[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 27, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H5756]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





             IMMIGRATION AND GOP'S ATTACK ON WORKING PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise to call attention to the outright 
assault on working people in America by the Trump administration.
  When candidate Trump ran and carried States like Ohio, Michigan, and 
Wisconsin, he promised to renegotiate NAFTA to secure U.S. jobs and 
stop outsourcing. He said he would fight to raise people's paychecks.
  Well, wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living as workers 
backslide on hourly wages, while healthcare and prescription drug costs 
rise and retirement benefits are being cut.
  This week, Harley Davidson just announced it will outsource hundreds 
of jobs because of the Trump trade war. Meanwhile, the NAFTA trade 
deficit remains far too high under the Trump administration. That means 
more lost U.S. jobs and a diminished middle class.
  Now, why has President Trump delayed NAFTA renegotiations so critical 
to creating a level playing field both in our country and across our 
continent?
  Instead of renegotiating NAFTA to heal these gaping deficits and to 
prevent pitting one group of workers against another on this continent, 
he is targeting the lowest wage workers in the Americas and tearing 
them apart from their children, their families, and their communities. 
Most are agricultural workers who work in grueling jobs, for which U.S. 
citizens rarely apply.

                              {time}  1045

  Let me bring you to Ohio. Just in the past 3 weeks, Ohio communities 
have faced six massive worker raids at two Corso Lawn and Garden 
centers and at four Fresh Mark animal slaughter facilities.
  America has a choice: We can either grow and process our food and 
floriculture inside this country; or, if we fail to tend it, we will 
outsource more and more of our production and be forced to import more 
food and cede more jobs that relate to agriculture.
  These worker raids create a climate of fear where workers are too 
afraid to stand up for their rights, to report wage theft, or to 
redress dangerous work conditions facing them.
  Working in a meat slaughterhouse is among the most dangerous jobs in 
the United States of America. NAFTA forces workers who work in these 
jobs to exist in a shadow economy and be treated as, yes, less than 
human.
  The raw truth is NAFTA was purposefully designed to create an exodus 
of millions of displaced small farmers in the Mexican countryside who 
have become an exploitable underclass of vast dimension across this 
continent. Millions and millions of small farmers were turned off their 
land, forming an endless pool of cheap, exploitable labor in the 
Americas. I call it the most significant continental sacrilege in my 
lifetime.
  Voila. There it is, the cold, hard truth of NAFTA's underbelly, still 
left unaddressed after a quarter century.
  Their lives are viewed as cheap, those human lives given no value in 
this continent's enormous economy. Yet we wouldn't eat without them. We 
wouldn't recreate without them.
  Where is President Trump? Instead of fixing this NAFTA problem, he 
has sidelined NAFTA renegotiation. Instead of fixing this problem, 
congressional Republicans passed a GOP tax scam that gives away 
trillions to the ultrawealthy--the top 1 percent got 83 percent of the 
benefits--while adding trillions to our deficit. Meanwhile, workers are 
facing increased health costs, cutbacks in retirement benefits, 
unaffordable medicine and healthcare, and rising education costs for 
their children.
  How about that? Instead of carefully targeted trade relief and going 
after closed global markets, the Trump administration starts a trade 
war with most of our allies.
  It isn't productive that this President of the United States is 
offending the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada. 
Really? Our closest neighbors.
  Young people are expressing workplace frustration as well with the 
jobs in the so-called gig economy with Uber or elsewhere, where a 20-
year-old, sure, can work, but with far fewer benefits and much less 
security and stability.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time for a better deal for workers across this 
continent, starting with an enforceable NAFTA trade pact that has 
strong labor provisions and a labor secretariat on both the agriculture 
and industrial side.
  I am one of the Democrats willing to work with Republicans and roll 
up my sleeves to reach that compromise, as difficult as I know it will 
be.

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