congressman Ronald V. Dellums. C. L. Dellums, from
Oakland, California, was one of the primary organizers of the Sleeping
Car Porters Union and the California counterpart to the A. Philip
Randolph Trade Union Movement.
The Sleeping Car Porters Union was the first black union. The
establishment of this union changed the perception of African Americans
in America. Prior to that time, African Americans were brought in to
break strikes by taking advantage of their financial oppression. We
just heard from the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) that this is
still occurring in this country. Employers use the classic strategy of
pitting oppressed worker against oppressed worker, black, white, Asian,
Latino.
The formation of this black union changed the whole labor dynamic in
America because black labor could see that we could be part of a union
movement, and thus this was a very significant step in the American
labor movement.
These bloody battles waged by our labor progenitors brought better
wages, health care, pensions, housing for workers. But we also know
that battles, even those that were won at great costs, were not known
or valued by those who did not struggle. So we have to learn and fight
anew.
We do have recent successes. One, of course, is the defeat of
Proposition 226 in California in the last June primary.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, it was a fascinating effort and wonderful
effort by workers coming across California to make this happen. Someone
told me that 26,000 people were activated to defeat this antiworker
provision.
Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely correct. But it was
not only defeated by labor unions and workers, it was a coalition of
young people and unemployed. It was a fabulous coalition. I believe
that is a testament as to what is really going on in this country.
This was an attempt to block employee contributions to unions. Yet,
it would have continued to allow corporate contributions to political
campaigns. The issue alarmed and energized voters all over California
and all over the country and brought out 7 percent more voters actually
in my district. Proposition 226 was defeated 53 percent to 47 percent.
Flowing from that success is the failed attempt now to place a
similar bill on Nevada's ballot. A Nevada court ruled that the proposal
was a violation of the First Amendment right of free speech. But
workers who try to gain decent, living wages and working conditions
oftentimes have to pay dearly for their successes.
Were working conditions and wages adequate, working people would not
spend the time or the money or expose themselves to the dangers, and
there are some real dangers that come with fighting for economic
justice.
A decision to strike only follows when workers collectively blow the
whistle on work conditions. It is really the final straw used to get
the attention of the employer.
The employer's retaliatory lockouts, business closures, and transfers
of operation to Mexico, Indonesia, and China, with their pools of
exploited labor, threaten the very livelihood of workers and their
families here in America.
Workers take action knowing that the cost of gaining dignity at work
is the likely destruction of their livelihood and family economic
security. We need international unions to protect workers all over the
world.
Let me just tell you, in California, workers who live in my district
and who work in Burlington Northern/Santa Fe's Richmond Intermodal Yard
were fired because they joined the ILWU last September. As soon as they
negotiated decent wage and benefits at $12 an hour, the railroad took
away the contract to load and unload its trains and gave it to another
contractor, Parsec, a company with a long history of union busting.
According to the 1998 newsletter called Labor Notes, a worker named
Sabrina Giles went to work 7 years ago keeping track of huge shipments
at the
[[Page H4958]]
yard. Over the years, she trained one worker after another in the
difficult art of tracking the million-dollar cargos shipped by giant
corporations.
But while others moved up to better jobs and higher pay, she stayed
on in one place watching her wages inch slowly from $8 to $9.50 an
hour. The people she saw moving ahead were mostly white, she says, the
friends and relatives of supervisors. According to Giles, who is an
African American woman, this yard was full of favoritism, racism, and
sexism.
A couple of points on the farm workers in California I would like to
mention. Farm workers have been struggling for decades for the right to
organize and have minimally decent working conditions. The situation of
the strawberry workers in Watsonville, California is extreme and has
consequences not only for the workers but for their children.
The most dangerous life-threatening aspect of their work is constant
exposure to a wide range of very powerful pesticides and insecticides.
Women farm workers suffer the additional burden of sexual harassment.
A third problem concerns not only the health of the worker, but the
health of the consumers of strawberries and other produce because of
the lack of toilet facilities in the field. Why do we wait until we
have a severe epidemic of hepatitis before we react? The problem has
persisted over and over and over again.
Also we are looking at the issue of janitors on the West Coast that
are mostly immigrant men and women. They work for minimum wages, for no
benefits, more than the normal workload, and many of these workers are
employed by contractors who sometimes keep up to 50 percent of their
wages.
We held hearings when I was in the California Senate, and we found
that contractors negotiated a dollar amount for the contract.
Subsequent to that, they paid the workers about 50 percent less than
what they were being reimbursed for. Unfortunately, these workers now
have no benefits. And now they are trying to circumvent the unions by
having their employees form company unions, which offer substantial
benefits and circumvent any effort to improve the working conditions.
So the Janitors for Justice effort to improve working conditions
continues, and we will not rest until each and every janitor is treated
with justice and with fairness.
Finally, and let me just say, most of my colleagues I know serve
constituents, the majority of whom are not CEOs and millionaires. So I
urge this Congress to react by enacting legislation that supports
working people.
I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) for allowing
the American people to hear stories tonight of the importance of our
labor union movement and the actual successes and the struggles of
working men and women in this country.
Mr. BONIOR. I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) for her
comments and her passionate concern about this issue and for talking
about 226 and the farm workers and the janitors that need justice and
for her comments. We thank her for participating tonight.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Green), my good friend, for comments.
Mr. GREEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank our Democratic whip for organizing
this special order in recognition of June 24, when American workers
will use the day to celebrate victories we have had in protecting the
right to organize and bargain collectively to improve living standards
and working conditions. This is an important day I think we need to
remember but also recognize we still have a long way to go.
The right to join a union is a basic civil right, and unions are an
avenue to equity, fair treatment, and economic stability for working
people. I know hearing my colleagues tonight, and the gentleman
mentioned it earlier, around the world, the right to bargain
collectively and independently is so important to industrialized
democracies; in Poland, the success of the solidarity union. Around the
world, in China and some of our, both competitors and countries we try
to work with, the right to organize and bargain collectively is so
important.
{time} 2215
Let me just give a small commercial. I have a bill, H.R. 2848, the
Labor Relations First Contract Negotiations Act. The bill was
introduced to allow rights of employees to organize and bargain
collectively for living standards. This bill would require mediation
and ultimately arbitration if an employer and newly elected
representative had not reached a collective bargaining agreement within
60 days. We have time after time in our country right now where there
is an election, yet there is no contract months and months afterwards.
Yet the workers have voted to have union representation. That bill is
important. I would like to see if we had a bill this session I could at
least have a debate on that piece of legislation so we can move that
further, so they do not necessarily get bogged down in NLRB by both
sides oftentimes, and either management or labor could exercise that
right.
Let me talk about something that is happening in Harris County, in
Houston, Texas on the 24th. Our Harris County AFL-CIO is having a
Justice Bus Tour. Let me talk about the five stops they are going to
have. One of them is our new baseball stadium that a lot of us
supported in downtown Houston that is being predominantly built by
nonunion labor. The building trades are fighting for fair wages and a
voice for those workers. In fact, the International Union of Operating
Engineers is currently conducting an organizing campaign with the crane
operators there at that site. All of us love baseball. I know the
gentleman does, too. I love the Houston Astros. We would like to make
sure that the people building that stadium are being paid a fair wage.
The second stop is not actually in my district, where the Oil,
Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, Local 4-227 has been locked out of
Crown Petroleum for 2 years. I have been out there for those
anniversaries of that lockout, I have spoken at the union hall about
Crown Petroleum's not being able to negotiate with their workers who
are my constituents and live all over Harris County but the plant is
actually in my district. That is so wrong for those workers there.
The third stop will be at Union Tank Car Company. Last April, the
United Steel Workers won an election for the workers by a two to one
margin. The company disregarded the workers' choice and used delaying
tactics and legal challenges to overturn the election. The workers
there will speak to the fact that Union Tank Car disrespected the
decision made by its workers and is using a variety of tactics to keep
the union out. Over 100 workers are expected to meet that justice bus
there at that location. The event is also being coordinated with one of
the company's headquarters in Chicago, so between Houston and Chicago
hopefully we will get Union Tank Car's attention.
The fourth stop will be at a Kroger grocery store represented by
United Food and Commercial Workers, both Locals 408 and 455. The
grocery store workers will award Kroger for being such a good employer
that respects their workers. They will also thank Kroger for its
support for the United Farm Workers in their organizing efforts for the
strawberry workers in California.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I think that is a really important point,
that we recognize the corporations and the companies who respect their
workers and treat them with dignity. I am glad that part of the justice
bus tour in Houston is going to do that, is going to let the community
know that these people are really part of the community, they care
about it, they care about the workers and the people who shop in their
store. Kroger deserves a lot of credit.
Mr. GREEN. There is both positive and negative reinforcement in this
tour. Another stop will be at Columbia Lighting, represented by the
IBEW, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 716. The
company tried to decertify, but they lost the election and so that
company shut down that plant. That is so wrong at Columbia Lighting.
The workers will talk about that company's attempt to get rid of the
union. They failed on decertification but now they are just shutting
the plant down.
We have a long way to go. We have a lot of success, a great history
in our
[[Page H4959]]
country of recognizing workers, their right to organize. We have a long
way to go. I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) for
his effort tonight and look forward to continue working with him to
make sure that not only do we fight for justice all over the world for
workers but we also recognize we have to fight for it in our own
country.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for all his
support and help and for coming and staying late this evening to
express his views on this.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).
Mr. PAYNE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, let me congratulate the gentleman from Michigan (Mr.
Bonior) for the outstanding work that he continues to do and my
colleagues who have taken time tonight to talk about this very
important issue. I applaud working Americans, because on Wednesday,
June 24, we will support workers' rights to organize a union. We know
that this voice will be heard nationwide. They will share with us their
desire to improve the working conditions and how unions help them
achieve their goals for a better workplace.
Unions are good for America. They emphasize the fact that organizing
unions is the basic American way. I believe that it is also important
that we come together to promote policies which will help working
people.
It has been documented that 77 percent of employers distribute anti-
union literature, and that 50 percent of employers in one study
threatened to fire all workers if they joined a union. Such anti-union
efforts harm working Americans. First, on average, nonunion workers
earn 33 percent less than their union counterparts. Second, these
activities hamper the ability of working Americans to express their
views on their work experience to their employer.
Mr. Speaker, we have seen this Congress try to suppress the voices of
workers. They have attempted to pass legislation which would eliminate
the ability of working families to participate in political activity
cloaked under the guise of campaign reform. They have attacked the
National Labor Relations Board, the body responsible for enforcing the
National Labor Relations Act. Because those efforts have been
unsuccessful, they have sought to overturn the National Labor Relations
Act itself.
____________________