[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 73 (Tuesday, May 3, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2268-S2269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Unions

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate being recognized.
  I want to start with a short little story. A month after--well, maybe 
2 weeks after--President Biden took office, I was invited as the new 
chair of a major Senate Committee, the Senate Banking, Housing, and 
Urban Affairs Committee. I think the Presiding Officer was there that 
day, too. We met in the Oval Office with the President of the United 
States.
  We sat in a semicircle, and I saw that the painting behind President 
Biden was of Franklin Roosevelt. He was surrounded by busts of Harry 
Truman, Rosa Parks, Dr. King, Cesar Chavez, and Robert Kennedy. He 
asked us to go around the room and tell what interests us, what kind of 
things we should be doing.
  When it was my turn, I talked about the Protecting the Right to 
Organize Act, and I talked about the child tax credit, which, after we 
passed it, it was a $3,000 tax cut to 92 percent of the families in my 
State and a similar percent in the Presiding Officer's State of 
Michigan. Families with children received a $3,000 tax cut, the biggest 
in American history.
  I spoke about housing, and then I said, at the end of my little 
minute and a half: Mr. President, thank you for talking about unions.
  He kind of smiled and said: Of course.
  When the meeting was over, after 45 minutes or so, the President 
walked toward me and said: Why wouldn't I mention unions?
  I said: Mr. President, I have been in this office a number of times 
over the last 25 years, and I have never heard a President talk about 
the unions the way you do.
  That was the beginning. We then passed the recovery act and have done 
so much more with the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
  He has always put the emphasis on workers, putting workers at the 
center

[[Page S2269]]

of our economic policy and workers at the center of our country and at 
the center of our economy.
  Let me illustrate. In the last 2 weeks--I know that Senator Hassan, 
who is about to preside today, when she went back to New Hampshire 
during these 2 weeks, she was talking to families and workers, and 
Senator Peters, who is presiding, from Michigan, did the same--what 
struck me is that we had four sort of Cabinet-level people from the 
Biden administration who came to Ohio during these couple of weeks. I 
was with three of them. With one of them, we couldn't work out 
schedules.
  The head of the EPA was in Ohio. Do you know what he talked about? He 
talked about how we replace--Ohio, unfortunately, is No. 2 in the 
country in the number of contaminated pipes connecting main water lines 
going into people's homes, contaminated with lead. We are, because of 
the bipartisan infrastructure bill, going to replace those 600,000 
pipes. We are going to replace them with U.S., Made-in-America iron and 
steel and other components, because in infrastructure, we passed the 
strongest--and Senator Hassan was part of this and others. We passed 
the strongest ``Buy America'' provisions ever in American history. If 
you are going to spend American tax dollars, you are going to hire 
American workers to do that.
  Administrator Regan of the EPA talked about what that means. It means 
thousands of jobs for pipefitters and other union trades people. It 
also means clean water going into moderate- and low-income families' 
homes in Appalachia and East Cleveland and everywhere in between. And 
that means healthier children.
  Then the Secretary of the Department of Labor came. The Department of 
Labor Secretary with President Biden's predecessor was essentially a 
corporate lawyer. I would use the word--this might sound disrespectful, 
and I apologize ahead of time--a hack. Fundamentally, he was a guy who 
spent his career making, I assume, millions of dollars a year working 
for a prestigious law firm, busting unions, and always siding with 
employers and with big corporations against workers. That was the 
predecessor.

  The Secretary of Labor under President Biden came out of Boston. He 
was a former laborer. He was a former union laborer. Make that 
contrast. Then I spent part of the time in Lakewood, a Cleveland 
suburb--in the city of Cleveland and in Lakewood--and then Fremont, OH, 
with the new Chair of the Export-Import Bank, talking about jobs, 
talking about workers, talking about getting help competing with the 
Chinese, with the Export-Import Bank, always with an emphasis on wages.
  We know what has happened the last 50 years. I went to high school 
and walked the halls of Mansfield Senior High School and Johnny 
Appleseed Junior High School with the sons and daughters of machinists 
who worked at Ohio Brass, of electrical workers who worked at 
Westinghouse, of autoworkers who worked at GM, of rubber workers who 
worked at Mansfield Tire, and with the sons and daughters of laborers 
and operating engineers, millwrights, carpenters, pipefitters, 
painters, and electricians--all making middle-class union wages that 
really built a decent economy for tens of thousands of families in my 
community.
  I know what that meant, and then we saw corporate leaders: First they 
shut down production in places like Mansfield, my hometown, or 
Springfield or Toledo. They moved to Alabama or Tennessee or Arkansas--
low wages, few unions, weak unemployment compensation, sort of 
inadequate unemployment workers' compensation programs for injured and 
unemployed workers.
  But those wages weren't low enough. So these same corporate leaders 
went on a scavenger hunt to Mexico and China--all over the world--to 
try to find the cheapest labor possible.
  And do you know what? Far too many Presidents and far too many people 
in this body helped them do that. That is why this President is so 
important and why this Senate is so important--that we can fight back.
  We are seeing now that the whole idea of this administration is to 
begin to bring these jobs back home and treat these workers with 
respect and begin, again, to rebuild the middle class.
  The last Cabinet Secretary to come in who I spent a full day with was 
in Chillicothe, OH, in southern Ohio. It is a small community hurt by 
globalization. There is a VA hospital. It is one of the oldest VA 
hospitals in the country. And these workers--there was a Commission 
started by President Trump that is slating the closure of the 
Chillicothe VA.
  Today, Presiding Officer Senator Hassan and I were in the Veterans' 
Committee asking about workers--with Senator Tester presiding and 
Senator Boozman, a good bipartisan team on Veterans' Affairs--what do 
we do to make sure these workers are whole, that we train workers, that 
they are not burning out by all the tension and the pressure and the 
anxiety they face now?
  In sitting with Secretary Denis McDonough, the new Secretary of the 
VA, the Biden Secretary of the VA, it was a pleasure watching him 
interact with these workers, interacting with Jessica Fee, who is the 
union president, at Chillicothe, the American Federation of Government 
Employees. President Kelley, the international president, was there. 
Ms. Simon, his assistant, was there, listening to these workers, 
listening to what do we do to train enough LPNs, licensed practical 
nurses? What do we do to train enough nurses? What do we do to train 
enough physical therapists? And how do we keep this hospital open? 
Because so many veterans care so deeply about this hospital.
  So the last 2 weeks what motivates me in this job is my job really, 
in so many ways, is how do you speak for those who don't have a voice? 
How do you fight for those--it is always whom you fight for and what 
you fight against. I am not interested in opposing Senator McConnell 
because he blocks a whole bunch of stuff that we care about. I am not 
interested in opposing him; I am interested in fighting against some of 
the things he does.
  But I am interested in fighting for these workers at the VA. I am 
interested in fighting for these pipefitters who are going to lay these 
clean pipes without lead contamination, making these children in 
Appalachian Ohio, in East Cleveland, in East Columbus, OH--making them 
more whole. I am interested in helping these workers who DOL finally 
sides with instead of siding with corporate interest.
  During these 2 weeks, I went to a Starbucks in Columbus, and these 
workers are trying to organize a union. They know that carrying a union 
card--carrying a union card means better wages; it means better 
benefits; it means more control over your work schedule. Of course, 
Starbucks is fighting the union, but finally we have a government that 
is helping these small businesses export more. And we have a government 
that is going to finally side with veterans and side with workers at VA 
hospitals.
  The last 2 weeks is--and for me it has been a celebration, as Studs 
Terkel said in an introduction of a book called, ``Christ in 
Concrete,'' a book written in the late 1930s about an immigrant worker. 
It came out the same week as ``Grapes of Wrath,'' and, interestingly, 
it was chosen over ``Grapes of Wrath'' for the Book-of-the-Month Club, 
even though ``Grapes of Wrath'' had a little bit more staying power.
  But Studs Terkel talked in his introduction about celebrating the 
uncelebrated, and that is really what we should be doing here. You 
celebrate those workers. It is not the corporations; it is not the 
President; it is not the big shots; it is really the workers who power 
this economy, the workers who make the VA work, the workers who will 
lay those pipes, the workers who are the small business people 
succeeding and competing with China in countries around the world, the 
workers at the VA.
  That is what the last 2 weeks for me was about. It is why the honor 
of having this job and fighting for these workers gets me up every day.
  I yield the floor.

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