[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 48 (Tuesday, April 25, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2852-S2853]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    FAIR PAY FOR LOW INCOME WORKERS

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as we continue to wage our ongoing battle 
in Congress for a fair increase in the minimum wage for millions of 
workers across America, it is important to understand that low-income 
workers in all parts of the country are doing all they can themselves 
to obtain fair increases in pay from their employers.
  One of the most important examples in recent weeks has been the 
strike by janitors in Los Angeles, who were seeking a long overdue 
reasonable increase in wages during this time of remarkable prosperity 
for most Americans.
  At the beginning of last week, an excellent column by respected 
journalist David S. Broder appeared in The Washington Post and many 
other newspapers across the country, calling national attention to the 
strike, and emphasizing the issues of fundamental fairness at the heart 
of this dispute. Mr. Broder noted recent reports of the lavish salary 
and bonus packages totaling millions or even tens of millions of 
dollars a year available to the top executives of major firms across 
the country, and he compared these extraordinary benefits with the low 
salaries of the janitors in this dispute, whose lives ``are lived on 
the ragged edge of poverty.''
  I had the opportunity to meet with many of the striking workers and 
their union leaders on a visit to Los Angeles during the recess, and to 
express my support for them in their battle and to commend them for 
their courage.
  Fortunately, a tentative agreement on the issues in the strike was 
reached over the weekend, and a settlement granting a significant pay 
increase and other benefits was overwhelmingly approved by a vote of 
the workers yesterday. The President of the local union called the 
agreement ``the beginning of a new era for organized labor.''
  Justice for these janitors means progress toward justice for all 
working men and women across America. Their cause was just, and because 
of timely and important articles like David Broder's, more and more 
people across America are becoming aware of these fundamental issues 
and their extraordinary importance for our society.
  I commend Mr. Broder for his eloquent analysis and insight, and I ask 
unanimous consent that his column in The Washington Post on April 16, 
entitled ``Of Janitors and Billionaires,'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the column was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, April 16, 2000]

                      Of Janitors and Billionaires

                          (By David S. Broder)

       LOS ANGELES--The janitors on strike at the office buildings 
     near the downtown hotel where I stayed for a couple days last 
     week were the most polite picketers I have ever seen. The 
     largely Latino groups of men and women standing on the plaza 
     from which several of the city's highest office towers rise 
     greeted visitors with elaborate courtesy and seemed genuinely 
     grateful when anyone accepted one of their handouts 
     explaining why they had stopped using their brushes and 
     brooms.
       It was about money, they said, about struggling to support 
     their families and themselves at a pay scale ranging from $7 
     to $8 an hour--about $300 a week before taxes.
       The Service Employees International Union, representing 
     about 8,500 janitors, called the strike to back up its demand 
     for raises of $1 an hour each year for the next three years. 
     If granted, that would allow members of these overnight crews 
     to make the magnificent sum of about $21,000 a year in 2003.
       The janitorial service companies that have contracts with 
     these towering buildings, filled with banks, law firms and 
     corporate offices, were counter-offering raises of about one-
     third that size, also spread over three years.
       This is part of the overlooked reality of this era of 
     record prosperity--a story that receives far less attention 
     in the press and on television than the gyrations of the

[[Page S2853]]

     Nasdaq. Understandably so, for the Nasdaq determines the 
     value of the stock options held by the high-tech millionaires 
     who are the ``masters of the universe'' in the new economy, 
     the stars whose spectacular success draws envious glances 
     from those Americans who cannot imagine enjoying such riches, 
     unless they hit the lottery or have a spectacular run of luck 
     on one of the TV game shows.
       As Shawn Hubler, a Los Angeles Times columnist, noted last 
     week, ``the janitors' strike . . . has brought to the surface 
     something deeply resonant about the lives, now, of all 1.3 
     million of the region's working poor.'' Hubler described how 
     the janitors arrive to begin their tedious, wearying chores 
     just after most of the tenants have left the building, and 
     how she watched one late-working executive push open the door 
     to a freshly cleaned bathroom, with nary a nod of 
     acknowledgment to the woman janitor who had her equipment 
     cart just a few feet away. ``There is a dimension now,'' 
     Hubler wrote, ``in which whole human beings can be rendered 
     invisible, just erased.''
       Ralph Ellison described the phenomenon as experienced by 
     black folks in his novel of the last generation, ``Invisible 
     Man.'' But we imagine we have become more sensitive, more 
     aware in our time. Not so. There are millions of people whose 
     work makes our life easier, from busboys in the restaurants 
     we patronize to orderlies in the hospitals we visit, but 
     whose own lives are lived on the ragged edge of poverty. Most 
     of us never exchange a sentence with these workers.
       Meanwhile, the rich get steadily richer. The wall Street 
     Journal, not exactly a radical publication, printed its 
     annual survey of executive pay on April 6. Reporter Joann S. 
     Lublin cited a study of 350 major firms, conducted by William 
     M. Mercer Inc., a New York compensation consulting firm. It 
     found that the median salary and bonus package for the top 
     executives of those firms in 1999 was $1,688,088. That's 
     about $120,000 higher than it was in 1998 and just about what 
     80 of the striking janitors combined would make three years 
     from now--if they got what they are asking. But it's only 
     one-hundredth as much as the $170 million in salary, bonuses 
     and stock options the highest-paid executive in the survey, 
     L. Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco International, made in 1999.
       How do you justify those extremes? the Journal quotes 
     Jeffrey D. Christian, head of a Cleveland executive 
     recruiting firm, as explaining that the business heads he 
     meets ``all want the same opportunity for extreme wealth 
     creation and legacy creation as their dot-com counter-parts. 
     It's billionaire envy.''
       Another article in the special section--and remember this 
     is the Wall Street Journal, not Mother Jones--reported about 
     the increasing use of bonus guarantees to recruit or retain 
     executives. One boss named Thomas Evans ``will collect as 
     much as $10 million if his vested stock options would yield a 
     profit of less than that by August 2002,'' the Journal said. 
     And then there are the sweetheart deals, in which outside 
     directors on a firm's compensation committee grant lavish 
     salary increases or stock options to the CEO, who in turn 
     arranges lucrative consulting contracts for those same 
     directors.
       It's doubtful many of the striking janitors have read the 
     Journal's special section. If they did, they wouldn't be 
     quite so polite.

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