[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 161 (Thursday, December 13, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7999-S8000]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to rise to express my deep sadness
about the events in Michigan. Denied the chance to participate in their
own government, Michigan workers have been the victims of backroom
political trickery, and they have lost much in a short period of time.
It is also a sad day, however, for our entire country because Michigan
is only the latest battleground in a much larger war on workers'
rights. If we lose this great battle, the casualty will be the American
middle class.
I have always said and believe that strong unions are the foundation
of a strong middle class. When union membership was at its peak in this
country, we all grew together. The middle class grew and prospered.
Everyone, from the richest CEO to the minimum wage worker, benefited
from our Nation's prosperity when labor union organization was at its
peak.
Michigan's economy has always been a shining example of that shared
prosperity, where an autoworker who put in a hard day's work could earn
enough not only to buy one of the cars he made but to buy a house, send
his kids to college, take a nice vacation, have a good retirement, and
live the American dream.
As unions have declined in this country, the middle class has
suffered. Those at the top earn more and more, while ordinary working
people are seeing the American dream slip out of their reach.
It is not just union workers who are losing ground because unions
don't only benefit their members. They benefit each and every American
worker, regardless of whether one has ever held a union card. It is
unions that fought for all the things we sort of take for granted. It
is unions that fought for the 40-hour work week, a fair minimum wage,
laws against discrimination, and laws that keep workers safe on the
job. It is unions that are fighting today for Medicare, Social
Security, job training, and other programs that help working families
succeed.
I think it is important to go back to, truly the founding father, if
you will, of the American labor movement, Samuel Gompers. He was asked
once, ``What does labor want?'' Here is what he said:
What does labor want?
We want more school houses and less jails; more books and
less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and
less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of
the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.
That was Samuel Gompers, and he went on to say:
Where trade unions are most firmly organized, these are the
rights of the people most respected.
Historically, we know that is true. Perhaps, most important now,
America's labor unions are the last remaining voice strong enough to
speak out for those who are not rich and not powerful. That is why they
are under attack. Unions are under attack because they are one of the
few remaining groups strong enough to stand up to the powerful, the
very wealthy interests that want to run our country and ship our jobs
overseas.
Last Thursday, Governor Snyder of Michigan called a press conference
with the Republican leaders in the Michigan House and Senate and
announced their plans to force through a change in Michigan laws for
the so-called right-to-work law.
By the end of that same day, Republicans had introduced and passed
right-to-work bills. There was no real debate. There were no hearings.
To make matters worse, they manipulated the process to prevent the
voters in Michigan from ever reviewing their actions. Why do I say
that? Because Michigan law allows voter referendums on most laws but
has an exception for appropriations bills. So the Republicans in the
legislature attach their antilabor provisions to an appropriations bill
to deny voters in Michigan the chance to even be heard on it.
But here is the key thing about the American people, when we are
fighting for our families and our children's future, we will not be
bullied, nor will we be silenced. This week's events in Michigan
illustrate this so powerfully. Ordinary working people with bills to
pay, kids to feed, and worries on their minds are taking time out of
their busy lives to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, to say enough
is enough.
This is not, again, just about organized labor. There are huge stakes
for the middle class in the ongoing Republican assault on the right of
American workers to organize and bargain collectively. There is a very
direct connection between this war on unions and the harsh reality that
American workers' incomes have effectively stagnated and even declined
in recent decades, even as corporate profits have skyrocketed.
In an important column earlier this week, the Nobel Prize-winning
economist, Paul Krugman, points out that even as the economy has
struggled, corporate profits are at an alltime high. Moreover, as
Professor Krugman points out, ``profits have surged as a share of
national income, while wages and labor compensation are down. The pie
isn't growing the way it should--but capital is doing fine by grabbing
an ever-larger slice, at labor's expense.''
As this chart shows, corporate profits have been rising rapidly for a
decade in dollar terms, but wages have been stagnant, barely keeping up
with inflation over time. In dollar terms, total wages have been
increasing slightly, but that is because of inflation and the size of
the workforce. A growing number of workers are dividing up their share
of the pie. But corporate profits have been skyrocketing, almost
tripling over a decade. Therefore, the worker's share gets smaller and
smaller.
This is what this second chart shows. It is kind of a little
confusing, so I will explain it. If we look at a longer period of time
in terms of the gross domestic product, what we see is that from the
1950s till 2000, wages and corporate profits moved back and forth
relative to each other. But since the 1980s, we see a picture of
corporate profits increasing and exploding over the last decade. At the
same time, wages and salaries have been on a steady downward slope as
the economy has grown. As I said, this pattern has accelerated
dramatically over the past decade.
So let's take a look and try to make some sense out of this chart.
Here are wages as a percent of the gross domestic product. If we look
back at the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, up to about 1980, we will see that
labor's share was right around 50 percent, give or take a little bit--
right around 50 percent of GDP--and corporate profits basically kept in
line with its share. Beginning in 1980, wages--the red line--started
going down and corporate profits started their huge climb. But for the
recession, where they took a dip, we can see the huge increase now in
corporate profits as a percent of GDP has more than doubled from its
low point in the recession of a decade ago. It has reached its highest
point in over 70 years. Wages have fallen down to below 44 percent of
GDP.
So as a percent, we can see that corporate profits have skyrocketed
but not wages, and this is what is happening: More and more of the pie
is going to corporate profits, and less and less is going to wages.
That is the squeeze that is going on. If we look at unions and trade
unions during this same period of time, we see, beginning right in
here--beginning early in the 1980s, right in here--the huge attack on
organized labor, the eroding of labor's rights in many ways, and so
wages started going down.
These are not just wages of union people. These are wages of all
working people--all working people. That is why I say it is not just
union members who have benefited from the strength of organized labor;
everyone in the
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middle class has benefited from it. Throughout most of the 20th century
labor unions led the push for higher wages, for pensions, health care
benefits, and safer working conditions. The gains won by unionized
workers served to lift wages, benefits, and working conditions for
nonunionized workers as well. Millions of middle-class Americans who
never thought about joining a union have received very considerable
benefits from the labor movement.
I always ask people: How did we get the 40-hour workweek, time-and-a-
half overtime, paid vacations, worker safety? This didn't happen
because management voluntarily gave it. People struggled for this. They
fought for this, marched for this, and many got beat up, lost their
jobs and their livelihoods fighting just for a 40-hour workweek or for
time-and-a-half overtime or paid vacations. Yet it has benefited the
entire middle class of America. That is why I say when the Republicans
are doing an open assault on organized labor, they are assaulting the
middle class of America. They are dragging down the middle class of
America.
As the war on unions has succeeded in dramatically shrinking the
share that is unionized, this has reduced the ability of most workers
across the entire economy to negotiate increases in wages and salaries.
The result is the growing imbalance--skyrocketing corporate profits at
a time when personal income is stagnant or declining. The fruits of the
expanding economy have accrued overwhelmingly to corporations, their
executives, executive pay, and shareholders, leaving workers behind.
Despite skyrocketing profits, and despite the fact that corporations
and shareholders have taken the lion's share of income from the growing
GDP, corporations are still demanding lower rates of taxation and huge
additional advantages regarding corporate taxes. So corporations get
more and more of the GDP at the same time they say: We don't want to
pay any more taxes; we want to pay less taxes. Corporations paid an
average effective rate of just 7.9 percent in 2011--7.9 percent. Now,
wasn't it Mr. Romney, the Republican nominee, who said corporations are
people too? Well, I bet a lot of people in this country would like to
pay 7.9 percent of their income in taxes. But the corporations are
still not satisfied. They want even lower rates, even as the middle
class and the poor are asked to make major sacrifices--major
sacrifices--as we address the so-called fiscal cliff and the real
deficit that we do have.
Very high income Americans get most of their income from capital
gains and dividends. The tax on that type of income is now 15 percent--
the lowest percentage since the 1930s. I repeat: Since the 1930s, the
lowest percentage on capital gains and dividends is right now, at 15
percent. But until 2003, dividends were taxed at the same rate as
regular income. Now dividends are getting the same very generous
treatment as capital gains, while regular income rates are now 35
percent.
So just think about that: It wasn't until 2003 when we said, OK,
capital gains, dividends, 15 percent. Before dividends were always the
same rate as regular income. So who gets that? The wealthy. Average
working people don't have significant dividends or capital gains.
Republicans claim that economic calamity will occur if those rates go
up. But let's look at recent history. When the 1993 tax bill passed,
every Republican here voted no. Many Senate Republicans predicted
economic calamity if it passed. I was here. I remember those debates.
You can look it up in the Record. However, in the 5 years after the
passage of the Clinton tax bill in 1993, 14 million jobs were created.
Contrasting that, in the 5 years after the 2001 tax bill passed--that
lowered the regular rate to 35 percent--only 4 million jobs were
created.
Now, I am not saying raising taxes creates jobs, but raising tax
rates does not kill jobs either. As we address the fiscal cliff,
corporations and high-income individuals can afford to pay a greater,
fairer share of Federal revenue. In recent years, they have seen their
incomes grow by huge sums. It would be grossly unfair to shift the
burden to the middle class, which has already been deprived of its fair
share of the growing economic pie in recent decades.
Mr. President, people in Washington are obsessing about what they
call the fiscal cliff. Well, we do indeed face fiscal challenges in the
future. But I am more concerned about the crisis of America's middle
class--a middle class confronted by stagnant or declining wages, with
jobs being shifted overseas and with traditional benefits, such as
pensions and health insurance, being taken away.
There is no doubt the debate over collective bargaining rights will
continue--in Michigan and across the country--for months, probably
years to come. While there is little I can do standing in the Senate to
directly help the people of Michigan today, I wanted to come to the
floor to tell them a lot of us stand with them, and we will stand with
them tomorrow. A great injustice is being committed in the State of
Michigan--again, not just against union members but against the middle
class.
I think we have to recognize what is happening in this country: an
assault on union workers, on collective bargaining, and the assaults we
have seen by my Republican friends on the National Labor Relations
Board, the National Mediation Board--anything to take away from workers
their right to bargain collectively.
When you are a minimum-wage worker or just above, and you are working
at Walmart, how much power do you think you have against the Walton
family or their corporate executive? What, are they the second or third
richest family in the world now? Do you think you have some bargaining
power? You don't have anything. But if you are unionized, and you have
all of the union members with you, now you can bargain. Now you get on
a more even keel with wages and capital to make sure wages and capital
don't get too far out of kilter.
That is simply what has happened. Too much of our GDP in the last 30
years has gone to capital and not enough to labor. When that happens,
middle-class America suffers. When middle-class America suffers, we all
suffer because we know from history, from our American experiment, the
American economy grows best from the middle out, not from the top down.
So, again, Mr. President, I feel sorry for those workers who were
caught off guard in Michigan. I feel sorry for the middle class in
Michigan--those whose rights are being undermined. But we stand
steadfast in our support for the rights of working people and for the
inherent--the inherent--right of people to be able to join together to
form an association or a trade union and to bargain collectively for
their wages, hours, and conditions of employment.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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