[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 82 (Wednesday, June 13, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H3124]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PROTECTING AND PROMOTING THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, 
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), who organized some of us to 
come to the floor and discuss the importance of protecting and 
promoting the rights of workers to organize.
  Every year our government spends tens of millions of dollars of our 
tax money to support efforts around the globe to promote democracy. One 
of the ways that we measure society's success in establishing a 
democratic system of government and an open society is how well its 
laws protect the rights of the poor, the rights of workers, and the 
rights of its citizens to speak, to organize, and to act collectively 
on their own behalf.
  This is a message that we send every day from the floor of this 
Congress. We condemn, as we did today, those governments that oppress 
workers, that shield unscrupulous employers and empower the elites of 
society. Democracy is not measured by how well you guard the affluent 
and the powerful, but by how well you protect the rights of the weakest 
and the most vulnerable.
  Thirty-six years ago, in 1935, Congress enacted the National Labor 
Relations Act to address the inequality of bargaining power between the 
employees who do not possess the freedoms of association or liberty of 
contract and the employers. In the depth of the Great Depression, our 
government understood that working men and women could not challenge 
employers who, through their wealth and power and associations, could 
exploit labor if workers themselves were not protected in their efforts 
to organize. That was a decision born of decades of brutal, bloody, and 
crippling warfare in the mines, the factories, the wharves, and the 
workshops of America.
  But today, as the men and women born, along with the NLRA retire, 65 
years later that promise to America's working people remains 
unfulfilled despite many achievements by organized labor on behalf of 
America's working families.
  Unions have made tremendous improvements in the quality of life and 
standard of living of their members and their families. Union workers 
earn 28 percent more than nonunion workers, and union women earn 31 
percent more than nonunion women workers. Unions have made dramatic 
improvements in the economic status of minority Americans: African 
American union members earn 37 percent more than nonunionists, and 
Hispanic workers increase their earnings about 55 percent through union 
membership.
  Ninety percent of union workers have pension benefits compared to 
only 76 percent of nonunion workers, and 86 percent have health care 
benefits compared to 74 percent of nonunion workers. Only 50 percent of 
the nonunion have short-term disability benefits, compared to 73 
percent of union workers. And the union workers, on an average, enjoy 
twice the job stability of their nonunion counterparts.
  American workers and their families, whether union or not, enjoy a 
higher quality of life, greater freedoms, greater opportunities, 
greater political influence and greater health because of the union 
movement in the United States. Because of the many hard-fought battles 
over the last century and a quarter, most Americans can take a weekend 
off. Most Americans only work 8 hours a day rather than 10 or 12. In 
their later years, most Americans have pension plans, health insurance, 
as well as Social Security and Medicare that union support made 
possible and protects today.
  Given this great heritage, many question why the number of workers 
who are members of unions has decreased. Perhaps unions are victims of 
their own success at times. They have raised the quality of life for 
millions who never carried a union card. But there is another 
explanation and the Congress needs to pay it closer attention and 
address the shortcomings of current labor law.
  Congress sends millions of dollars to build democratic institutions 
in other countries, and one of the measurements of success is the 
creation of a free trade movement with the right to strike and engage 
in collective bargaining and political activity. That is a measure of 
political health. But it is often not the case in the United States.
  Unions and the men and women who would form and join them are the 
victims of grossly unfair bias under the current labor laws. The decks 
are stacked against those seeking to create a union. The law grants 
numerous advantages to employers that facilitate their efforts to 
prevent fair elections and successful collective bargaining.
  Let me give you a few examples. The Wagner Act says a laborer may not 
be fired for trying to form or join a union. However, the only remedy 
for an unlawful discharge is to grant the worker back pay and 
reinstatement. As anyone familiar with labor law knows, it can easily 
take a year or more to litigate the unlawful discharge case. While that 
may be fine for an employers' association, few workers can afford to go 
several years without a job. Nor does the back pay of money that should 
have been earned to compensate a worker for the damages suffered as a 
result of having no income for 6 months. The worker receives no 
compensation to account for the new clothes that the worker could not 
provide for his child. The worker receives no compensation for the car 
or home that was repossessed. These are just the beginning of some of 
the unfair labor practices that exist in current law in this country. 
We will continue this discussion.

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