[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16955-16956]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have always supported organized labor, 
for a simple reason: When workers join together and act collectively, 
they can achieve economic gains that they would never be able to 
negotiate individually. History tells us this: Union members were on 
the front lines fighting for the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, 
employer-provided health insurance and pensions. Organized labor led 
the way in passing legislation to ensure fair and safe workplaces and 
in championing many other employee safety nets, including Social 
Security, Medicare, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
  Unfortunately, continued forward progress is not inevitable. We have 
seen this in recent years, as union membership has declined, wages have 
stagnated, the numbers of uninsured have risen, and private companies 
have been allowed to default on their pensions, threatening the 
retirement security of millions of Americans. It is clear to me that to 
rebuild economic security, we must first rebuild strong and vibrant 
unions. And to rebuild strong unions, we must first reduce unfair 
barriers to union organizing.
  To rebuild the promise of health care and pension benefits, we must 
reduce unfair barriers to union organizing. A recent study by the 
Institute for America's Future confirms this. By comparing organizing 
campaigns in the United States and Canada, the study found that more 
worker-friendly certification rules increase union participation.
  Of course, this is all just common sense. If you reduce the barriers 
to workers joining unions, more workers will join. But what does it 
mean? Well, as this study makes clear, by passing the Employee Free 
Choice Act, and by making it easier for workers to band together, more 
than 3.5 million Americans would be able to secure health coverage, and 
nearly 3 million more Americans would have access to employer-based 
pensions.
  Middle class families in this country have an increasingly difficult 
time making ends meet. More than 47 million Americans lack health 
insurance--including 251,000 Iowans--and even those with coverage find 
that if often covers less and less. This should not be happening in 
America. When productivity rises, everyone should see their fair share 
of that gain, but in the past several years, increasing productivity 
has gone hand-in-hand with a growing wage gap. According to the 
nonpartisan Congressional Research Service:

       Adjusted for inflation, average worker pay rose 8 percent 
     from 1995 to 2005; median CEO pay at the 350 largest firms 
     rose about 150 percent over the same period.

  In my home State of Iowa, real median household income fell by 3.4 
percent between 1999 and 2005, dropping from $48,142 in 1999 to $46,500 
in 2005.
  By passing the Employee Free Choice Act, by giving workers a seat at 
the table, we can start to reverse this negative trend. Union 
participation in the workplace means everybody wins. When employees 
have a voice--not just to ask for better wages and benefits, but to 
make suggestions about how to do things better--employers benefit, too. 
Union employees take pride in their work and work to get more training. 
And they are happy to help find other efficiencies in the operation, 
because they get a share of the savings.
  Unfortunately, scaremongers are trying to tell us that the Employee 
Free Choice Act takes away employee rights to a ``secret ballot.'' 
Nothing could be further from the truth. This bill does not establish a 
new election process; it merely requires employers to honor employee 
choice. Right now, the company gets to decide whether it will recognize 
a majority sign-up vote. Under the aptly named Employee Free Choice 
Act, the employees get to decide. If the workers want to use the 
National Labor Relations Board process, they are perfectly free to do 
so. But, as we know from hard experience, that process can be 
threatening and intimidating to many employees.
  In addition to making it easier to form a union in the first place, 
the Employee Free Choice Act provides for arbitration for the first 
contract. I know from personal experience how simply stalling 
negotiations of a contract can bust a union and cause major economic 
hardship for people. My brother Frank was a proud UAW member for 23 
years. He worked at the old Delavan manufacturing plant in Des Moines. 
In 23 years, he missed only 5 days of work--all of them because of 
blizzards. He made a good living. He was a dedicated employee. During 
those 23 years, there was never one strike or work stoppage. Delavan 
made good money.
  But then Old Man Delavan decided to retire and sell the company. A 
group of investors bought it. And one of the new owners bragged that, 
``If you want to see how to get rid of a union, come to Delavan, and 
we'll show you how.''
  He made good on that boast. When the contract came up, the company 
put forward conditions that no union could agree to in good conscience. 
The owners refused to budge, and the UAW local had no choice but to go 
out on strike for the first time. When they did, the company brought in 
replacement workers. It was a long, bitter strike. And after 1 year as 
allowed by labor law--they had a decertification vote. Who votes to 
decertify the union? The workers who are there--the replacement 
workers. They didn't want to lose their jobs, so they voted to 
decertify.
  So after 23 years Frank was out of a job. He lost his union job with 
excellent pay, vacation time, and a pension. And what does a 54-year-
old deaf man do in a predicament like that? He got a job as a janitor 
at a shopping mall--working nights for minimum wage,

[[Page 16956]]

with no benefits and no vacation time. It didn't just destroy his 
livelihood. It broke his spirit.
  My friends, that is what happens when unions are weakened and 
destroyed. It jeopardizes our standard of living and our whole middle-
class way of life. And, my friends, that is exactly what is happening, 
today, to tens of millions of people all across America.
  I quote a December, 2005 letter signed by 11 Nobel Peace Prize 
laureates calling for greater international labor rights:

       Even the wealthiest nation in the world--the United States 
     of America--fails to adequately protect workers' rights to 
     form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. 
     workers lack any legal protection to form unions and 
     thousands are discriminated against every year for trying to 
     exercise these rights.

  It is time to level the playing field for workers in this country. It 
is time to give them a truly free and fair election process to decide 
if they want representation in the workplace. It's time to pass the 
Employee Free Choice Act.

                          ____________________