[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 83 (Tuesday, June 23, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1202]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            SALUTING THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE INTO LABOR UNIONS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 23, 1998

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to salute one of our most 
cherished rights as Americans: the right of working people to bank 
together and organize into labor unions to achieve higher wages and 
better working conditions.
  When people first go to work for a non-union employer, they do so as 
individuals. Often times, they are not familiar with the specific 
conditions of work at their workplace. Sometimes those conditions are 
acceptable, and provide the sort of income that can support them and 
their families. But, too often those conditions are substandard and the 
wages are insufficient. In this situation, workers discover that they 
have many interests in common. They find that by joining together they 
can begin to work out responses and solutions to the problems that they 
face in the workplace. And they find that organizing into a labor union 
is their best vehicle to better treatment, improvements in working 
conditions, and expand respect on the job.
  Since the massive organizing drives of the 1930s, unions have come to 
play an important role in American society. Unions contribute to the 
stability of our economy by helping to ensure that working people have 
the income to purchase the products and services of industry. Unions 
give workers a voice on the job. Unions help to close the wage gap 
between men and women. And unions help to uphold fairness and equality 
of opportunity for all their members in the workplace.
  Unfortunately, the right to organize is increasingly under attack. 
Millions of workers would decide to join a union if they could be 
assured that they would not be punished for making that decision. 
Instead, workers who express their pro-union sympathies are routinely 
harassed, forced to undergo closed-door meeting with employers, and 
even fired.
  In my own district on the west side of Cleveland, the right to 
organize is not safe. For example, a company with $80 million in sales 
pays its workers at starting wage of $6.25 per hour, barely above the 
minimum wage. This is a company that received a tax abatement from the 
City of Cleveland to construct a new building. The company's sales have 
been growing, but that growth has not translated into higher wages and 
benefits, or better working conditions. Most employees support 
themselves and their families on weekly paychecks of less than $200. 
Retiring employees do not have a pension plan they an count on. Safety 
conditions are terrible. Employees have lost fingers and, in one case, 
an arm. When fires have broken out in the plant, employees have been 
required to continue work.
  Faced with these low wages and dangerous conditions, these workers 
turned to the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees--
UNITE. After workers contacted UNITE, 60 percent of them signed cards 
saying that they wanted the union to represent them. A petition for 
election has been filed with the National Labor Relations Board. Yet in 
the first two weeks of the union's organizing campaign, the following 
has happened: the employer has held captive audience meetings to 
frighten the workers; the company has threatened to close the factory 
completely; and the company has intimidated vocal union supporters by 
issuing written warnings against them, some for work offenses that 
occurred months earlier. The union predicts that this anti-union 
campaign will continue and become more intense in the next six weeks 
before the union election.
  I wish I could report this sort of behavior is unusual. But often 
this is typical action by employers to block the right to organize by 
any means necessary. This sort of behavior is shameful. It is turning 
the clock back to the 19th Century, when workers had few rights.
  To guarantee the stability and prosperity of our democratic society, 
workers must have the right to choose--freely and openly--whether to 
join together with their fellow workers and select the union of their 
choice. I urge my colleague to stand up and declare that:
  Workers have the right to organize;
  People have a right to a job . . . at fair wages with decent benefit;
  Workers have a right to a safe workplace . . . and a right to 
compensation if they are injured;
  People have a right to decent health care; and
  People have a right to participate in the political process.
  The foundation for all of these rights is the right to organize. To 
all those workers and employees who are fighting to exercise that right 
to organize, I salute you. Your struggle is difficult and painful, but 
you are proceeding in the finest traditions of our American history.

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