[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 180 (Monday, November 6, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7009-S7011]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Nomination of Peter Robb

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, this morning I drove from Cleveland to 
Youngstown. I was in Youngstown, OH--Mahoning Valley--at Teamsters 
Local 377 talking to workers. There were maybe 200 of them in the room, 
mostly retirees who are in danger of having their pensions cut--
pensions they earned over a lifetime of hard work.
  To understand how that happens, when workers are at the bargaining 
table, whether it is Teamsters, electricians, Steelworkers or SCIU, 
they so often are willing to give up wages today in order to have a 
secure retirement in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
  That is what these workers chose to do. They chose to give up wages. 
Whether they worked for Schwebel's in Youngstown, whether they worked 
for Roadway, over the road, whether they were working for any number of 
companies, they were willing, at the bargaining table, to give up 
higher wages today to have money to set aside that was then invested 
often in Wall Street. We will get to that in a minute. It is bad enough 
Wall Street squandered those workers' money. It is worse that the 
government that is supposed to look out for these workers simply isn't 
doing it. One of the retired workers, Ed Barker, told us: We did our 
part. Now it is time for Members of Congress to cross party lines and 
do theirs.
  We talk a good game in this body about how we respect workers and 
respect their work, but I am not sure we always live that. If we really 
value a hard day's work in this country, we start by keeping our 
promise to these hard-working Ohioans, Virginians, Montanans, and all 
over this country. We keep our promise to those hard-working people in 
our country, but we can't end there. That is just the beginning of what 
we need to do to ensure that hard work pays off for ordinary Americans.
  During his campaign, Candidate Trump made a lot of big promises to 
workers in Ohio. He ran some of his big rallies across our State. He 
made big promises to workers in Ohio and across the country. He told 
them he would put American workers first. Well, the White House today 
looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives, and many of the people 
the President has put in charge have a record of doing the opposite of 
putting American workers first.
  That is certainly true of Peter Robb, the nominee to serve as the 
general

[[Page S7010]]

counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. Mr. Robb has spent his 
career working to strip workers of their rights, defend corporations 
accused of mistreating workers, and he has tried to undermine the 
watchdog agency he is now seeking to join. He will be working at the 
National Labor Relations Board, which is supposed to strike a balance 
and advocate only for American workers. The President's nominee is 
someone who received a very high salary building his career defending 
corporations accused of mistreating workers, working to strip workers 
of their rights, and trying to undermine the NLRB's effort to get a 
fair shake and build a level playing field for workers.
  Someone who views unions and collective bargaining as a threat to be 
dealt with was primarily the story of Mr. Robb's career, instead of 
helping to protect the central rights for workers. A person like that 
has no business serving as the top lawyer for the National Labor 
Relations Board.
  His nomination is just the latest in a long line of evidence that 
work simply isn't valued in this country the way it used to be. People 
in Ohio and around the country work harder. They work more days, more 
hours, longer hours, harder than ever before, and they have less to 
show for it.
  Over the past 40 years, GDP has gone up, corporate profits have gone 
up, and executive compensation has gone up--all because of the 
productivity of the American worker, but, fundamentally, the workers 
haven't shared in the wealth they have created. Again, GDP goes up, 
profits go up, executive salaries go up, productivity goes up, but 
workers' wages are stagnant or worse. We know that.
  We also know people in this body rarely side with workers in that 
equation. One major reason the economic growth has not brought higher 
wages to workers is Americans are less likely to have a union card to 
protect them. When Americans reminisce about the good jobs that 
disappeared, I am willing to bet most of those jobs were union.
  As manufacturing employment declined, the share of workforce 
represented by unions declined with it--only more rapidly. I can accept 
that the workforce is changing, but what we can't accept is more and 
more of our workers are paid less in wages, have fewer benefits, and 
have little economic security.
  It is no coincidence that over the same timeframe, economic growth in 
this country has been shared among fewer and fewer Americans. Keep in 
mind, as the 1 percent gets richer, they take more and more of the 
profits, they take more of the productivity gains, and workers are left 
further behind.
  We know what will happen with this so-called tax reform that is being 
considered in the House. They are then going to negotiate it right down 
the hall here in the majority leader's office the same way they did 
healthcare. They will be right down the hall in the majority leader's 
office with lots of lobbyists but no light shone, no public, and no 
media coverage.
  We know what happens. We know what happens with tax reform like that. 
The rich get richer and the middle class shrinks. That is the story of 
those Teamsters in Youngstown today. As I walked with the crowd of 
Teamsters, I spoke with a number of them on the way in and the way out. 
I asked how long they had driven a truck. Most had driven 30, some 40, 
and a few 45 years. They worked that hard. They gave up wages today so 
they would have a pension in the future. Yet, right now, because of 
Wall Street misfeasance and malfeasance, in large part, and because 
government, the people in this body don't have the guts to stand up for 
these workers, we know what has happened to their pensions, and we know 
what will happen to their pensions if we don't step in and do the right 
thing come December this year.
  We know what will happen with the tax reform bill, again, written 
down the hall in the majority leader's office--the same thing. The 
wealthiest 1 percent get richer. The rich get richer and the powerful 
get more power and what happens is, the middle class shrinks. We know 
that.
  Last week, I was on the floor with many of my colleagues talking 
about a case before the Supreme Court--Janus v. AFSCME. The case is 
part of a decades-long attempt to chip away at workers' power in the 
workplace. Mr. Robb has been part of that effort. The nominee to be the 
top lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board has been part of the 
effort to chip away at workers' rights, to continue the demeaning and 
diminishing role of workers in this country, to suppress wages in this 
country. He is the person the President of the United States wants to 
serve as the top lawyer on the National Labor Relations Board.
  What is wrong with that picture? He defended corporations accused of 
discrimination of not paying their workers the paychecks they earned. 
Imagine, he represented the corporations that tried to keep these 
workers from getting the paychecks they earned. He worked for an energy 
company that was working to defeat workers' organizing effort. His own 
law firm's website brags about how they delayed the election 2 more 
years.
  You know how it works. My colleagues know this. These workers signed 
a petition. They signed a card, if you will, saying they would like to 
have a union election. A majority of these workers--probably a majority 
of 60, 70 percent--signed a card saying they wanted to have a union 
election. It is a right in this country. It is a right since the 1930s. 
When President Roosevelt pushed through the National Labor Relations 
Act, workers received the right to vote on a union. Mr. Robb's company 
was bragging. They were bragging that they were able to delay the 
election for 2 years. So maybe they couldn't defeat the workers, but do 
you know what you do then? You delay the election because you have 
really good, high-priced lawyers who know how to do this for 
management, for the corporation.

  If you delay the election for a week, for a month, for a quarter, for 
half a year, for a year, for 2 years, you know what happens. Many of 
those workers who signed that petition who thought they might have a 
shot at the union, some of them got fired, some just left, some of them 
were ready to retire, maybe some of them died. So by the time the 
election is held, you have pretty much defeated the organizing effort. 
That is why people like Mr. Robb don't belong at the National Labor 
Relations Board.
  We need someone in this job who wakes up every day ready to defend 
American workers, not oppress them, not shut them down, not depress 
their wages. You don't want somebody who has spent his career trying to 
bring these workers down.
  What Mr. Robb doesn't seem to understand is, it is not corporations 
that drive the economy, it is workers. We grow the economy from the 
middle class out.
  I know you are going to hear a number of my colleagues who support 
this huge tax break in this tax bill. It is all about cutting the 
corporate tax so corporations make more money, have higher profits, 
have higher executive salaries. It will not have anything to do with 
wages. It never does. No matter how profitable the companies are, they 
are not willingly giving higher wages to its workers. You are going to 
hear from these companies. You are going to hear the defenders of these 
companies come to this body, and they are going to talk about how 
corporations are driving the economy; that if you give tax breaks to 
the richest people in the country, it will trickle down and create jobs 
and increase wages. Well, it hasn't worked that way in the past.
  In the 1990s, Bill Clinton grew the economy. He focused the tax 
breaks in the tax bills on the middle-class workers and grew the 
economy out from the middle. Twenty-two million net private sector jobs 
increased during the Clinton years.
  The next 8 years, under President Bush 2, the tax cuts all went to 
the rich, two major tax cuts--not entirely to the rich but 
overwhelmingly to the rich. For trickle down, zero net increase of 
private sector jobs. There were 22 million during the Clinton years 
because he focused on the middle class. There was zero job growth 
during the Bush years because it was trickle-down economics.
  What is going on in the back room in the majority leader's, Senator 
McConnell's, back office? It is another tax cut for the rich, trickle 
down, see what happens. The rich get richer, and the middle class 
shrinks.

[[Page S7011]]

  What Mr. Robb doesn't understand is, it is not corporations that 
drive the economy, it is workers. When the workers are doing better, 
they are buying more things, they are creating more demand, companies 
sell more products, the economy grows. If work isn't valued, if 
corporations shortchange workers with the help of lawyers like Mr. 
Robb, then Americans can't earn their way to a better life for their 
families no matter how hard they work.
  We all know, workers are working harder than ever before. They are 
working longer hours than ever before. They are more productive. 
Profits are up. Executive compensation is up. Wages have been flat. 
What is fair about that? What should we do about that? What we should 
do about that is not to put people on the National Labor Relations 
Board who want to do more of the same.
  Whenever we face another attack on American workers and their freedom 
to organize, I think of the words of Pope Francis. He said: ``There is 
no good society without a good union, and there is no good union that 
is not reborn every day in the peripheries--that does not transform the 
disregarded stones of the economy into cornerstones.'' We need laws 
that reflect the dignity of every discarded stone, of every American 
working too many hours for too little pay. The last thing we need is 
another nominee who doesn't value work, another nominee who doesn't 
respect the Americans who do it, another nominee who always lines up on 
the side of the richest people in the country and always is working to 
take rights away from workers, to take wages away from workers, and to 
take benefits away from workers. That is the story of Mr. Robb's work 
history in the private sector.
  Is that the kind of person you want representing workers and 
representing the American economy at the National Labor Relations 
Board? I think not.
  I urge my colleagues to listen a little bit more. Go to the 
Teamsters' hall in Youngstown like I did today. Listen a little more to 
the Americans we serve. Listen a little less at the country club, to 
the big corporations trying to squeeze every last penny out of these 
workers' hands, to squeeze every last penny out of these workers. 
Reject Mr. Robb's nomination.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. 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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