[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 78 (Thursday, June 2, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1029]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2012

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. JOSEPH CROWLEY

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 1, 2011

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 2017) making 
     appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for 
     the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other 
     purposes:

  Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Chair, I rise today to strongly oppose the Gosar and 
Scalise amendments to the 2012 Homeland Security Appropriations bill.
  Not only do these amendments threaten the stability and well-being of 
our Nation's construction industry, they would seriously undermine the 
wages and benefits of hard-working construction workers across the 
United States.
  It's no secret that since November 2010, many conservative leaders 
have sought to crack down on the rights of public sector workers across 
America. From Wisconsin to Indiana to Ohio, public sector workers like 
teachers, police officers, firefighters and other middle-class 
Americans are seeing their right to participate in labor unions and 
collectively bargain taken away.
  However, what is less known is that many conservatives are 
simultaneously working, through measures like these two amendments, to 
drive down the wages and benefits of workers in a major private sector 
section of our economy: construction. The workers who would be severely 
hurt by these two amendments are not even employed by the federal 
government, but by private businesses. This means that federal law 
would be responsible for reducing the wages of private sector employees 
at a time when they can least afford it.
  The Gosar amendment would eliminate important protections guaranteed 
by the Davis-Bacon Act, one of our Nation's oldest and most important 
labor laws, which requires payment of local prevailing wages on federal 
construction projects. The Scalise amendment would prohibit funds from 
being used to implement Executive Order 13502, a measure which 
encourages executive agencies to enter into project labor agreements on 
large-scale federal construction projects. Project labor agreements, 
like Davis-Bacon, are a cornerstone of the American construction 
industry and give cost and wage certainty to all parties involved in a 
construction project. Davis-Bacon and project labor agreements not only 
help hard-working construction workers make ends meet, they create a 
more skilled workforce that results in projects being completed with a 
high degree of quality and safety.
  At a time when we face unprecedented threats from abroad and are 
working hard to create good American jobs, removing these two mainstays 
of the American construction industry makes no sense at all. The men 
and women who build our Nation's roads, bridges and buildings have the 
right to make a decent living instead of facing deliberate attempts to 
not only undermine their wages and benefits, but drag the entire 
construction industry into a race to the bottom.
  I urge my colleagues to vote no on these two amendments.

                          ____________________