[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 73 (Wednesday, April 28, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2281-S2282]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Workers Memorial Day

  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, today we mark Workers Memorial Day, when 
we honor and remember workers who have laid down their lives on the 
job.
  I have worn on my lapel since I was in the House, a pin depicting a 
canary in a bird cage given to me at a Workers Memorial Day rally in 
Lorain, OH, in the late 1990s.
  This pin depicts a canary going down in the mine. It suggests the 
mine worker taking a canary down in the mines. If the canary died from 
lack of oxygen or from toxic gas, the mine worker got out of the mines. 
He had no union strong enough to protect him and no government that 
cared enough to protect him in those days.
  To me, this pin represents the role of government to support the 
middle class and those who aspire to the middle class. It represents 
the progress we have made and the society we continue to fight for 
every day here.
  We know the story. Coal miners took the canary down into the mines. 
Throughout the 20th century, we have worked to change that. We passed 
workers safety laws and overtime pay. We banned child labor. We passed 
clean air and safe drinking water laws. We enacted Social Security and 
Medicare and workers' rights and women's rights and civil rights.
  But despite that progress over the last year, too many workers have 
felt a whole lot like those miners. They have felt like they are on 
their own.
  A moment ago, I mentioned a grocery store worker in Cincinnati, who 
said: ``They tell me I am essential, but I feel expendable.''
  That grocery store worker and thousands of others have been on the 
frontlines of this pandemic, risking their lives so Americans could 
keep food on their table and get their packages delivered. They were 
changing linens in hospitals and driving buses and stocking shelves in 
supermarkets.
  Then workers go home at night and are anxious that they might spread 
the virus and infect their family.
  We know that hundreds of thousands of workers have been exposed to 
the virus on the job. Thousands have died. It is hard to get an exact 
count of how many because the previous administration didn't bother to 
keep track.
  We know that food and commercial workers reported last summer that 
more than 16,000 grocery store workers have been exposed, more than 100 
have died. We know those numbers keep going up.
  The National Nurses United has recorded at least 3,200 healthcare 
workers have died. In meatpacking plants, the toll has been horrific.
  Last summer, 16,000 workers had been infected; the vast majority of 
them Black and Brown workers. More than 230 died.
  And yet all of last year, the Trump administration and too many large 
corporations failed to protect their workers. The corporate lawyers 
that ran the Labor Department from the top down refused to issue 
workplace safety requirements
  Corporations ran a lot of feel-good TV ads saying thank you to 
essential workers, claiming these workers are the heart of their 
companies, but workers didn't ask for a PR campaign. They needed 
protections on the job.
  This Workers Memorial Day, today--we celebrate it every year--we 
remember the American workers who have lost their lives on the job from 
this virus, sometimes from gun violence, sometimes from workplace 
accidents.
  We honor them best by fighting to protect these workers and their 
fellow workers to make their hard work pay off.
  Yesterday, in the Banking and Housing Committee, we held the 
committee's first-ever listening session. It was purely a listening 
session. No Senators got to ask questions. We just came to listen, with 
workers from Ohio and around the country, to hear how the financial 
system affects their jobs and their lives.
  They shared powerful stories about their work, about how companies 
and economic policies prevent their hard work from paying off.
  We heard from a distribution worker in Ashtabula County, OH. He told 
us:

       We rarely go a few weeks without an injury, largely because 
     of the insane pace we work at. We have suggested that slowing 
     the pace even just a little would improve safety and could 
     save money, to which we were told, ``Injuries don't cost the 
     company much money.''

  We heard from a Wells Fargo call center worker who talked about how 
the bank misclassified her to avoid paying overtime. They put her on 
salary. They said she was management. They worked her more than 40 
hours. They never paid her an overtime dollar.
  We heard from a full-time gig worker who works for multiple 
corporations like Uber and Instacart. He works full time. He has zero 
benefits because these companies claim he is an independent contractor.
  We heard from a Michigan worker who lost her job when a private 
equity firm bought out her company. They laid off 3,100 workers in the 
Detroit area, and they pocketed the money.
  We heard from a worker in West Virginia who talked about working her 
whole life and never seeing that hard work pay off. She said the term 
``working poor'' should not be two words that go together.
  If you work hard, you should be able to get ahead in this country. If 
you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work.
  If even the global pandemic, where America's workers have been on the 
frontlines--if even that won't get corporations to rethink their 
business model that treats workers as expendable, it is time to stop 
letting them run the economy. That is what the new Banking, Housing, 
and Urban Affairs Committee is all about. Wall Street had its chance. 
They failed. If corporate America won't deliver for its workers, then 
we have to create a better system centered on the dignity of work. That 
means safe workplaces.
  The Biden administration is taking steps toward finally issuing an 
OSHA emergency temporary standard. We went a whole year in the pandemic 
where the President of the United States simply refused and the 
corporate lawyer who ran the Department of Labor simply refused to 
issue any standards on workplace safety. Think about that. Now it means 
laws and policies will reward work, like the earned income tax credit 
and the child tax credit--the junior Senator from New Hampshire is here 
and has been supportive of that; a strong overtime rule; ending 
misclassification that robs workers of their wages and their rights. It 
means a strong labor movement. Unions give people power on the job. 
People ought to have the option, if they choose, of joining a union, 
allowing them to join together to make their workplace safer.
  It is workers who make our economy successful. It is workers who 
allow corporations and Wall Street investors to rake in record profits. 
It is time for that hard work to pay off for all workers, no matter if 
you punch a clock or work for salary or work for tips or take care of 
your parents or take care of

[[Page S2282]]

your children. Work should be rewarded in this country. When you love 
this country, you fight for the people who make it work on Workers 
Memorial Day and the other 364 days of the year.
  Madam President, I yield the floor


                      nomination of samantha power

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I rise to voice my strong support 
for the confirmation of Ambassador Samantha Power to be the next 
Administrator of the United States Agency for International 
Development. I am confident that she brings the talent, skill, and 
experience required of this office and is the right person to lead this 
pivotal agency at a critical point in America's return to global 
leadership.
  Ambassador Power has worn many different hats throughout her sterling 
career--advocate, academic, advisor, and diplomat. But that trajectory 
has been propelled in large part by her time as a journalist, where she 
saw the day-to-day experiences of those living in places struggling 
against the tides of war, famine, genocide, and disease. She witnessed, 
first-hand, the tireless efforts of USAID Foreign Service officers 
working in partnership with local stakeholders to uplift and empower 
communities around the world. And those early experiences seeing the 
work of USAID and the challenges the agency faces continue to guide her 
path.
  Like Ambassador Power, I spent the early part of my career seeing 
global conflict up close. As a staffer working on the Senate Foreign 
Relations Committee in 1988, I travelled to Iraq after Saddam Hussein 
used poison gas against the Kurdish people. It's a trip that Ambassador 
Power recounts in her first book, A Problem from Hell, which won her 
the Pulitzer Prize in 2003--and it's a trip that animates so much of 
the work I do in the United States Senate.
  The world witnessed the horrific chemical weapons attacks on the 
Kurdish people in Halabja in March 1988 and later that year, together 
with my colleague, Peter Galbraith, I interviewed Kurdish survivors of 
other chemical attacks that followed. It was a heartrending journey 
that stays with me to this day. But that experience, like Ambassador 
Power's experiences in Bosnia, East Timor, Darfur, West Africa, and 
elsewhere, instilled in me a sense of moral urgency that hasn't tired 
in the three decades since--and I know hasn't tired in Ambassador Power 
either.
  I'm confident that she'll employ that sense of urgency in her new 
role as the Administrator of USAID, which bolsters peace and prosperity 
both in developing nations and here at home. The biggest threats that 
we face are interconnected and global--from climate change to 
cybersecurity to pandemics. As we've seen throughout the past year, 
viruses know no borders, and our ability to defeat COVID-19 depends 
upon our willingness to partner with other nations to stop the spread 
and mount a successful recovery. And as we reassert American values at 
the core of our foreign policy, we will also need to combat the Chinese 
government's efforts to export its model of authoritarianism to 
governments in developing countries. USAID will be at forefront of 
these missions and others. In Ambassador Power's own words, 
``Development is critical to America's ability to tackle the toughest 
problems of our time--economic, humanitarian, and geopolitical.''
  Madam President, there is no doubt in my mind that Ambassador 
Samantha Power will serve our country well as the next Administrator of 
USAID. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of her confirmation.