[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2027-S2028]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



             Nominations of John Ring and Patrick Pizzella

  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I am here today to urge my colleagues to 
oppose the confirmation of two Trump nominees--John Ring, who has been 
nominated to the National Labor Relations Board, and Patrick Pizzella, 
who has been nominated Deputy Secretary of Labor. These two nominees 
have been selected to hold critical jobs to protect workers. That is 
what these jobs are about.
  I will be blunt. I start with a pretty high bar here since, despite 
his campaign rhetoric from 2 years ago, the President's track record on 
standing up for workers has been absolutely miserable. From the day he 
nominated Andrew Puzder--an executive who delighted in mocking and 
belittling his own low-wage workers--to run the Department of Labor, 
this administration has delivered one gut punch after another to 
America's working people.
  The National Labor Relations Board is responsible for protecting the 
rights of workers to organize and bargain for better wages and 
benefits, so as we consider President Trump's latest nominee for the 
Board, it makes sense to look at what his nominees so far have already 
done.
  Look at the new Republican majority's very first week back on the job 
back in December. In just 5 days, the Board mowed its way through a 
giant wish list of areas where giant companies were begging to be let 
off the hook for violating workers' rights.
  Allowing employers to shirk their collective bargaining obligations 
by contracting out workers? Check.
  Making it easier for employers to control the outcome of union 
elections. Check.
  Opening the door for workplace rules that chill workers' ability to 
join together on the job. Check.
  Allowing cases to be ``settled'' without input from the workers whose 
rights are affected by the settlement. Check.
  Just as troubling as these anti-worker decisions themselves are the 
egregious conflicts of interest behind them.
  From the moment he was nominated by President Trump, I have 
repeatedly raised concerns about Board Member William Emanuel's history 
of representing big corporations that have abused their workers and 
about his mile-long list of potential conflicts of interest. Sure 
enough, after just a few months on the Board, NLRB's inspector general 
determined that Mr. Emanuel participated in not one but two important 
decisions involving his former law firm, which directly violated his 
ethics pledge. In response, the Board vacated one of its most 
consequential decisions of the last year, and Member Emanuel lost any 
remaining credibility that he could be an impartial Board member. So I 
called on him to resign.
  Now the President wants us to put John Ring on the Board. I have 
asked Mr. Ring to provide a list of clients and cases that might 
require his recusal. To his credit, he has done so. But Mr. Ring's long 
list of clients is a huge red flag. Either he will ignore the ethics 
rules when they are inconvenient--like Mr. Emanuel did--or he will 
likely have to recuse himself from important cases.
  A large number of potential conflicts of interest isn't the only 
thing Mr. Ring has in common with Mr. Emanuel. Like Emanuel, Mr. Ring 
has also spent his career representing large employers against workers, 
and his few public statements on the NLRB express a belief that the 
Board has been too friendly to workers and that corporations have 
gotten the short end of the stick.
  After decades of stagnant wages and skyrocketing corporate profits, 
does

[[Page S2028]]

anyone other than insider lobbyists and lawyers think that Washington 
is working for middle-class families and that big corporations are the 
ones under attack? I don't think so. That is exactly why an NLRB that 
looks out for workers is more important than ever. President Trump's 
NLRB is failing miserably at that mission.
  Working Americans deserve Board members with a demonstrated record of 
fighting for workers, not against them. They deserve Board members who 
aren't ethically and legally constrained from doing the job. Mr. Ring 
does not meet those qualifications.
  Workers need an NLRB that works for them, and they need leaders at 
the Department of Labor who are going to be on their side, not on the 
side of giant employers and extreme, rightwing donors. Patrick Pizzella 
has been nominated to the No. 2 job at the Department of Labor, and 
nothing in Mr. Pizzella's resume tells us that he meets the description 
of being on the side of workers.
  In the 1990s, Mr. Pizzella lobbied with Jack Abramoff to exempt the 
Northern Mariana Islands from Federal labor laws. Do you know what that 
did? That allowed companies to run sweatshops while slapping ``Made in 
America'' labels on their products.
  Later, when Mr. Pizzella was in charge of data management and other 
operations at the Labor Department, the Government Accountability 
Office found that the Wage and Hour Division was egregiously 
mishandling wage theft complaints, consistently leaving vulnerable low-
wage workers out to dry, because of faulty data systems and other 
operational failures.
  After leaving the Department, Mr. Pizzella went to work for 
secretive, far-right donor groups, such as the Conservative Action 
Project, which secretly planned out the 2013 government shutdown to 
sabotage the Affordable Care Act and undermine many workers' access to 
healthcare, all while Mr. Pizzella was its highest paid employee.
  The Deputy Secretary position should be filled by someone who has 
defended worker rights, not undermined them, someone who will make 
government work for the American people, not hamstring it for political 
purposes. Mr. Pizzella is the wrong man for this job.
  President Trump talked a big game during his campaign about fighting 
for workers, but after a year of corporate tax cuts and rolling back 
commonsense protections for workplace safety, retirement security, and 
more, we know that those promises have turned out not to be worth much 
of anything.
  The Senate should send a clear message to this administration that we 
expect agencies like the NLRB and the Labor Department to stand up for 
working people, not to suck up to corporate lobbyists. Rejecting these 
two nominees would be a good first step.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). Under the previous order, all time 
has expired.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Boom 
nomination?
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Arizona (Mr. McCain).
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker) 
and the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 96, nays 1, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 65 Ex.]

                                YEAS--96

     Alexander
     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Coons
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Feinstein
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Harris
     Hassan
     Hatch
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hirono
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Jones
     Kaine
     Kennedy
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Leahy
     Lee
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Paul
     Perdue
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Scott
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--1

       
     Sanders
       

                             NOT VOTING--3

     Booker
     Duckworth
     McCain
  The nomination was confirmed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to 
reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table and the President 
will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

                          ____________________