[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 82 (Wednesday, June 13, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H3125]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              LABOR RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take this 
opportunity to salute first of all organized labor and to talk briefly 
about the role that it has played and continues to play in the lives of 
average citizens, ordinary Americans, the role that it has played in 
helping to create what we call the middle class.
  Every day when I pick up the paper, the first thing that I generally 
see is where the rights of workers are being eroded. We are continuing 
to downsize, outsource, privatize. There is a tremendous amount of 
anti-union organizing activity. We see the diminution of workers' 
rights and the elimination of fringe benefits. More and more people are 
forced into having to work part time, with not a real job where they 
have benefits, where they know that if they should become ill, they can 
go to the doctor or go to the hospital.
  In a world that is increasingly connected by international trade and 
investment, the need for enforceable rules in the global economy to 
protect workers' rights and prevent a devastating drive to the bottom 
in labor standards has never been more critical than what it is today. 
Working together, countries must take steps to establish minimum 
international labor standards so that increasing trade competition 
between nations does not continue to spiral downward.
  The fact is that since NAFTA was enacted in 1993, the United States 
has lost more than 600,000 jobs. U.S. companies have less stringent 
labor and environmental standards. In fact, more than 150 U.S. 
companies have left the U.S. for Mexico since NAFTA and are now 
relishing in the fact that they have avoided compliance with important 
worker safety and health standards. And, of course, they are getting 
away with paying their employees as little as $7 a day. How can a 
Teamster, for example, who might make an average of $19 an hour compete 
with this? The fact of the matter is that he or she cannot. And each 
and every time we go to the bargaining table to negotiate a good, fair 
contract, we are berated with threats of companies relocating. In the 
end, American jobs are eliminated, our wages are suppressed, and 
benefits cut. Unfortunately, the World Trade Organization does not seem 
to be concerned with this problem.
  I was pleased not long ago to listen to my colleague from North 
Carolina talk about reauthorization of the agricultural bill and the 
fact that rural America must have a real place in it. I was thinking 
that when we reauthorize that bill, we need to make sure that we look 
at some of the subsidies that we are giving to agribusiness, that we 
look, for example, at the tremendous subsidy that the sugar growers are 
getting which is keeping the cost of sugar so high in places like where 
I live that candy companies are going out of business, or they are 
talking about moving to Mexico or Argentina or someplace other than in 
the United States.
  And so I think it is a call to arms for the workers of America to 
unite, to keep coming together, to keep organizing, to make sure that 
there is protection for the average person, the workers of this 
country.

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