[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 42 (Wednesday, April 5, 2006)] [House] [Pages H1539-H1540] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] THE DELPHI MYTH Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from New Jersey. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Ohio? There was no objection. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, a number of Members of Congress from the Democratic side have come together in a process known as an e-hearing where we have solicited from people across the country their concerns in particular about the auto industry, trade law, labor law and Delphi Corporation filing for bankruptcy. This evening, a number of us will come before this House to make a presentation on behalf of people who participated in the e-hearing and to make clear the direction this country must go in with respect to our trade law, labor law and with respect to the Delphi case. I want to begin by thanking the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) who is the ranking member on our committee for his work in helping to organize this hearing, and hopefully he will be here himself to participate, [[Page H1540]] but you will be hearing shortly from the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) as well as other Members with respect to the results of our e-hearing. Much of the talk surrounding the current crisis facing U.S. automakers revolves around the toll that wages, health insurance and pensions place on companies. A loss of these benefits would be a devastating blow for workers and their families. Consider what my constituent, Betty Payer of Parma, Ohio, said during our committee's recent e-hearing. She said, ``The way the auto industry is going affects us in so many different ways. If my husband was to lose his job, we would not be able to raise our children properly. I don't even know how we would be able to give them the proper education. We can barely afford to buy them clothes and get them the things they truly need the way it is. My oldest son is getting ready to turn 3 and he needs speech therapy and physical therapy the way it is. Without insurance, we would not be able to take him to those because we cannot afford to pay for them. He has to go once a week until they see an improvement in him.'' That is from Betty Payer of Parma, Ohio. But the discussion about the auto industry is not served when certain individuals mischaracterize the actual labor costs. There is a myth put forward by the CEO of Delphi about the overpaid auto workers. He is claiming that $65 per hour is a typical wage Delphi pays for blue color labor. The problem is Delphi doesn't pay $65 an hour. Rather, this figure is a creation of Delphi's media consultants and it lumps together all of Delphi's labor costs and payments to unemployed and retired workers, but falsely allocates them only to Delphi's much smaller workforce. That inflates the average labor cost. {time} 1945 Actual average wage for current Delphi workers is about $23 per hour. So whatever Delphi's financial problems, one thing that is not a cause is workers earning $65 per hour. And it is misleading of Delphi's CEO to say otherwise. But bad faith characterizes the Delphi CEO. It was bad faith that he filed motions in bankruptcy court to break his labor contracts. Negotiations with the union had not reached an impasse. Rather, the opposite was true. GM and Delphi had just reached an agreement with the union on a Special Attrition Program. Don't you think that one agreement could lead to another? If Delphi's CEO is notorious for his drive to beat down the wages and benefits workers have won through their unions and impose a wage scale that is more in line with that of China, then he has been greatly helped by the official policy of the United States, both in terms of trade law and labor law. We have a trade policy that actually permits foreign based companies to export an infinite number of goods and services to the United States, with no expectation that goods and services made in the United States will find buyers overseas. So companies locate in low wage countries, such as China, and export without limit to the U.S. Predictably, the U.S. is, in turn, suffering from a record-sized widening trade deficit with China and the world. Our trade deficit is approaching $750 billion. Workers are threatened by plant closures, and plant owners can plausibly threaten they are going to move to Mexico where they can find lower wages, lower legal standards, and export to the U.S. what they used to manufacture in the U.S. What is needed is balance. There should be some kind of a balance between our imports and our exports. What we import from China, for example, should be roughly in line with the value of what we export to China. Our trade policies should be guided by what you could call a principle of reciprocity. We also have a labor policy that enables foreign-owned companies to threaten and intimidate American workers when they try to organize themselves into unions. The leading foreign automakers have plants in the U.S., but they are all non union, thanks to the anti worker slant of U.S. law. That gives them an unfair advantage over the unionized American auto companies. Why do we tolerate giving Honda and Toyota such an advantage in our own country? If workers were allowed join unions, as they do in Canada, when a majority signed cards attesting that that is their wish, foreign auto companies would be less able to squash an organizing effort. Then GM and Toyota would be on a level playing field as far as labor costs were concerned. Here in Congress, we cannot compel automakers to design cars people want to buy. We hope that they can find the people to design such vehicles. Clearly, the American automakers have made serious errors. Auto workers didn't make the errors because they are told what cars to make. But we can make sure that the playing field is level so there is fair competition in the auto industry. Our trade policy, Mr. Speaker, and I am speaking of NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO, for starters, has had a consistent effect. Know what that effect has been? To deindustrialize the United States. We are losing our industry, not because of the laws of nature or the invisible hand, but due to trade policy established here in Congress. Our labor law is also responsible. American-owned companies are losing market share to foreign-owned transplants because of the viciously anti-worker environment this Congress has unfortunately established. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to hearing my other colleagues about what we can do to protect American industry and American auto workers. ____________________