[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 203 (Wednesday, December 2, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7168-S7170]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Worker Safety

  Mr. President, this spring I was talking with a grocery store worker 
in Southwest Ohio, who told me: You know, they call me essential, but 
really I feel expendable.
  That grocery store worker and thousands of others are on the 
frontlines of this pandemic. They risk their lives so that Americans 
can keep food on their tables and get their packages delivered. They 
are changing linens in hospitals. They drive buses. They stock shelves 
in supermarkets and drugstores. Then workers go home at night. They 
worry they are going to bring to their home the virus and infect their 
family--always the anxiety they live with.
  We know that hundreds of thousands of workers have been exposed to 
the virus on the job. Thousands have died. We don't know exactly how 
many because the President hasn't directed his government to make it a 
priority to keep track of these numbers. Think of that.
  We know UFCW--United Food Commercial Workers--reports that more than 
16,000 grocery store workers have been exposed at work. More than 100 
have died. Sixteen-thousand exposed at work. More than 100 have died.
  National Nurses United has recorded at least 1,700 deaths, and 58 
percent of those healthcare workers who died were people of color. 
Seventeen hundred have died; 58 percent, people of color.
  In meatpacking plants, we know the toll has been horrific. As of this 
summer, 16,000 workers in meatpacking plants, including in the Dakotas, 
the vast majority of them Black and Brown workers, and more than 230 
have died. We can only expect those numbers to be higher.
  What is the President's response? In the White House, they are 
putting up holiday displays with a lit-up ceramic post office and 
ornaments in the shape of garbage trucks and nurses' hats. That is 
right. Workers are dying around the country, and instead of doing 
anything at all to protect them, the President of the United States is 
decking the halls with ornaments. Workers don't need Christmas 
ornaments; they need fair pay, and they need protections on the job.
  President Trump hasn't lifted a finger to protect frontline workers. 
Let me explain. I make a charge like that, I back it up. He spent 4 
years in office putting corporate lawyers in charge of the Department 
of Labor. The Secretary of Labor made millions of dollars practicing 
law by representing corporations against workers--sometimes union 
workers, sometimes unorganized workers.
  The Department of Labor makes it easier for corporations to skirt 
safety rules. The point of the Department of Labor, the point of the 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is to protect workers. 
Yet this Secretary of Labor, this Department of Labor--including from 
IBEW workers to steelworkers, to meatpacking workers--he refused to 
issue workplace safety requirements throughout the pandemic. He failed 
to get workers the protective equipment and medical supplies they need 
to protect themselves. He forced people back to work in meatpacking 
plants around the country.
  In South Dakota, we know, in a meatpacking plant owned by the Chinese 
Communist Party, 1,300 workers got sick in one plant, and 4 of them 
have died that we know of.
  The Trump administration fined this multibillion-dollar meatpacking--
Chinese Communist Party-owned meatpacking plant--fined them $10 a 
worker. Thirteen hundred workers got sick and OSHA, the government, the 
President, fined them $10 a worker. But don't worry, he and his wealthy 
contributors who come for White House tours without masks or social 
distancing will get to look at some sparkly ornaments.
  President Trump could crack down on corporations like Smithfield. He 
could mobilize American manufacturers to get every American worker the 
masks and the protective equipment they need. He could issue an OSHA 
temporary standard, as we have asked him repeatedly, that would provide 
clear enforceable requirements for keeping workers safe. He could stand 
up for workers, but he won't.
  That is fundamentally why he lost. Eighty million Americans 
decisively rejected this President and his total lack of empathy, his 
complete failure to understand the dignity of work.
  There are a lot of Senators in this body--not a lot. There are some 
Senators in this body whose mothers or fathers carried union cards and 
knew that was their ticket to the middle class and understood that 
their mothers and fathers were protected by OSHA, protected by the 
Department of Labor that cared about the safety of those workers in the 
workplace.
  But all that the President did do to ignore workers and didn't do to 
protect workers, none of that is stopping him from trying to do more 
damage on his way out the door. The Trump USDA, the Department of 
Agriculture, is trying to race through a new rule--trying to push 
through, in the last weeks, a new rule that actually speeds up chicken 
factory processing lines; that is right, not slow them down in the face 
of record infections at these plants but speed up the line.
  We know it is a trick. It is the oldest trick in the book. You make 
more money if you speed up the line. You speed up the line, and workers 
are more likely to get hurt. When you speed up the line during a 
pandemic, more workers are likely to get sick.
  They tried to pass the rule earlier. It was held up over concerns 
workers would get hurt and salmonella would spread. That is not even 
counting COVID. But to President Trump and his allies, more workplace 
injuries and more grandparents hospitalized by salmonella are a small 
price to pay if it means more profits for meatpacking companies.
  Trump and his corporate lawyer Secretary of Labor are pushing through 
a new policy to ensure that companies can continue to exploit workers 
by classifying them as independent contractors. Go back to the 
childhood of a number of Members of the Senate who had parents who 
worked in factories and parents who worked in construction jobs, 
parents who carried a union card. You know what that would mean to 
those workers and the threat that they could get sick.
  Think about it now. Corporations love this new business model. It is 
a way to classify people as independent workers. It is a way to pay 
people less for the same work, skirt labor laws, wash their hands of 
responsibility for the workers who make their businesses successful.
  These workers aren't working for a big insurance company that really 
does have a public image they are trying to protect. These workers 
aren't working for a hospital or a big bank that cares about its public 
image. These workers are working for an entity hired by these big banks 
or by these insurance companies to prepare the food or to provide the 
security or to do the custodial work--a company you have never heard of 
that has no public image because this company is all about being hired 
by large corporations. They then can pay them lower wages. They can 
then protect them less on the job, and they can then not provide 
benefits. That is what happens with contract workers--those independent 
contractors. We know they love this business model. They can pay 
workers less. They can skirt labor laws.
  President Trump wants to make that easier, partly, because he 
probably does that in his business, and he has a whole lot of corporate 
friends--big contributors to the Trump campaign who make more money by 
doing that.
  Fundamentally, President Trump, Senator McConnell, and their 
corporate allies just don't understand the dignity of work. They think 
workers are always a cost to be minimized instead of the engine behind 
our country's success.
  Think back again to those Members of the Senate whose parents carried 
union cards who cared about all this, who had a chance--in a job like 
this, who had a chance for opportunity because those workers carried a 
union card and were treated decently on the job. Because those workers 
carried a union card, their bosses couldn't think of them only as a 
cost to be minimized. They did think of them as the engine behind their 
country's success.
  The American people rejected that--the 80-plus million people who 
voted

[[Page S7169]]

for a new President. They voted against the President who treated 
workers as expendable. They voted for the candidate who put workers at 
the center of his campaign.
  Joe Biden had the most pro-worker campaign in a generation, and in 
January we get to work to deliver results. The new President, right 
now, on January 20 can immediately issue an OSHA emergency temporary 
standard forcing corporations to take important, critical, decisive 
steps to protect their workers from contracting or spreading the virus 
in their workplaces.
  What is more important than protecting workers, especially essential 
workers who deliver our food, who prepare food, who do custodial work, 
who do security work, who are helping people in our country live every 
day?
  With cases rising and hospitals filling up all over the country, the 
end of January isn't soon enough. Workers put themselves at risk in 
nursing homes and hospitals. They deliver packages of holiday gifts. 
They stock supermarket shelves with supplies for holiday meals.
  Some of those workers are going to get sick. Some of them are going 
to die. They are going to die because they are essential workers, but 
we don't treat them like essential workers. We can do something about 
it now. We could pass a real plan that invests in protective equipment 
for them. We can pass a real plan of testing and contact tracing. We 
could get money to small businesses like Liz Valenti's business in 
Dayton, OH, so they can protect their workers--her two restaurants in 
Dayton.
  Well, what is Leader McConnell doing? Ramming through more Trump 
nominees like Mr. Hauptman and Mr. Waller, who keep stacking the deck 
in favor of their Wall Street friends, trying to hold on to their power 
even after Americans said: No, we want something different--80 million 
of them.
  Mitch McConnell needs to stop letting Donald Trump sabotage our 
economic recovery on his way out the door and get to work for the 
people he serves.
  It is time to remember what makes this country great. If you love 
this country, you fight for people who make it work--our workers who 
organized in union halls and church basements and fought for workers' 
rights, women's rights, and civil rights.
  In closing--I know that Senator Lee wants to speak. I have worn for 
my time in the Senate and before that, I wore this pin on my lapel. It 
is a depiction of a canary in a birdcage. You may remember the old 
labor story of the worker, the coal miner who took the canary down into 
the mines. If the canary died by suffocation or lack of oxygen or some 
contaminant in the air, the mine worker got out of the mines. He had no 
union in those days to protect himself, and he had no government that 
cared enough, that was strong enough to protect him, and he had no 
government that cared enough to protect him. He was essentially on his 
own.
  This pin was given to me at a workers' Memorial Day rally by a 
steelworker who told me about this pin and what it stood for. He knows 
that the labor movement changed this country for the better. It created 
the greatest economy and the strongest middle class on Earth. It said 
the opposite of what Mitch McConnell says to workers all over the 
country: Sorry. You are on your own. What this canary pin represents 
is, we are all in this together. It means we fight for the dignity of 
work. It means if you love your country, you fight for the people who 
make it work. We can do that again. We can protect workers from this 
virus. We can build a better system centered on the dignity of work
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.


              ALS Disability Insurance Access Act of 2019

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is nothing short of a tragedy when anyone 
suffers from ALS. This is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, one 
that attacks the nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord of its 
victims and eventually affects control of the muscles, even the muscles 
that are needed to move, to speak, eat, breathe, and otherwise live.
  Sadly, this is a disease that is always fatal. The average life 
expectancy is only 2 to 5 years following diagnosis. Not only are the 
people who suffer from ALS robbed of time but also their ability to 
work, imposing great hardships on them and on their families.
  The bill that we had before us today to help these victims by 
reforming our Social Security Disability Insurance Program is a good 
cause, and it is one that I think we all support, but I think it goes 
about the job in the wrong way. It sets bad precedent, and it fails to 
include other needed reform.
  We must remember that ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, is one of many 
similarly debilitating and deadly diseases that Americans are suffering 
from today. While not as well known, all of these victims are also 
deserving of the same kind of special attention and accommodation in 
Federal policy.
  Let's review some of the background of the program. The Social 
Security Disability Insurance Program, or SSDI, was created, in part, 
to help people who suffer from conditions like ALS, providing monthly 
cash benefits to those who become disabled and therefore unable to 
work.
  One challenge with a program like this is that the agency 
administering the program, that is, the Social Security Administration, 
has to verify an applicant's eligibility for benefits before they can 
start sending out the checks. Today, eligibility determination takes an 
average of 3\1/2\ months. For some people and for some diseases, 
including ALS, 3\1/2\ months can be a dangerously long time.
  So, in 2018, the SSA established a new policy to fast track the 
application process for those with serious and urgent medical 
conditions. Under this Compassionate Allowance Initiative, more than 
200 diseases now automatically make applicants eligible for expedited 
review.
  But while the Compassionate Allowance Initiative shortens the 
determination process from an average of several months to an average 
of 39 days, there is still a lengthy 5-month waiting period to actually 
start receiving the benefits, and in the case of urgent, fatal 
diseases, that is still too long of a wait.
  The bill that we have before us today seeks to address this problem 
but only for the victims of ALS. Now, obviously, we should try and help 
the victims of this tragic disease to the very best of our ability. 
They are not, however, the only ones who need to be helped. Of the list 
of compassionate allowance conditions, some are just as urgent as ALS 
and some are even worse. There are, sadly, several for which there is 
no known cure and that have life expectancies that are terribly short.
  I want to cite some examples. For instance, Creutfeldt-Jakob disease, 
a degenerative brain disorder, is among these. This particular disease 
leads to dementia and most often results in death within 6 to 12 
months. Tragically, there is no cure, and around 1,000 Americans are 
diagnosed with it every single year, including a dear friend of mine in 
Utah who a couple of years ago passed away from this ailment.
  Another is cardiac amyloidosis, also known as stiff heart syndrome. 
This disease affects the way electrical signals move through the heart, 
leading to abnormal heartbeats and faulty heart signals. For those 
diagnosed, there is no known cure, and they typically face a life 
expectancy of only about 6 months after the onset of congestive heart 
failure. About 4,000 people develop this condition each year.
  Take peritoneal mesothelioma, this disease is a cancer that develops 
in the lining of the abdomen, usually leading to death within 12 months 
of the first signs of illness. Around 600 cases are diagnosed every 
year in the United States.
  That is why I have been working for the past year with my colleagues 
to broaden the scope of this legislation, so that Congress doesn't 
waive the SSDI waiting period one disease at a time. It should not 
matter which fatal, rapidly progressing and debilitating disease an 
American is suffering from--all fatal diseases with no known cure 
should have access to disability benefits after their Social Security 
Administration determination.
  The men and women who suffer from those conditions and the family 
members affected by their ailments have precious little time left, and 
they are just as worthy of help. They are certainly no less worthy of 
help than those with ALS. There is always hope that a cure can be found 
for them or

[[Page S7170]]

that, at the very least, a new treatment can further extend the life of 
these men and women. Rather than removing the waiting period for those 
with one specific disease, we should remove the waiting period for 
those who suffer from any of a small select group of conditions that 
have no cure and have the shortest life expectancies. There is no 
reason we cannot help those who suffer from ALS and these other 
conditions. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can protect 
victims of ALS and these other conditions as well.

  The bill, as written, sets the stage for only those diseases that 
have the most recognition and, to put it bluntly, the most fundraising 
backing to fund bill sponsors, and it would set at a disadvantage the 
conditions that are far more rare and underfunded. Who will be the 
voice for the men and women who suffer from those diseases? Who will 
fight for them? Adding similarly cruel maladies to this list takes 
nothing away from ALS, and it can make all the difference in the world 
for Americans suffering from similar disabilities.
  I had hoped to offer my broader approach as an amendment, but after 
months and months of working with the Social Security Administration 
and with the Congressional Budget Office, I was, unfortunately, given 
incomplete information at the time an agreement was reached on 
scheduling a vote on this bill. I appreciate Senator Cotton's and 
Senator Braun's patience in allowing me to work towards a fix while 
they remain committed to advancing their legislation, for which I 
commend them.
  Additionally, while I would have hoped that my work with the Social 
Security Administration and the Congressional Budget Office could have 
gone more quickly, I do appreciate their efforts to address my 
questions and compile the necessary information and tools to estimate 
my amendment's fiscal impact.
  While I was pleased to see Senator Grassley's amendment, which at 
least would have paid for the removal of the waiting period for ALS, I 
will continue to work on legislation that will remove the waiting 
period for diseases that meet a set of criteria--no known cure with a 
life expectancy of less than 5 years--while not further jeopardizing 
the solvency of the disability insurance program. It will be ready for 
introduction soon.
  My concerns and efforts have not been about waiving the SSDI waiting 
period for those who tragically suffer from ALS. I certainly agree that 
we ought to improve the time that they have left. But picking and 
choosing favorites among those with comparable conditions is not the 
right way to go about it. The lives of the men and women who suffer 
from other very similar conditions are just as valuable, and we should 
be a voice for them, too.

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