[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 125 (Wednesday, July 25, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H7679-H7681]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        FEDERAL EMPLOYEE UNIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Garrett). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from the District of 
Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of 
the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include 
any extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to speak to two 
issues. One, is the dagger thrown at the heart of the right of Federal 
employees to organize. The second will be ICE raids that randomly 
rounded up residents of the District of Columbia without a warrant and 
without any cause.
  Let me proceed first to the gang-up on Federal employees by the 
executive and Republicans in the House to undermine the rights of 
Federal unions to represent Federal employees.
  We have seen Republicans for years try to weaken the rights of 
Federal employees. Certainly, we have seen them go at unions before. 
But this time, they have gone even further. The intention to destroy 
the right of a union to represent Federal employees is the clear intent 
of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
  I shall explain why that intent is so obvious this evening. The 
American Federation of Government Employees had a rally today. 
Attending also were many other employee unions, but the AFGE led the 
rally because of the acute danger that the current work of the 
Republican House and the President present to the right to organize and 
to be represented.
  Federal employees are represented in virtually every category of work 
by the AFGE. If we look at what the President and the House Republicans 
are doing, it is clear that they have declared war on their own Federal 
employees. They have done it by striking at the heart of the right to 
be represented by a Federal union.
  I will explain how they have moved against that right, but, first, 
let me explain where that right comes from and why there is any such 
right at all.
  You certainly don't have that kind of right in the business sector. 
You can't

[[Page H7680]]

go to the business sector and say: Hey, look, I have a right to have a 
union here.
  You have to fight for it, and I might add, so do Federal unions have 
to fight for it. They have to get their cards and the Federal employee 
votes. But there is an important trade-off here. The Civil Service 
Reform Act of 1978, recognizing that the Government did not want to 
allow Federal workers the right to strike--which is a constitutional 
right--designed a system which is indeed a trade-off. You will give up 
the right to strike, and, in return, you, Federal employees, will have 
the right to be represented by a union if you win a union election and 
the Federal Government will not oppose your right to organize.
  That is very important because employers in the private sector, of 
course, do oppose. I don't mean to say that Federal agencies don't try 
their best to see that an agency doesn't get representation, but they 
cannot simply keep that from occurring. That is the trade-off from the 
Civil Service Reform Act.
  One of the most important aspects of the right to represent Federal 
employees is to use official time-on-the-job to represent employees to 
settle matters with a Federal agency. That is the whole reason that 
this right was given in the first place. Even apart from a right to 
strike, if you have an employee who has a grievance, there has got to 
be some way to make sure that grievance is attended to.
  Official time use, by another Federal employee operating as a 
volunteer, allows such matters to be settled in a peaceful way without 
a strike. What the official time means is, an employee says: With no 
pay, I agree to help other employees through the system to have their 
matter brought to the agency and somehow dealt with. They either win or 
they lose or they settle. Employees often don't understand the system. 
They don't use the system every day, so a volunteer works to help them 
use the official time.
  Now, official time only means that that volunteer employee is given 
time from his or her work to represent this person. Does that mean the 
person doesn't have any work? It does not. It is a real sacrifice, Mr. 
Speaker. That person isn't given a lesser workload, that person has to 
find a way to get that done and to represent employees as well, or to 
trade off with another employee who will also represent employees.
  Remember, this is to keep labor peace and to keep the Federal 
Government working so that there is a civilized way to settle a matter 
between the Federal employer and an employee.
  But the AFGE has had to turn to the courts in order to get this right 
enforced.
  Why in the world would that be necessary given the Civil Service 
Reform Act of 1978?
  It is going to be necessary because what is being proposed in this 
House is in violation of that act.
  I shall explain. Republicans today are so intent on destroying 
unions--understand, unions are not nearly as powerful as they once were 
decades ago--but Republicans are so intent on destroying unions that in 
the case of Federal employees, they are using the two branches of 
Government at once--remember, they control three--the two political 
branches of Government to destroy the representation of a union.
  They control the executive, they control the House, they control the 
Senate. So they pull all stops, using all of their energy and all of 
their power against their own Federal workers.
  I think of it as a two-fisted approach. One fist is pending on this 
House floor, as I speak. Indeed, it is due to come to the House floor 
in September. It is a bill I fought in committee along with many other 
members.
  You can't just abolish official time to represent employees, because 
the Civil Service Reform Act gives them that right.
  This is why I think that what the House does in this bill cannot 
stand, because what it does is to so reduce the amount of time, so-
called official time, that you can help many employees get through the 
system. You are like a lawyer. The employee is fresh to the system, so 
he or she needs somebody to tell the employee how to get through the 
system.
  But if there is so little time, while you are helping one employee 
who may be using up all the time that the House Republican bill would 
give, which is one-quarter of the time that is now being allowed.
  Where did they get that figure from? Nowhere.

                              {time}  1945

  It is just a matter of not being able to wipe it all out, so let's 
wipe out almost all of it. It gives so little time to represent all 
those who need to go through the system with the help of a volunteer 
employee that I do not believe, for a moment, that this matter will 
stand. That is why I think the AFGE was right to go to court now. I 
will tell you in a moment why it has gone to court, even though this 
bill has not passed the House, as I speak.
  Not only is so little time given that you couldn't possibly handle 
all of those who have issues or grievances--it is only a quarter of the 
time an employee has, that has been previously spent helping other 
employees to get through the process. There also is an enforcement 
mechanism in the House bill that is truly vicious.
  If you go into overtime in helping another employee, you will do so 
at your own risk, because you will lose your pension credits if you 
devote more than the amount of time prescribed in this bill. That loss 
of pension credits is also without due process and arbitrary. That also 
is why I believe this bill can't stand. But my Republican friends are 
so anxious to cripple Federal employee unions that they also have asked 
for the other fist, a Trump executive order.
  If you look at this executive order, which is essentially the same 
thing as the pending bill, you can't help but ask: Why two fists on 
these Federal workers? Why get the President and the Republican House 
to promise to do the same thing? How many branches, how many arms of 
government do you need to try to stamp out the rights of Federal 
employees?
  I believe I know why the House has turned to President Trump. The 
House bill is so extreme, so clearly illegal, in my judgment, that it 
will be difficult to get it through the Senate. So, the President, who 
obviously has control over the workforce, is being asked to do the same 
thing by executive order.
  I don't believe he can do it. I don't believe he can just wipe out 
official time, if not all of it, so much of it, so that employees 
cannot be served. But the President may have preempted the House bill, 
that may come on the floor in September, by his executive order against 
official time.
  If you play chess though, watch out, because he has hopped right into 
it. Now that he has signed an executive order, now that he has come 
forward with an executive order, he has allowed the AFGE to make a 
brilliant move.
  Before the ink was dry on the executive order, the AFGE had gone to 
court, in a brilliant chess move. And I have no doubt that they will 
win in court because the flaws of the bill are so clear. I think courts 
will agree with AFGE. Had the Republicans tried to kill official time 
and the Senate or to get the same thing through an executive order, you 
have the same problem, even perhaps worse.
  The executive order is a clear violation of the Civil Service Reform 
Act.
  Understand why the act has worked for so many decades. It is because 
of labor peace, to use a word that is often used to describe why unions 
have been important in the Federal sector. You need labor peace. You 
don't need strikes or disruption by Federal employees.
  But you have got to have a tradeoff. That tradeoff is adequate 
representation through a formal process. If that formal process is cut 
to smithereens and you leave a figment of it in place, don't think that 
the Federal courts will be fooled by that. This process has worked, but 
it won't if you make it impossible to do the job that the Civil Service 
Reform Act prescribes, and that is to represent Federal employees.
  Now, the unions aren't fools. They recognize they can't depend on the 
House or the President. They also recognize there is an election coming 
up and they know that, at least as of the moment, the people are there 
to correct for issues either ignored in this House or by threats like 
the pending bill and the executive order on official time that 
threatens their rights.

[[Page H7681]]

  The all-powerful Federal Government has absolutely nothing to lose by 
allowing its employees, who have so little authority, fair access to a 
process that does no more than allow them to be heard before all-
powerful Federal agencies.
  What could the largest employer in the world be afraid of?
  It looks as if it is afraid of its own employees, ordinary citizens 
represented also by Members of the House and the Senate, who ask for no 
more than a process and, if I may say so, a fair process to be heard, a 
process that does not show anything like guaranteed winning, but it is 
at least a process.
  Well, perhaps these employees are to be feared after all because 
today they showed up in great numbers. Remember, they showed up on the 
streets of Washington, D.C., but there are millions of them throughout 
the United States. They showed up in a fighting mood, fighting back.
  I am pleased to come to the floor to represent the thousands of 
employees who showed up. I am simply one among hundreds of Members of 
the House who will always show up for workers when their rights are 
being threatened.
  As it turns out, the American Federation of Government Employees 
represents both D.C. employees of the D.C. government and Federal 
employees of the Federal Government and I am proud to represent them 
all.
  All that my Republican friends have done is raise their fighting 
spirit, which has already shown that our chances of taking back the 
House of Representatives have grown every single day.
  The second issue I want to say a word about has to do with 
indiscriminate raids of the kind we have never had in the United States 
of America before. These are raids on residents. I have seen their 
effect here, so I will talk about these residents living in the 
District of Columbia.
  When you hear of such raids and indiscriminate arrests, perhaps you 
will understand why cities like the District of Columbia have declared 
themselves to be sanctuary cities that protect, particularly, their 
immigrant residents from arbitrary action, recognizing that they will 
not be able and do not wish to protect them when, in fact, there is a 
right to take them back to where they came from. But that is not what I 
am talking about this evening.

  In the District of Columbia, at least a dozen individuals were 
arrested last week when it is clear that they would not have been 
arrested had there been a warrant or had anything but racial 
profiling--racial and ethnic profiling, I might add--been used, a 
brazen act.
  As it turns out, some of the people arrested were, for example, MS-
13. So far as the numbers show, that is 37. Those are people for whom 
they had a warrant. Those are people for whom there is probable cause 
that they committed a crime. But that is 37 out of 132. They never 
could have gotten the rest of these residents without indiscriminate 
racial profiling.
  What did they do?
  First of all, they went to predominantly Latino D.C. neighborhoods, 
and they went there for a reason. They snatched what appeared to be 
anyone on the streets who looked like the people they wanted, based on 
race or appearance.
  When you have, in the United States, police picking up people based 
on their appearance, you understand what a police state looks like. The 
reaction will be, I am sure, intimidation from going into the streets 
of your own city.
  Now, ICE boasts that it went looking and found people who present a 
significant security threat, but they were only able to show 37 such 
people. When you round up citizens without a warrant and without 
probable cause based on what they look like, that is what you get: 
indiscriminate arrests, arrests based on appearance, arrests where you 
cannot possibly show a significant public safety threat.
  I am not here to say that MS-13 or others who pose such a threat 
should not be arrested. I am here to say that breaking up families is 
an outrageous way to enforce a law and does not, in fact, do so.
  The Washington field office was responsible for this roundup, and 
they have indicated the people whom they arrested.
  I am not here on this floor this evening to defend--here I am reading 
from people they say they arrested--the El Salvadoran national 
identified as a high-ranking MS-13 member.
  I am not here on this floor to defend a Bolivian national who has 
four prior convictions for rape and intercourse with a victim under 13. 
They are not what I am here talking about.

                              {time}  2000

  I am here talking about people who were in the streets minding their 
own business, with no criminal arrests, with no criminal background, 
with families at home waiting for them.
  Yes, we have got to deport people from this country, even if they 
come in ways that we could otherwise understand. Deportation has to 
occur. It occurred in the last administration. Some were deported right 
at the border. I am not here making the case to open the borders wide 
open and let everybody in.
  But the courts have already turned around the procedures now being 
employed, because every day you read in the papers and see on 
television how many families have been disunited, children and parents 
broken up, parents deported without their children. The authorities are 
still looking to unite hundreds of children with their parents. That 
just isn't what we do in the United States of America.
  Since one of these roundups occurred here in the Nation's Capital, 
and the shame is that it would occur in the Capital of the United 
States, I thought it was my responsibility to come to this floor to 
call it out and to indicate that these raids are one of the reasons why 
the District of Columbia will always be a sanctuary city--not a city 
for MS-13, not a city for those who should be deported, but a city for 
those who have a right to go through a lawful process.
  We will not stand for residents to be rounded up in the streets. That 
means that each and every one of us could be rounded up in the streets 
based on what we look like. We will not have it. We will resist it.
  There is a way to deport people. There is a way to make sure that you 
come into this country legally and to make sure that you are deported 
if you do not.
  The wrong way to do it, the way that we cannot tolerate, is to go to 
police state tactics, unknown before in our country, and particularly 
police state tactics in the Capital of the United States, Washington, 
D.C.
  So, Mr. Speaker, as the House prepares to go home later in the week, 
these are two issues I felt I had to put before this body. I would hope 
that we all would think of better ways to accomplish our ends.
  If our problem is with Federal employees, let's deal with that 
problem and not try to nullify a statute that took into account our 
differences, the Civil Service Reform Act.
  As for Hispanics and other immigrants being snatched off the streets, 
I would hope that I do not stand alone in saying tonight that that is 
not the American way. There are hundreds of jurisdictions that are with 
us as sanctuary cities to stand and say that that is not the American 
way. I am pleased that the courts of the United States have protected 
sanctuary cities just as these cities have protected residents from 
arbitrary treatment in the United States of America.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________