[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 17194-17206]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed on H.R. 800, 
which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to H.R. 800, an act to amend the National 
     Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to 
     enable employees to form, join, or assist labor 
     organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for 
     unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for 
     other purposes.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the time 
until 7 p.m. shall be equally divided between the Senator from 
Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, and the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Enzi, or 
their designees.
  Who yields time?
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

[[Page 17195]]

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I might use.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts is 
recognized.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, over the period of these last few days, 
we have had a number of our colleagues on this side who have spoken, 
and spoken very well, about the Employee Free Choice Act. We have had 
Senator Durbin, Senator Brown, Senator Clinton, Senator Schumer, 
Senator Murray, Senator Lautenberg, Senator Menendez, Senator 
Klobuchar, Senator Webb, Senator Casey. I have spoken myself. We have a 
number of additional Senators. I see my friend from Maryland, Senator 
Cardin, will be addressing the issue this afternoon.
  I think we have had some excellent presentations about this issue and 
about the importance of this issue, about the fact that there are about 
60 million men and women across this country who wish to be able to 
participate in the trade union movement, but because of the realities 
of the current election process are denied the opportunity to do so.
  There are millions of people across this Nation who are enormously 
concerned about the growing disparity which has taken place in this 
country between the explosion of wealth in terms of the top one-tenth 
of 1 percent of our population and the fact that those at the lower end 
of the economic ladder most recently had to wait 10 years to get an 
increase in the minimum wage.
  I can remember going back to a period of time when the increase in 
the minimum wage was a bipartisan event. People understood at that time 
they were trying to make the minimum wage about half of what the 
overall national wage was going to be, to say to American workers: If 
you worked at the lower end of the economic ladder in our economic 
system, we still appreciated your work and you would not have to live 
in poverty here in the United States of America.
  We have in recent years seen where millions of our fellow citizens 
have had to live in poverty because we have failed to get the increases 
in the minimum wage. It has become a more partisan issue here in the 
Senate and also in the House of Representatives, regretfully. I am 
basically suggesting that we are seeing America growing apart. That is 
a matter of enormous concern to Americans everywhere. It does not have 
to be this way. It was not this way when I think America was at its 
best. It was not this way.
  What we are seeing now is the increasing factor that those who have 
the resources and have the wealth and have the superwealth are 
accumulating it more and more; those who are at the lowest end are 
falling farther and farther behind, and the great middle class that is 
represented by workers and used to be the trade union movement is being 
constantly challenged.
  For many in that middle class, they feel they are slipping farther 
and farther behind, and they are slipping farther and farther behind. 
They were not slipping farther and farther behind when we had a strong 
trade union movement. They weren't. They were moving ahead with the 
rest of the country. But now, they are falling farther and farther and 
farther behind. They know that. The option before the Senate now is to 
at least give American workers an opportunity, if they so desire, to be 
able to participate in a union so that their economic interests, their 
health insurance interests, a decent retirement, can be addressed, 
because as we have seen, working families, increasing numbers of those 
working families, are losing health insurance, are finding their 
deductibles and copays are on the rise, and it is getting more and more 
difficult for them to continue to afford this. An increasing number of 
retirees, who thought they had commitments to health insurance, are 
being dropped. We are finding an increasing number of those Americans 
who rely on a defined benefit system losing out on their pensions.
  We are finding out that the costs across the spectrum for working 
families are going up through the roof--the price of gasoline, the 
price of health care, the price of prescription drugs, the price of 
tuition, the price of any kind of retirement income.
  Books have been written about this great shift from the kind of 
common responsibilities and common involvement Americans had with each 
other, commitments we had with each other, to a different perspective 
and a different paradigm where everyone is sort of effectively on their 
own.
  That means you are on your own with regard to retirement, health 
insurance, and education in the workplace. That is happening 
increasingly. You are on your own when the employer won't give you a 
raise. You are on your own when you are put in working conditions which 
may very well jeopardize your health.
  I wish to review exactly where we have come as a country on the issue 
of growing apart and growing together. Most of us remember clearly the 
Mayflower compact that was signed a few miles off Provincetown, MA, 
when extraordinary men and women had sailed the seas to escape 
religious persecution and, after 6 long weeks and the loss of a number 
of those who had set sail on the ships, before they got off the ship, 
they gathered on the deck and made a compact between each other about 
the importance of working together for the common good as a community 
and as a society. The Federal Constitution talks about the general 
welfare and about moving ahead together as a country and a society. We 
have seen that when America has been at its best.
  Here we have a chart that shows the years 1947 to 1973. It is titled 
``A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats.'' What this chart shows is income for 
five different sectors of our economy--this is from the Economic Policy 
Institute--the lowest 20 percent, the second 20 percent, the middle, 
fourth, and top 20 percent. This chart shows clearly from these colors 
that from 1947 to 1973, America's income moved along together. Those in 
the lowest sector of our economic society moved along. As a matter of 
fact, they moved along a little higher than those at the very top. But 
America was moving along together.
  It is interesting that this is a period of time when we had the trade 
union movement at its peak. One of their strong themes during that time 
was economic fairness, economic justice. If we were going to see an 
increase in productivity as a result of their own enterprise and 
working with the employer, the benefits were going to be shared. It was 
going to be shared between those at the top and those who were working. 
That was the concept we had seen reflected in this growth from 1947 to 
1973.
  Look at what is beginning to happen from 1973 to 2000. We begin to 
see now the lowest is growing the least and the top 20 percent is 
growing at a rate of three or four times higher than the lowest. This 
was the beginning of significant tax cuts that benefited the wealthiest 
individuals. We see the economic indicators reflected here in the 
income for those individuals across the board.
  Now look at what has happened in the most recent time. We see that 
those in the lowest economic income have been falling further and 
further behind, and those in the top 1 percent have been going further 
and further ahead. All of this is going on at a time when we have seen 
the weakening of the trade union movement.
  How is this reflected in what has happened with corporate profits? 
Here we see at the same time corporate profits were going up some 84 
percent at the time from 2001 to 2007, where wages and salaries have 
been virtually stagnant. They haven't moved. They have gone up a total 
of 4 percent over this 6-year period. The profits have been growing; 
wages and salaries have not been growing. Benefits are going up in 
terms of corporate profits, but the workers' are not. We have seen what 
has happened.

[[Page 17196]]

  This chart is interesting. It tells the story of what I have just 
mentioned in a different way. For the first time, young men make less 
than their fathers did. We have grown up in this country believing that 
the future generation was going to have a better opportunity and a more 
hopeful future than the current generation. Those certainly were the 
hopes and dreams of those who came to this Nation. It has been 
certainly generally true, right? Wrong. We saw that was true from 1964 
to 1994, the purple colors reflecting the son; the green, the father. 
We talk about income. You see that the son's income exceeded the 
father's. Now look from 1974 to 2004. There has been a 12-percent 
decline of the son over the father--again, the decline in the voice to 
speak for workers, the strong voice that is going to speak for workers.
  Now look at what happened again, if we can go back. Remember the 
first chart where I talked about 1947 to 1962 when all of the different 
economic groups went along and went up together. This is the time of 
peak union membership. What this chart shows is that wages and 
productivity rise together. What does this chart show? It shows right 
along here increasing productivity. That means the workplace is 
becoming more productive. They are producing more. What happened when 
we had the height of the trade union movement during this time, we 
found out wages were keeping up with productivity; therefore, workers 
were working harder, but they were getting more in terms of wages. They 
were keeping pace with their increasing productivity. Now we see the 
unions begin to decline, and the workers are falling further behind. 
Productivity is still going up, but real wages are in decline and 
productivity grew more than 200 percent more than wages, reflected in 
that earlier chart which showed the profits going up.
  All this is at an interesting time where the workers' voice in the 
workplace is being constantly diminished. On the far left, we find peak 
union membership; wages and productivity rise together.
  Now you can ask: What happened after 1966? Why this sudden disparity? 
How could it be doing so well with union membership during this period 
and then suddenly we find a decline? Well, we had decisions made by the 
National Labor Relations Board and the Supreme Court that decided 
businesses can veto majority signups as a result of elections. I will 
go through that in more detail. But they have it as an art at the 
present time where an election can be held, let the workers make a 
judgment, a majority can say: We want to join a union, and next you 
know that those individuals who are involved in that activity are being 
fired, lose their jobs, are out of jobs--not just for 1 month or 2 
months, not just for 6 months, not even for 1 year, sometimes 3, 4, 5 
years. It is the cost of doing business. A whole industry has grown up 
to help employers defeat the voices of workers in the workplace. That 
is what happened during this period of time in the 1960s and 1970s. We 
had our Republican friends appointing members to the National Labor 
Relations Board during this period of time--also the Supreme Court--who 
made these judgments to disadvantage workers. We have seen the abuses 
skyrocket.
  This chart is from a Peter Hart Research Associates poll from a year 
ago. It shows that 58 percent of nonmanagement workers would vote for 
union representation. This represents 60 million workers who want to 
join. We can ask ourselves: If they want to join, why don't they join? 
Let me point out, before we get there, what else has been happening in 
the workplace.
  We find there have also been assaults on unemployment insurance. This 
is the fund for when we have extended unemployment periods. This is an 
unemployment insurance fund which is paid into by workers so they will 
be able to receive it when they are unemployed. It has been generally 
used historically in times when we have had a downturn in the economy. 
But we have had administrations which have refused to extend the 
unemployment insurance, even though the fund itself is in surplus, to 
look out for the workers. We have seen 6 million individuals who 
qualified for overtime who were workers 3 years ago lose their overtime 
pay. We saw the results of administration action in Hurricane Katrina 
where they refused to extend the Davis-Bacon provisions. We have the 
undermining of family and medical leave. We have had Supreme Court 
judgments and decisions which have also compromised the worker.
  One of the most notorious was the Supreme Court decision that was 
made probably 4 weeks ago where a woman who had been working in a plant 
for a number of years and had been working alongside a number of men 
for all these years found out she was being paid significantly less 
than the men. That is unfair under legislation we have passed in the 
Civil Rights Act. When the case finally went up to the Supreme Court, 
the Supreme Court said: Well, it is too bad that has been her case 
because under the legislation, she should have complained in the first 
180 days. Since she didn't complain in that time, she lost all her 
rights.
  That is the most cockamamie decision I have heard of the Supreme 
Court making in recent years. I can give you another one, the Grove 
City case on civil rights, but imagine this individual didn't even know 
she wasn't being paid fairly. She had no notice of it. The payroll was 
being kept by the employer. This is what is happening in real America.
  We all know what happened with carpal tunnel syndrome. We had rules 
and regulations under the previous administration. More than a million 
people, most of them women, are doing the kind of repetitive work which 
endangers their health. We had the National Academy of Science make 
determinations that these individuals, by and large women, are being 
harmed by this kind of activity. We had the previous Democratic 
administration issue rules and regulations to provide protections and, 
and bam, under this administration, under the current administration, 
the Bush administration, they have been eliminated, all of them.
  So we see the series: Elimination of overtime pay, elimination of 
protecting people in terms of pay on the job, eliminating rules and 
regulations to protect people from carpal tunnel syndrome--all of these 
going on at the same time. They are the kinds of situations the trade 
union movement speaks about and fights about. They fight for an 
individual member who is being abused like the woman being abused in 
the workforce. They have been a principal spokes-group for the 
protection of people doing repetitive work and being affected by carpal 
tunnel syndrome. But they have been weakened, their voice has been 
weakened. As a result, we see the great economic disparities, and we 
see the great threat to the workers.
  Now, you can say: Well, that is very interesting, Senator, but what 
are these kinds of barriers to workers, if they have an election and 
they are successful? Well, here are some of the roadblocks. Workers who 
lead the union efforts are fired. We have 30,000 a year who get 
backpay. Mr. President, 30,000 a year get backpay from employers for 
violations of their rights. What kind of message do you think that 
sends to other workers who have to provide for their children and their 
family, seeing the individuals dismissed or their rights violated?
  The employer challenges the election results. No matter what the 
disparity, they still challenge it and delay it. Then the employer 
appeals the NLRB ruling in the courts. I might, later on this 
afternoon, go over some of the court decisions as to the National Labor 
Relations Board and how they have changed from protecting the worker to 
protecting the employer and how the DC court--because the DC court is 
the special court of jurisdiction--how they have altered and changed in 
terms of protecting the workers. But the workers, effectively, are not 
getting protection either from the National Labor Relations Board, 
which was set up to protect them, or in the courts, which are supposed 
to be protecting their interests.
  The employer stalls or refuses to bargain for a first contract. They 
are able to kick this over for a year. The employer can seek to stop 
recognizing the

[[Page 17197]]

union. Then the workers start all over again.
  This is what we have: The employees are fired in one-quarter of all 
private sector union-organizing campaigns--one-quarter of the 
campaigns. Talk about discouraging those who want to speak up. One in 
five workers who openly advocate for a union during an election 
campaign is fired. This has not varied or changed. You would have 
thought the Department of Labor or the National Labor Relations Board 
or the courts would try to protect these workers. Oh no, they have not, 
and we have the current situation we have.
  In 2005, over 30,000 workers received backpay after employers had 
violated their rights. This gives you an idea of the warfare that is 
going on in the workplace--absolute warfare. Can we do something about 
it? Yes. That is what the legislation which is before us is trying to 
do. That is exactly the issue this legislation is trying to face. We 
will explain that. But that is exactly the point.
  We see why some 60 million workers want to join unions. This chart 
demonstrates the percentage of wages for union members over nonunion 
members. This next chart is very interesting because it draws the 
distinction, the effect of union organizing for women. It makes a very 
significant difference in protecting women and women's rights, for 
African Americans, and Latino Americans. It is a very major force and 
factor in terms of making sure we are going to protect the rights and 
the civil rights of our fellow citizens.
  This chart gives you a pretty clear idea. This is what we are talking 
about: people with wages that are $22,000, $23,000, $17,000, or 
$18,000. These are the people we are talking about. We are talking 
about, as demonstrated on this chart, that the cashier, if they do not 
belong to a union, is making $15,000; if they do, they are making 
$24,000. For childcare workers, if they are nonunion, they are making 
probably $16,000; if they are a union member, they are probably making 
$21,000. And we have demonstrated on the chart the wages for a cook, a 
housekeeper, across the board.
  Look at the Federal poverty line on the chart. Those who are not a 
part of the union movement are below the poverty line, and those who 
are members of a union are slightly above it.
  So let me point out what we are attempting to do. We are saying we 
want to give individuals the opportunity to be able to join unions 
through a card check, effectively. If a majority of those in a union 
are going to check the card, they are going to be a majority, and they 
have the opportunity to do so. But we do not eliminate the secret 
ballot. We are saying the secret ballot is still available.
  Today, the secret ballot is decided, effectively, by the employers. 
Since the employees are the ones whose interests are at stake, we give 
them the option to go either through the secret ballot or to be able to 
do it through a card checkoff.
  We have heard a lot on the floor about how the secret ballot in the 
workplace is comparable to the great American tradition of elections in 
the United States. But, of course, that is completely untrue. For 
example, if you take what we call the NLRB--that would be the elections 
in the workplace--versus a Federal election, in regard to equal access 
to the media, do we think the workers have equal access with the 
employer? No, of course not. It is the employer who has all of the 
access. Now, in a Presidential or a congressional campaign, there is 
relatively equal access. Maybe one candidate is able to get additional 
kinds of resources and able to get more of the media, but at least 
there is some degree of fairness and some degree of comparability. But 
here it is all one-sided, all with the employer. The freedom of speech 
is with the employer.
  Access to the voters: No union members can come onto a grounds and 
say: Look, we would like to talk to these individuals who are trying to 
make up their mind. But the employer has access to these individuals 
all day long.
  Campaign finance regulations: The employer spends whatever they wish 
on these issues.
  The timely implementation of the voters' will: The federal elections 
all have them but not here. As we have just pointed out, employers 
contest the elections.
  The way these elections are conducted now in the workplace, the odds 
are all stacked against the workers. So the workers have been 
discouraged from doing so, from being able to express themselves. As a 
result, they have not been able to move ahead. As a result, they have 
fallen further and further behind.
  Now, we also hear on the floor: Well, we can't have this kind of a 
checkoff because we will have intimidation of these workers in a 
certain way, we will have intimidation for those in the workplace. 
Well, the fact remains there are very strong laws against any kind of 
intimidation or coercion of workers. We can go through that in greater 
detail, which I am glad to do.
  I know some opponents on the other side have cited a study by the 
Human Resource Policy Association that identified 113 NLRB cases that 
involved union deception or coercion. Over the last 60 years, one 
expert--who testified at the House hearing of the employee free choice 
legislation--who examined the cases found they contained only 42 such 
instances. We should not have any, but they had 42. In any event, those 
113 claimed examples of coercing or intimidating workers over the past 
60 years are next to nothing compared to the NLRB statistics that show 
acts of coercion alleged in a single year, which, in 2005, equaled 
about 30,000 workers getting backpay for firings or violations of their 
rights who were involved in union activity--firing them, throwing them 
out of their jobs or otherwise violating their rights.
  So experience has shown, too, that when the majority signup replaces 
the battlefield mentality of the National Labor Relations Board 
election process, conflict is minimized and the workplace becomes more 
cooperative and productive--a win for both sides.
  I might mention that this chart shows Cingular Wireless, and this one 
shows Kaiser Permanente. They provide for what is permitted under this 
bill. Of course, if the company wants to do it, it can do it now. It 
can do it today. But this will institutionalize it to encourage 
companies all over the country to do it.
  Here is Kaiser Permanente, a well-known company. Mr. President, 800 
nurses were able to choose a union based on the model of the Employee 
Free Choice Act. Kaiser Permanente proves that respecting workers' 
desire to have a voice on the job, rather than fighting the unions, is 
not only the right thing to do, but it makes good business sense. Says 
the president of Kaiser Permanente:

       We not only believe it's the fair thing to do, but we also 
     believe it's the right thing to do for our employees, our 
     health plan members, and also our business. It has been their 
     experience.

  This is Cingular Wireless. A majority signed up. This is what one of 
the workers, Larry Barrett, said:

       Management didn't pressure us or try to interfere. . . . We 
     didn't attack the company and they didn't attack us. We were 
     focused on improving our jobs and making Cingular a better 
     place to work.

  This is what the executive vice president of Cingular said:

       We believe that the employees should have a choice. . . . 
     Making that choice available to them results . . . in 
     employees who are engaged in the business and who will have a 
     passion for their customers.

  We can either do it right or we can do it wrong. That is what this is 
really all about. It is permitting, on a voluntary basis, the 
opportunity to be able to permit workers to make a judgment and a 
decision as to who can be their voice and representative in terms of 
their economic conditions, their work conditions, their retirement 
conditions, their health conditions, and the rest. If they want to so 
do it, let's let them do it. If they do not want to do it, let them 
make that judgment and choice. But today, the system is effectively 
broken. It is unworkable. The workers know it. The employers know it. 
Too many of the employers want to keep it that way.
  We have an opportunity to provide some real democratization in the 
workplace. When we do that and we have

[[Page 17198]]

workers who can have a voice in determining their economic future, 
their future in terms of other issues, we are going to have a stronger 
economy. It is going to be stronger in dealing with our competition 
around the world, and we are going to have increasing productivity.
  I know there are those who say: Well, if we have a weaker trade union 
movement, we are going to have a stronger economy. I will just show the 
example of Ireland. Ireland has one of the strongest economies in all 
of Western Europe at the present time, and 35 percent of their workers 
are union members, as compared to 12 percent in the United States. Look 
at the economic growth of Ireland, which is at 6 percent; the United 
States is at 3.3 percent.
  So I am hopeful the Senate will at least give us a chance to move 
ahead on this legislation. The time to act is now. This legislation 
will make a major difference in terms of our ability to deal with the 
challenges of a stronger economy, a fairer economy, an economy where 
workers have a voice as well as a vote. It is the right thing to do, 
and now is the time to do it.
  Mr. President, I withhold the remainder of my time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is 
recognized.
  Mr. McConnell. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. McConnell are printed in today's Record under 
``Morning Business.'')
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The minority leader is recognized.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, more than three centuries ago, settlers 
in the New World began to put into practice the political ideals that 
brought them here and for which many of their descendants would later 
fight and die.
  One of the most important of these was the ideal of political 
freedom, and one the most concrete expressions of it was the right to 
vote in secret, without harassment and without coercion. Rejecting the 
English Parliamentary tradition, several colonies, including all the 
New England colonies, established secret elections as the norm.
  The secret ballot has been standard everywhere else in this country 
for more than a century. It simply hasn't been questioned. Americans 
have come to assume that in everything from electing their high school 
yearbook editor to their President, their vote is sacred and it is 
secret.
  That is, until now. The so-called ``Employee Free Choice Act'' is an 
assault on the centuries-old practice of secret voting, and the fact 
that we are here in this Chamber discussing it at all is a scandal.
  The Employee Free Choice Act was not written to help employees. It 
was written to help union bosses, who are angry because their 
membership has been plunging for decades.
  This bill aims to reverse that trend by stripping workers of the 
right to vote privately for or against a union. They'd be forced to 
publicly sign a card instead, exposing them to coercion and 
intimidation by employers and union bosses alike.
  When union bosses convince more than half the employees at a work 
site to sign a card authorizing a union, they will be free to organize.
  Meanwhile, employers would be free to check whether their workers 
favor labor or management.
  Look, Congress settled this issue 60 years ago when it amended the 
National Labor Relations Act to provide secret ballots at the 
workplace. Congress changed the existing law then precisely because of 
widespread intimidation and coercion at the workplace.
  Now our Democratic friends want to strip that right away from 140 
million American workers, rolling back the clock 60 years on employee 
rights and potentially eroding the broader voting rights that 
generations of Americans have fought to secure for themselves and their 
children.
  This is really a disturbing development. For years, American voters 
have been able to depend on Democrats to be loud persuasive supporters 
of voting rights. Their sudden conversion is shocking, but its cause 
isn't a secret.
  Speaking to a union rally on Capitol Hill last week, the 
distinguished majority leader gave us a clue into the origins of this 
anti-Democratic bill. Here's what he told the unions that showed up: 
Democrats are in control of Congress now because of you. You made all 
the difference--and let me start with two words: thank you.
  Well, are we to expect that blowing these folks a kiss at a pep rally 
was all they wanted? I think not.
  The unions haven't been coy about their legislative wish list. And 
according to the Las Vegas Review Journal: ``The Employee Free Choice 
Act is at the top of their wish list.''
  The Review Journal is calling this a textbook case of payback. Well, 
for all you civics students out there, you are about to see a textbook 
example of something else: how this kind of thing backfires when it 
threatens to undermine something that Americans hold dear, and that is 
the right to vote without somebody looking over your shoulder.
  Historians tell us that once secret ballots gained near-universal 
acceptance a little over a century ago, the only Western country that 
didn't continue to observe the practice religiously was the Soviet 
Union.
  Yet even there, communist leaders were careful to maintain at least 
the formal appearance of secret ballots. An ad that recently appeared 
in a number of national newspapers illustrates my point. I think I have 
it here behind me. At least I thought I was going to. I guess I don't.
  Leading with the quote; ``There's no reason to subject the workers to 
an election,'' it asks: ``Who said this?''
  We are given three choices: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Idi Amin, and 
American union leader Bruce Raynor. It was Raynor in fact who said that 
in defense of the Employee Free Choice Act.
  No wonder the Communist Party USA endorsed the bill at its national 
convention in 2005.
  It's understandable why my good friends on the other side hoped they 
could introduce this bill quietly--just slip it in, watch it fail with 
a whimper, then crow about their support for Big Labor at political 
rallies.
  They knew as well as I do that if voters knew they were looking to 
roll back a basic protection like the right to vote in secret, they 
would be in trouble.
  The polling data is overwhelmingly on this one: Nine out of ten 
Americans--including 91 percent of Democrats--favor the right to a 
federally supervised secret ballot election when deciding whether or 
not to form a union. The main provision in this bill is about as 
popular as poison ivy, which is why this was supposed to all be quiet.
  Incredibly, my good friend the majority leader has even indicated 
that he doesn't expect the bill to pass. Last week he was worried that 
some Republicans who are opposed to the immigration bill would vote for 
this bill just to delay debate on that one.
  He said such a move would be made out of pure spite, which could only 
mean that he doesn't expect--or want--this bill to go anywhere.
  So what are we doing here?
  I'll tell you what: we are being told to squeeze in a vote on this 
anti-Democratic bill between two of the most important pieces of 
legislation in this Congress, in the hope that it will fail.
  Well, it will fail. But not quietly.
  Democrats can't put voting rights on the table and expect to get away 
with it.
  So first, Republicans will indeed block this bill.
  But we won't be quiet about it. We're not going to forget about it. 
We will make sure Americans don't forget about it either.
  We'll remind our constituents that our friends on the other side 
didn't mind promoting a bill that would lead to voter intimidation by 
employers and union bosses.
  All but two Democrats in the House passed their version of the bill 
in March. Apparently they have no problem with union bosses following 
employees to their cars after work and telling them to vote union.

[[Page 17199]]

  Apparently they have no problem with these guys following workers 
home at night and knocking on their doors for a chat.
  I am not making this stuff up.
  We have read about a case in Louisiana where a worker was forced to 
seek an arrest warrant for a union boss who showed up at his home eight 
times trying to get him to sign a unionization petition.
  Under this bill, the threat of employer intimidation is just as 
worrisome. Imagine having to announce in front of the person who writes 
your review, who sets your bonuses, approves your raises, and controls 
future promotions that you prefer labor to management.
  This is no different than the days when landowners sent their agents 
into the fields to tell their tenant farmers how to vote in local 
elections. It was because of practices like these that the first 
colonists fled to America in the first place.
  Another reason Democrats wanted to keep this bill quiet is that so 
many of them are on record opposing any abridgement to the right to 
secret ballots.
  On the first day of this session, the Senate's Democratic leadership 
introduced a bill outlining the purpose of U.S. Democracy-building 
efforts abroad. This Congress' Democratic leadership introduced this 
bill. Here's what it said:

       It should be the policy of the United States to use 
     instruments of United States influence to support, promote, 
     and strengthen democratic principles, practices, and values, 
     including the right to free, fair, and open elections, secret 
     balloting, and universal suffrage.

  Apparently, our good friends on the other side believe the right to a 
secret ballot is essential for everyone--except the American worker.
  Time and again, Democrats have expressed their belief that the right 
to a secret ballot is sacred in a democracy.
  Six years ago, 16 Democrats in the House sent a letter to a group of 
government officials in Mexico chastising them for even considering a 
switch away from secret ballots.
  They wrote:

       We feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary to 
     ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a 
     union they might not otherwise choose.

  Support for the secret ballot in the Senate has been just as 
passionate. My good friend the senior Senator from Vermont has called 
it ``one of the great hallmarks of this Democracy.''
  The senior Senator from Connecticut has referred to ``the sanctity'' 
of a private ballot.
  The junior Senator from Iowa went even farther, saying in 2005 that:

       Perhaps what we need is a Constitutional Amendment 
     guaranteeing the right of every citizen of the United States 
     a secret ballot and to have that ballot counted.

  Nine out of 10 Americans agree with these Democratic Senators, which 
is why their party's effort to roll back this right for workers is so 
alarming, and why it promises to be so alarming to voters next year.
  Unions have every reason to be worried about their membership, which 
has been in steady decline for decades. In 2005, only 12.5 percent of 
workers nationwide belonged to unions. In the private sector, the 
figure was even more anemic. It is now less than 8 percent.
  But the price of reversing this trend shouldn't be one of the 
fundamental tenets of a free society, nor should elected officials be 
complicit in the effort.
  According to the Associated Press, organized labor spent some $100 
million on get-out-the-vote efforts last year, reaching tens of 
millions of voters by phone and other means on behalf of labor-backed 
candidates. Labor PACs contributed $60 million for federal candidates, 
including $40 million from the AFL-CIO.
  According to news reports, Big Labor explicitly traded their 
endorsements of prospective freshman Democrats last year for the 
promise that the candidates would later vote in support for the 
Employee Free Choice Act.
  After the election, AFL-CIO's chief John Sweeney told a reporter it 
was money well spent. Big Labor had a plan when it poured money into 
the election last year.
  Look, you don't need to be John Locke to figure out what's going on 
here. The unions are losing the game, so they have decided to change 
the rules.
  But the rule they want to change isn't some little provision in the 
labor code it is a fundamental right that the citizens of this country 
have enjoyed without interruption for more than a century.
  This was bold, it was desperate, and it was stupid.
  Republicans will proudly block this bill from becoming law, and we 
will just as proudly remind people who forced a vote on it in the first 
place.
  Today happens to be the birthday of George Orwell, a great enemy of 
tyranny who had some harsh things to say about political speech.
  Orwell saw how rhetoric was used in his own day to excuse the 
inexcusable.
  We now call it doublespeak--or speech that is meant to conceal the 
actual thought of the person speaking.
  I can think of no better example of this than the Employee Free 
Choice Act.
  This bill isn't meant to help employees; it is meant to help unions. 
It is not about increasing employee choice, but limiting it.
  I will vote against it. And I strongly urge--and fully expect--my 
Republican colleagues to join me.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Pryor). Who yields time?
  The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as may be 
necessary.
  I have been looking at a lot of the charts the other side of the 
aisle has presented. We are going to have a vote on cloture to proceed 
to H.R. 800, which is the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. It would 
be better named the ``lose your secret ballot by intimidation act.''
  This legislation attempts the most radical, unacceptable, and 
unwarranted change in our system of labor-management relations in over 
60 years, since Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act. We have watched 
the other side of the aisle grasping for ways that this might be 
justified. We heard about the minimum wage, health insurance, pensions, 
costs going up, gas, food, and that it is all related to people having 
a secret ballot. The secret ballot is causing that? That is a stretch--
saying that unions cannot organize because they are required to have 
secret ballot elections. I grant you it is going to be much easier for 
them if they don't have to have secret ballot elections, and can rely 
on intimidation.
  I was fascinated by the chart on voting that was shown earlier, and 
the things that are supposedly not available in a union election as 
opposed to the things that are available to the American public in 
federal elections. Most of them just are not accurate.
  One was ``equal access to media.'' If one side is buying ads, the 
other can do it, too. You cannot tell me unions don't have money or 
don't know how to run ads because I have seen them run ads against 
politicians. They are both free to run ads under current law. Another 
was ``Freedom of speech.'' I don't know where they allege the National 
Labor Relations Act takes that away. We have freedom of speech under 
current law. My favorite category on the chart is ``equal access to 
voters.'' Under current law, the union gets a list of the home 
addresses of every single person who works in that business. Now, the 
employer cannot go to their home, but the union can go to their home, 
and we've heard some examples of how that works. That is why I call it 
``lose your secret ballot by intimidation act.'' If you have half a 
dozen people show up at your door, some of whom you know and some of 
whom you don't know, and they are going to try to persuade you to sign 
a check card, is that equal access to voters? If you don't let them 
have a secret ballot afterwards to see if they meant to sign that check 
card or if they only did so because the intimidators were there, it is 
simply not fair to the employee.
  You have to agree this card checking system is kind of a joke and 
that it isn't a real election where rights are protected. The National 
Labor Relations Board watches those very carefully. In fact, they run 
the election and

[[Page 17200]]

guarantee a secret ballot to every potential union person who votes.
  Despite its cynical and deceptive title, this legislation is not 
about employees, nor is it about enhancing employee rights. This 
legislation certainly has nothing to do with free choice either. It is 
plain and simple; this bill is about unfairly and artificially boosting 
organized labor's steadily declining membership at the expense of 
essential employee democratic rights. We need to begin by understanding 
just how radical a departure this objective is from our longstanding 
national labor-management policy.
  Under our system, the Government's role has never been to guarantee a 
level of membership for unions, or to change the rules in order to 
boost a union's membership numbers. The role of Government has been--
and should be--to remain neutral with respect to the positions of both 
organized labor and management. Its most important rule is to guarantee 
that employees have the maximum freedom possible to make their own 
choice as to whether they do or do not wish to be represented by a 
union in their workplace. In short, our system of labor-management 
relations is based on employee rights, not organized labor rights, and 
not employer rights, and certainly not on some supposed right to a 
certain level of membership among private sector employees.
  This legislation would turn that national labor policy on its head. 
It would sacrifice the fundamental democratic rights of working men and 
women in order to artificially boost union membership levels, increase 
union bank accounts with employees' dues, and enhance the political 
leverage of organized labor. That is what such money buys. We saw the 
results of that last week at some of the rallies put on by this bill's 
supporters. The speeches given at those rallies offer a real 
appreciation for that kind of political leverage. They implied that now 
is the time to pay up. This is a totally unacceptable perversion of our 
longstanding national labor policy. More important, it is outrageous to 
even suggest we should sacrifice the democratic rights and freedoms of 
working men and women to further such an effort.
  Despite the radical nature of what is proposed in this legislation, 
and despite the fact that it would constitute the largest attempt to 
change basic Federal labor law in more than 60 years, it is telling how 
the proponents of this legislation have sought to move this bill. In 
the House, those who opposed this legislation were effectively cut out 
of the process. Leadership in the House brought this bill to the floor 
and allowed little opportunity for amendment or debate. Indeed, it was 
on the floor in that Chamber for only a few hours. Here in the Senate, 
the proponents now seek to move this legislation outside the regular 
order. It hasn't been to committee. Even though this bill falls 
squarely in the jurisdiction of the HELP Committee--Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions--of which I am the ranking member, the proponents 
of this legislation bypassed the normal committee process and brought 
this measure directly to the floor. With the committee process comes 
increased scrutiny and a decreased prospect that legislation would ever 
move based on rhetoric rather than sound facts and reasoned policy.
  There may be those who believe that by short circuiting the committee 
process, it would be less likely that the public would see the 
legislation for what it is--that the true dimensions of this devil's 
bargain would be hidden behind a wall of rhetoric. We cannot and will 
not let that happen.
  Let's briefly look at what the legislation does. For nearly seven 
decades, millions of employees have decided for themselves, and for 
their individual workplaces, whether they want a union to become their 
exclusive legal representative. In the vast majority of instances, this 
critical decision has been made through the use of the most fundamental 
institution of our democracy, the private ballot. In a democratic 
society, nothing is more sacred than the right to vote, and nothing 
ensures truly free choice more than the use of a private ballot.
  The current system provides that the question of union representation 
in the workplace is determined by a Government-supervised secret ballot 
process overseen by the NLRB. For over 60 years, the NLRB has conducted 
tens of thousands of elections involving millions of workers, and has 
developed and refined complex rules and procedures designed to 
guarantee that the entire process is fair and regular and free from 
threats, intimidation, and coercion. It carefully monitors the conduct 
of all parties to the election process and acts quickly and effectively 
to remedy any misconduct that interferes with the free choice of 
employees. Those who understand the National Labor Relations Board's 
processes know that it conducts union elections in a free and fair 
manner, as evidenced by the fact that only around 1 percent of all 
elections are rerun due to misconduct on either side. More recently, in 
2005, over 2,300 certification elections were conducted by the National 
Labor Relations Board. Yet the National Labor Relations Board conducted 
rerun elections because of misconduct by either the employer or the 
union in only 19 cases. Yes, that is what they do, they force rerun 
elections because of misconduct by either the employer or the union. So 
in 2,300 certification elections in 2005, misconduct by either the 
employer or union, there were only 19 cases.
  The current private ballot election system is not only fair, it 
actually favors unionization. The win rate by unions in the National 
Labor Relations Board elections has increased for the last 10 years in 
a row. This is an unmatched run of electoral success. The win rate for 
unions in 2005 and 2006 was over 61 percent, again an unmatched record. 
Contrast this with the fact that during the entire 1980s, the average 
win rate was below 50 percent. For example, in 1982, unions won less 
than 45 percent of the time. The same is true for the decade of the 
1970s, where unions again averaged losing more than they won. But they 
didn't ask the heavily Democratic Congress at that time to change the 
laws. In light of unions' increasing electoral success, and the fact 
that the legal rules have not changed in 60 years, there is absolutely 
no basis to claim that a change is warranted, particularly where that 
change is to strip workers of their rights.
  Unions want to now change this carefully developed democratic system 
into one that is totally one sided, unsupervised, and an invitation to 
undue pressure, coercion, and even outright intimidation.
  Imagine you are a worker at a nonunion facility and you are 
approached at work by people with whom you must interact day after day, 
or visited at home by union organizers. Remember, they have all the 
addresses. Imagine you are repeatedly asked to ``sign up'' for the 
union and that you are given a sales pitch that may or may not be true. 
Do you think you might sign just to avoid the hassle, just to get 
people off your back, just so you don't offend a coworker, or just 
because you haven't heard both sides? Do you think you might sign up 
even though your truly free choice would be not to have a union? Think 
about it: visitors to your own house. Most people would sign for any 
one of those reasons, and that is exactly why we have private ballot 
elections.
  Beyond assaulting free choice and the right to vote, this bill would 
gravely damage the freedom of contract that has been a hallmark of our 
private sector labor-management relations. Our system recognizes the 
reality that in the workplace, as in other contractual situations, the 
parties who must live by the contract are the parties who must make the 
contract. Instead, under this bill, if an agreement was not reached 
within a mere 90 days, the contract would be placed in the hands of a 
Government arbitrator who would have the power to determine every 
detail of the employee-employer relationship. They could determine 
hours, pay, conditions, benefits, insurance, pensions, everything. 
Neither the employees nor the employer could contest this contract, and 
both would be bound to the terms for 2 years. There would not even

[[Page 17201]]

be a right for the union members to even vote to approve or disapprove 
the contract agreement, none at all. That right, which they have under 
current law, would be taken away, too.
  Can you imagine either buying or selling a house and being told that 
someone from the Government would decide the terms of the sale? And 
even if you didn't agree, you would be forced to go through with the 
deal? Whether it is buying a house or negotiating a labor contract, 
this notion is simply untenable.
  Lastly, the bill would substitute a tort-like remedy system for the 
make-whole remedy system that has served so well since the inception of 
the National Labor Relations Act. The vast majority of labor-management 
disputes are voluntarily resolved. A tort-type system, while it would 
certainly keep the trial lawyers busy, will clog the system with 
litigation and simply delay the resolution of claims.
  The bill seriously infringes on due process and the right to manage a 
private business through its mandatory injunction provision. This is 
how that works. If an individual claimed he was terminated because of 
his union sentiments, the Government would require that he return to 
work before the merits of his claim are determined. The law already 
provides that this extraordinary step can be taken in appropriate 
cases, but it doesn't require it in every case. We should not require 
that the Government take action based on the presumption that a party 
is guilty unless proven innocent, except in the rarest of 
circumstances. We certainly should never make that practice the norm. 
In a host of other statutes, we quite rightly outlaw all types of 
employment discrimination. However, in none of those statutes do we 
presume guilt and require the individuals who merely claim to have been 
discharged be returned to work before the merits of their claims are 
determined, and we shouldn't do so here. The law provides for them to 
be reinstated, but it doesn't require it in every instance.
  I am not alone in the view that this legislation is fundamentally 
flawed, unnecessary, and destructive to employee rights. That view is 
widely shared with others, as shown by some of the poll numbers that 
were mentioned earlier. Even union members oppose this bill by a wide 
majority--80 percent. I suspect that doesn't include union bosses, but 
it includes union members.
  These views were, at one point, shared by my colleagues across the 
aisle. In 2001, the lead sponsor of this misguided legislation in the 
House, along with the current House and Senate Members, wrote a letter 
to the Mexican Government regarding its labor laws in which they noted:

       The secret ballot election is absolutely necessary in order 
     to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a 
     union they might not otherwise choose.

  Incidentally, that was the chairman of the Labor Committee on the 
House side. It is simply incomprehensible that my colleagues would 
lecture foreign governments about the importance of industrial 
democracy while simultaneously advocating we strip American workers of 
the same rights.
  The signatories of this letter are not the only Members supporting 
this bill who, previously, consistently upheld the importance of the 
secret ballot. My colleagues have rightly noted:

       One of the most fundamental of all rights that make us 
     uniquely American [is] the right of the secret ballot.

  Yes, that was Senator Harkin. Another colleague said:

       The sanctity of a private ballot is so fundamental to our 
     system of elections.

  That was Senator Dodd.
  Second, not only have my Democratic colleagues previously insisted on 
the necessity of a Government-supervised private ballot, so, too, has 
organized labor when it has suited their purpose.
  In 1998, two of the AFL-CIO's most prominent unions argued to the 
National Labor Relations Board that the National Labor Relations Board 
supervised election process ``is a solemn . . . occasion, conducted 
under safeguards to voluntary choice . . . '' Other means of 
decisionmaking are ``not comparable to the privacy and independence of 
the voting booth,'' and the secret ballot election system provides the 
surest means of avoiding decisions which are ``the result of group 
pressures and not individual decision.''
  I remind both my colleagues and organized labor that such statements 
are ones of principle that are not to be twisted or abandoned for 
political expediency. Advocating these positions and supporting this 
legislation are so inconsistent as to be the height of hypocrisy.
  At least some labor organizations are willing to stand for the true 
preservation of employee rights by directly opposing this legislation. 
Last Thursday, the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization of over 
300,000 law enforcement professionals, sent an open letter to Senator 
Reid advising of its strong opposition to H.R. 800. In its letter, the 
Fraternal Order of Police noted:

       The National Labor Relations Board provides detailed 
     procedures that ensure a fair election, free of fraud, where 
     employees may cast their vote confidentially, without peer 
     pressure or coercion from unions, employers or fellow 
     employees.

  The letter concludes by noting:

       The only way to guarantee worker protection from coercion 
     and intimidation is through the continued use of a federally 
     supervised private ballot election so that personal decisions 
     about whether or not to join a union remain private.

  Third, not only do my colleagues and labor unions agree that the 
private ballot is the most fair, the most accurate, and the most 
democratic way to determine employee free choice, and that all other 
methods are seriously flawed, so, too, do the Federal courts.
  I have a chart from the U.S. Supreme Court which, along with every 
Federal circuit court of appeals, has uniformly and over the course of 
decades held that the private ballot is the best, most reliable, and 
most democratic means of determining employees' free choice in the 
matter of unionization, and that all other methods, most particularly 
card signing, are inherently flawed and unreliable.
  With respect to signed cards, the Supreme Court noted that cards are 
not only unreliable because of the possibility of threats surrounding 
their signing, but because they are inherently untrustworthy since they 
are signed ``in the absence of secrecy and in the natural inclination 
of most people to avoid stands that appear to be nonconformist and 
antagonistic to friends and fellow employees.''
  With respect to the importance of the private ballot, one Federal 
court of appeals put it best when it observed that its preservation 
mattered ``simply because the integrity and confidentiality of secret 
voting is at the heart of a democratic society, and this includes 
industrial democracy as well.''
  The long line of those who oppose this legislation and its outrageous 
assault on the democratic rights of American workers does not end here. 
I received a letter from a half dozen former members of the National 
Labor Relations Board regarding this legislation. The National Labor 
Relations Board is the Federal agency that overseas private sector 
labor-management relations, and enforces this very statute that this 
legislation would alter so radically. It supervises the entire secret 
ballot process under which workers currently make their free choice for 
or against union representation.
  These are the experts in this area of the law who were nominated by 
both Democratic and Republican Presidents. Here is what they have to 
say about this grossly misnamed legislation:

       We, the undersigned are all former Members of the National 
     Labor Relations Board, and were nominated to serve by both 
     Republican and Democrat Presidents and confirmed by the 
     Senate. In addition, each of us has devoted our respective 
     professional careers to work in the field of labor/management 
     relations. Each of us has carefully reviewed H.R. 800, 
     legislation entitled ``The Employee Free Choice Act''; and, 
     based on that review believe that the legislation is 
     fundamentally flawed and should be rejected by the Senate. We 
     fully agree with the position consistently expressed by the 
     Federal courts and by virtually all experienced practitioners 
     that authorization cards are inherently unreliable indicators 
     of true employee choice. There simply is no more fair, 
     accurate or democratic way to determine an individual's free 
     choice on any matter than through the use of secret ballot 
     election. We

[[Page 17202]]

     are also deeply disturbed by the legislation's binding 
     arbitration provision. This provision would radically change 
     the process of private sector collective-bargaining in the 
     United States and such change is neither required nor 
     beneficial. The success of private sector collective-
     bargaining in the United States has long been premised on the 
     traditional precept of contract law that the parties that 
     must live up to a contract are the ones that must make the 
     contract. The legislation would, in our view, do grave damage 
     to the process of collective bargaining in the United States.

  Again, I mention that these are both Republican- and Democratic-
nominated people to the National Labor Relations Board who were 
approved by the Senate.
  They go on to say:

       Lastly, we believe that the remedial provisions contained 
     in the legislation are unnecessary and counter-productive. 
     Since its inception the National Labor Relations Act has 
     provided that individuals who have suffered a loss because of 
     violation of the act be made whole. The act has never made a 
     provision for punitive sanctions. Because of this, the vast 
     majority of claims before the National Labor Relations Board 
     are voluntarily adjusted and fully resolved in a very short 
     amount of time. Were the remedial provisions of H.R. 800 
     enacted, board litigation would increase dramatically, and 
     the voluntary adjustment of claims that has been a hallmark 
     of the board process would inevitably become a thing of the 
     past. While this might be a boon to trial lawyers, it would 
     result to no benefit to employees whose rights have been 
     violated. Indeed, the sole effect on such employees would be 
     to substantially delay the receipt of compensation to which 
     they may be entitled.
       For the reason noted, we would respectfully urge the Senate 
     to reject H.R. 800 or, any other legislation, containing like 
     or similar provisions.

  That is signed by Marshall B. Babson, J. Robert Brame, Charles I. 
Cohen, Dennis M. Devaney, Peter J. Hurtgen, and John N. Raudabaugh.
  Let's listen to what our Democratic colleagues have said in their 
more candid moments, which I quoted earlier. Let's listen to what the 
Federal courts have consistently told us. Let's listen to what the 
labor unions honestly believe, and to labor law experts who enforce the 
NLRA and were nominated by both Democratic and Republican Presidents 
and confirmed by a bipartisan Senate. Let's hear what they say. Let's 
listen to what they say. Most of all, let's listen to common sense. 
Only in a totalitarian country or a society imagined by George Orwell 
could anyone assert that the Government was going to afford free choice 
by stripping them of the right to vote by secret ballot.
  It is plain to anyone who takes a moment to look that this 
legislation is not about employee rights, it is not about enhancing 
free choice, it is a transparent payback to organized labor at the 
expense of employee rights and employee choice.
  I urge my colleagues to flatly reject the notion that we should even 
further consider this unwarranted and destructive legislation. The 
Senate, quite frankly, has too many matters of genuine substance and 
importance to be spending time on legislation that is plainly designed 
to profit the special interests at the cost of fundamental employee 
rights. Help me to be sure we do not take away the right to a secret 
ballot.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield such time as the Senator from 
Maryland may consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. KENNEDY. First, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 
3:15 p.m. the Senate suspend its deliberation of the motion to proceed 
for the swearing in of the Wyoming Senator, and that any time consumed 
by that and speeches thereon not be counted against either side in the 
debate, with Senator Session's time delayed accordingly.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, first, let me thank my colleague from 
Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, for yielding me this time and for his 
leadership on behalf of working families and among the poor American 
workers.
  I listened with great interest to the Republican leader talk about 
the concerns of protecting workers' rights to a secret ballot. He had 
one complaint. It seems this legislation is lopsided in taking away the 
right of a secret ballot. The Republican leader then said, well, we are 
going to not be quiet about this. We are going to talk about this and 
make sure people understand exactly what this bill does.
  What I don't understand, and I think people listening to the debate 
will not understand and be somewhat confused about, is if you read H.R. 
800, you will see the protection for a secret ballot is preserved. It 
is an option the workers have to be able to have a supervised election. 
It is still in this law. I think they are going to be more confused 
because we have a vote tomorrow where we are going to have a chance to 
bring this bill before this body where we can have a full debate and 
consider amendments.
  Quite frankly, I have heard from a lot of my constituents about this 
legislation--some for, some against. Workers are concerned about the 
tactics being used by some employers to prevent unions from being able 
to collectively bargain. There are worker intimidations, where workers 
are fired; there are threats made that plants are going to be relocated 
if they dare choose to be represented by a union; there is propaganda 
put out by employers that is downright intimidating. Those things do 
happen and they deny workers the real freedom of choice.
  Some employers have expressed concerns about the arbitration 
provisions in this legislation and about making sure they do preserve 
an equal opportunity to be able to talk to their employees. These are 
matters we can debate, if the Republican leader will allow us to bring 
this issue to the floor. After all, he said he wanted an open debate on 
this subject. Let us have an open debate. There are troubling concerns 
in this country. Nothing is more American than an honest day's pay for 
an honest day's work. America's great economic strength has been 
created because of fairness in the workplace, because of collective 
bargaining, because of the importance of workers in our economy, and 
effective collective bargaining. But as Senator Kennedy pointed out a 
few minutes ago, we have some very troubling economic trends in this 
country--very troubling.
  Real wages for U.S. workers are lower today than they were in 1973, 
even though productivity has increased by 80 percent. We do pride 
ourselves that each generation of Americans will live a more prosperous 
life than in previous generations. That will not be true for a large 
number of Americans. Today, wages are not keeping up with productivity. 
There is a problem in the workforce, and it affects all of us in this 
country. We need to do something about it.
  Real median household income in my own State of Maryland has declined 
by 2.1 percent from 2000 to 2005. We find a widening of the income gap 
in America, a widening of the wealth gap in America. We should be 
moving to narrow that gap, not to see it continue to increase. We have 
a problem we need to deal with, and this legislation, H.R. 800, gives 
us an opportunity to debate these issues and determine whether the 
decline of unionization is one of the factors in contributing to these 
difficult economic trends.
  CEOs are now paid 411 times what workers are paid in America--411 
times. In 1990, it was bad enough at 107 times--once again, a widening 
of the gap. I remember when I was in college talking about the strength 
of America. The strength of America was that in all the western 
economic powers we had the narrowest gap between wealth and income. Now 
we have the widest. We need to do something about it. Unionization 
helps bridge that gap.
  What has happened to unionization? In 1973, 24 percent of Maryland 
workers worked in a company that offered union representation. In 2006, 
that number dropped to 13 percent.
  The United States has exercised international leadership. I listened 
as my colleagues talked about the letters we have written to other 
governments. We have been the leader in saying that workers rights is 
an international human rights issue. It is. America should be 
exercising leadership internationally on these issues. Some of us

[[Page 17203]]

have argued on trade legislation that we should be doing a better job 
in protecting international workers' rights. But it also starts with 
what we do here at home, and we should be troubled that nationwide only 
12 percent of U.S. workers have a union in the workplace. Surveys show 
that 53 percent want to have unions in the workplace.
  I listened again to what the Republican leader said about secret 
ballots, and I know there is a disconnect here, because, again, this 
legislation doesn't get rid of that. What this legislation tries to say 
is we want workers rights to be adhered to. If the majority wants to 
have a union, they should be able to have a union without intimidation 
from the employer. And if the majority does not want to have a union, 
they should be able to do that without intimidation from the union. 
Both are true. But in today's workplace, it is not balanced. H.R. 800 
gives us the opportunity to debate this issue and, hopefully, act on 
this matter.
  Why do we need this? As I have pointed out, we already have 
documented examples. Senator Kennedy pointed out how many back wages 
have had to be paid because of wrongful firings. We can go through the 
list, but it is clear it is not effective today--not effectively giving 
workers a real freedom of choice.
  This bill increases the penalties for illegal activities; allows the 
majority will of employees in joining a union; gives the framework for 
achieving negotiated contracts. It is a comprehensive bill. It is a 
bill that deals with more than just one subject, as the Republican 
leader keeps mentioning. It is a bill that tries to say, let us do a 
better job so that workers rights are protected in our economy and that 
workers who want to join a union are able to join that union and those 
who do not are equally protected.
  We will never be able to get into that debate unless 60 Senators join 
us tomorrow to vote to bring up this issue. As the Republican leader 
said, this is an issue that shouldn't be kept quiet. Everybody should 
know where people stand on it. Tomorrow, Senators will have a right to 
do that by voting to bring this issue forward so we can have this 
debate in this body and in this Nation.
  We should take every opportunity we can to act on behalf of 
protecting the rights of workers and working families here in this 
Nation. The statistics tell us we are not doing what is necessary for 
the growth of our economy. We need to make sure everyone prospers by 
our economy and we are not doing everything we need to do in that 
regard. That is why this Senator will vote to allow us to move forward 
to consider H.R. 800 when this issue is before us tomorrow.
  I thank Senator Kennedy for his leadership over so many years on 
these issues. He has been truly our leader in trying to speak up for 
what this Nation should be standing for. We are proud of the economic 
growth of America. Let us make sure all families can prosper in that 
growth. Senator Kennedy has been our champion on those matters.
  I urge my colleagues to support the effort to consider this 
legislation.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for a question.
  Mr. CARDIN. I will be glad to yield.
  Mr. KENNEDY. And, Mr. President, I yield myself such time as we might 
use.
  I listened to the very eloquent and persuasive speech of my friend 
from Maryland, and one of the points he made which I think deserves 
mentioning is the underlying disparity between the wealth of the 
Nation, between the very rich and basic workers in the country; and his 
pointing out that in the 1960s that difference was the narrowest in the 
greatest economy in the world--which is the United States of America--
and now it is the largest between the very wealthy and the neediest 
people in our society.
  I am sure the Senator remembers Henry Ford, who we all understand was 
the creator, the early entrepreneur of automobiles, and Henry Ford's 
concept at that time was to have a million people who had $10,000 a 
year to be able to support selling those cars and begin building the 
American economy. American workers brought us out of the Depression, 
fought in World War II, took a nation of close to 16 million men and 
women who had served in the military, came back, and transitioned again 
to being the most important economy in the world. Henry Ford understood 
it was important that there be a million people in America with 
$10,000.
  I am sure he would be perplexed today that we have 10,000 people with 
more than $1 million. It is an extraordinary kind of irony that we have 
seen a small number with enormous kinds of wealth at that time in 
America, which had the strongest economy, as compared to now.
  I share the concern the Senator from Maryland has, the direction we 
are going in, the indicators of where we are going and what is going to 
happen to that middle class, as the Senator pointed out; what is going 
to happen as tuitions go up and gasoline goes up, prescription drugs go 
up, and the pensions and security retirement are threatened, and the 
laws regarding what happens to workers.
  As in Maryland, the same will happen to the workers in Massachusetts. 
These were always issues that workers and working families felt were 
important not only to their own families but to their neighborhood's 
family, their community family, and to the Nation's family. I am 
wondering if the Senator is not perplexed somewhat about his sense of 
the individual kind of activity, that we can let every individual sort 
of take care of themselves. They do not need health insurance; they can 
survive. They do not need much retirement to somehow be able to 
survive. They do not need much assurance about the cost of their house 
because they are going to survive. They are on their own, versus the 
coming together of a worker who is concerned about the common community 
and the common good.
  I wonder if the Senator would talk a minute or two about how he sees 
which type of America he thinks is more in tune with our traditions and 
values.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kennedy for those comments 
and those questions.
  As I said, I was in college during the 1960s, and I did listen to my 
professors when they talked about the strength of this country, and it 
was unions that brought us the sensitivity in the workplace to provide 
health care benefits for people who never had health care insurance, 
who brought retirement plans for people who didn't have economic 
security when they retired. We made tremendous progress during the 
1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s as more people got health insurance and 
as retirement plans were readily available to workers.
  When we look at the record today, we find 46 million people without 
health insurance and we know there has actually been a reduction of 
employer-provided health benefits in this country. Every year more and 
more of the cost of health care is being put on the backs of the 
employees. There has been an erosion of middle-income families being 
able to afford health care, so many are now forced into bankruptcy 
because they can't pay for health care bills.
  For two-thirds of Americans, when they retire, Social Security is 
their largest source of income. It was never intended to be that way.
  We always thought private retirement would be a major security for 
people when they retired. We have not met those goals. So we have a 
shrinking middle class in America, and the middle class is critically 
important, as Henry Ford said, for the manufacturers and producers and 
farmers to be able to sell their wares here in America. To have 
economic strength, you need to have the middle class. You need to have 
the sharing of wealth among the people of this country, and we do not 
have that in America today. We are moving in the wrong direction. I 
think that is what troubles me the most. I know how important a growing 
middle class is to an economy, to the economic strength of our entire 
country, so everyone can benefit from this great economy. I agree, we 
have a great economy. We are the strongest economy in the world. But we 
have to tend to it, we have to deal with it. Protecting the growth of 
worker rights

[[Page 17204]]

will help everyone in our economy, including the owners of our large 
companies. That is what is so troublesome about this debate. It is not 
employers versus employees. We want a level playing field. We want 
companies to grow in America because we want more good jobs in America 
and we want employees to be able to get fair compensation for their 
work. That is what this debate should be about.
  I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for bringing this issue 
forward because it really does talk about what type of country we want 
for our children and our grandchildren.
  Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator understands--as we listened to this debate--
who brings support for this legislation. The Senator suggested broadly, 
during his comments, we have civil rights groups supporting the 
Employee Free Choice Act. Civil rights groups, community, religious, 
and poverty groups all support it. Whether it is ACORN, Sierra Club, 
the Presbyterian Church, public health associations, the Churchwomen 
United, the Methodists, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the 
Mexican-American Legal Defense--this is a group, not only of workers, 
it is a representation of civil rights groups, of women's groups, 
church groups that talk about the morality and the fairness. They talk 
about the morality of this issue as well, the fairness of this issue. I 
think that is what I find so persuasive.
  I wonder, if the Senator just had a minute, if he would not agree 
with me, in the outline of this legislation, that he finds this is an 
effective summary of the legislation? It requires the employer to 
recognize the union if a majority of employees sign valid authorization 
cards. So a majority has to find it. We have heard a lot of talk about 
expressing the minority and majority views.
  It preserves, as the Senator has said, the elections if employees 
choose to ask for one. The employees, after all, are the ones who are 
going to be affected by this choice. We hear a lot about free 
elections. Here, this legislation preserves free elections if the 
workers want that. It then instructs the NLRB to make clear and fair 
rules for a majority to sign up to protect workers' rights. Not if you 
listen to some of the comments and statements on the floor about how 
radical this proposal is. Does the Senator not agree with me that this 
is a fairly straightforward proposal to give those workers who are 
working in a setting the opportunity to express their will as to 
whether they choose to join a union?
  Mr. CARDIN. The Senator is absolutely right. To bring home the reason 
this is needed today, 53 percent of workers would like to have a union 
in their employment. Only 12 percent today have union opportunities. 
The will of the worker today is not being adhered to because of the 
tactics used by some employers to prevent a fair and open process for 
employees to choose a union.
  Just to underscore one more time, this is allowing the employees to 
have the freedom of choice. We will never be able to get to a full 
debate unless we get the opportunity to proceed with this legislation, 
and that is what this vote is about. I think the point of the Senator 
is very well taken. This is not taking away private, secret ballots. 
That is still an option which is available to the employees. But it 
allows the employees to have a level playing field, which in many cases 
today is not true.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the Senator for an excellent presentation.
  I see my colleagues desiring to address the Senate. I withhold.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. ENZI. I yield such time as he desires to the Senator from 
Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 800, the 
Employee Free Choice Act. While the bill's title suggests it would 
protect an employee's right to join a union, my belief is it would 
actually jeopardize that right. Actually, I would like to vote for 
cloture to allow this bill to be debated because I, frankly, think it 
would be defeated were that to be the case, and I would strongly oppose 
it. However, I will oppose cloture, not because I wouldn't like to have 
a debate on the bill but because I want to get to the next item of 
business before us, which is the immigration bill, which I hope we can 
complete before July 4.
  As to the Employee Free Choice Act, as I think it is rather 
deceptively titled, it would remove the requirement that elections of 
union representation and leadership be conducted by secret ballot. The 
secret ballot, of course, is the ultimate protection for workers 
because it guarantees anonymity for every worker and protects workers 
from being submitted to coercion. Opposition to the bill even comes 
from the hometown newspaper of the bill's author, which notes in an 
editorial:

       [B]asing representation on whether a majority of signatures 
     has been collected is a bad idea. . . . A worker who refuses 
     to sign, or changes his or her mind and wants to revoke the 
     signature, immediately becomes a target for pressure or 
     retaliation by the union.

  That is from an editorial, ``Want a Union? Vote One In,'' the Boston 
Herald, February 11 of this year.
  Currently, if a union has signed cards representing 30 percent of the 
workers, it can inform the employer, and the employer can either accept 
unionization or request a secret ballot. The secret ballot must pass a 
50-percent threshold among employees for unionization to take effect. 
What is more fair? That is democracy. That is what this country has 
been built on. It is how we have operated in this country ever since 
our inception. The so-called Employee Free Choice Act would remove the 
option of a secret ballot and allow a majority vote of the signed cards 
to justify the certification instead.
  As someone who was elected to my office by secret ballot, I am 
hesitant to uproot a process that is a cornerstone of American 
democracy, as I mentioned, and has proven to work very well. If 
American voters were forced to choose their Representatives and 
Senators by being presented with a card and then told to choose in 
front of the candidate's own staffer, let's say, I think we would 
dismiss this as nothing more than political thuggery. Why should union 
representation be anything different? In some cases, union 
representation affects a person's health care and wages more directly 
than Congressmen do, so the integrity of these elections is important, 
and it must be upheld.
  Speaking of the American voters, it is interesting to note that, 
according to recent surveys, 79 percent of voters oppose this so-called 
Employee Free Choice Act. Further, 89 percent of voters believe a 
worker's vote on union organization should remain private.
  My friend, the Senator from Massachusetts, spoke of fairness and 
morality and mentioned various organizations. The one I remember was 
the church of which I am a member, the Presbyterian Church. I am a 
Presbyterian, and I don't think it is fair to remove the secret ballot, 
so I am not exactly sure what point that makes. It is best to stick 
with what has been the cornerstone of American democracy from our 
inception--the secret ballot; majority rule. It has been common 
practice for unions and employers for the better part of the 20th 
century and into this century, and it doesn't seem to me it needs to be 
changed now, especially with an extreme lack of compelling evidence to 
indicate that the current process has failed and in view of strong 
public and union opposition to doing away with the secret ballot. The 
Employee Free Choice Act crushes employee democracy, eliminates free 
choice for workers to unionize, and could expose workers to coercion; 
therefore, it should be defeated.
  As I said I will join my colleagues in voting against cloture, not 
because I fear the debate--I think that would be healthy--but because 
clearly it is not going to pass. We might as well move on to our next 
item of business, which is the immigration bill.
  I thank the ranking member.
  Mr. ENZI. I yield myself such time as I might consume.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I listened to the Senator from Maryland, and 
I need

[[Page 17205]]

to clear up some misunderstandings. I hope they are just 
misunderstandings. He said we should vote for cloture and let us 
debate. That really was not the intention of the other side of the 
aisle. If they really wanted us to have a debate, it would have gone 
through the regular process. This would have gone through the committee 
on which I am the ranking member, and we would have had a debate in 
committee. We would have had an opportunity for some amendments, maybe 
amendments that make the bill actually do what that side of the aisle 
is saying this bill would do.
  I am most upset that they keep saying that under this bill, employees 
can still get a vote. This bill does not say the employees can get a 
vote if they want a vote. It simply does not. That is not just me 
saying it. We had the Congressional Research Service take a look at the 
bill and see if it requires the National Labor Relations Board to 
certify a union without any vote--and it does. Not vote. Only if the 
union sends in cards for only 30 percent of the employees will a vote 
occur as it does under current law. But the union organizers don't 
bother trying when they only have 30 percent of the people signed up. 
It is my understanding they seldom go for a vote unless they have 75 
percent of the people signed up, and with 75 percent of the people 
signed up, in a secret ballot election they still lose 39 percent of 
the time.
  This bill does not guarantee a vote. An employee who prefers to make 
his choice in a secret ballot election is not entitled to one under 
this bill. It does not guarantee a vote. That is not just my opinion. 
The Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress folks who 
are dedicated to being impartial when they review bills, agree with me 
that there is no guarantee for a vote--unless there is only 30 percent 
of the people who sign up. That has been the rule for a long time.
  I wish to point out one more inconsistency--maybe more than one. I 
really am kind of floored at the list of civil rights groups the other 
side presented--that those people put their name down as wanting to do 
away with a secret ballot. I would be no more surprised if they 
suddenly were for a poll tax.
  Here is another little inconsistency in the debate here. There was a 
comment that there were 30,000 backpay orders for terminations during 
organizing drives. That is a misstatement. There were 30,000 backpay 
orders, but the vast majority of these claims have nothing to do with 
employee terminations during organizing drives. The vast majority of 
them have to do with bargaining claims and they are with members of 
already-established unions. For example, in 200, two thirds of the 
recipients of backpay orders were involved in a single contract 
interpretation dispute.
  Union studies we've heard cited claim that half the employees who are 
offered reinstatement were illegally terminated during an organizing 
drive. There is not any basis for that estimate, but even assuming it 
is true, the number of discharges is very low. For example, in 2000, 
using the unions' own estimate, there were 600 unlawful terminations. 
In that same year, over a quarter of a million employees were involved 
in National Labor Relations secret ballot elections--hardly the 1 in 5 
they are claiming; 600 out of a quarter of a million. That is about 1 
discharge for every 416 employees. And that figure includes a huge 
percentage of settled cases in which there was never any finding that 
the termination was unlawful to begin with.
  I have been fascinated by the charts we have seen, many of which--I 
am not sure what the sources were. We will be checking those and 
questioning them. But they really didn't have anything to do with 
taking the right to a secret ballot away from employees.
  We have forgotten to mention that I have passed the Workforce 
Investment Act through this body unanimously on two occasions and then 
been blocked from having a conference committee with the other end of 
the building. The Workforce Investment Act would have provided training 
for 900,000 jobs in this country--900,000 people who could have had a 
higher wage. How come we are not watching out for those folks? A lot of 
them would have gone through union apprenticeships. But, no, we are not 
going to do the Workforce Investment Act. Instead, let's concentrate on 
taking away the secret ballot.
  I have a lot more people coming over to speak on our side, people who 
really do think there needs to be debate on this issue. I am told that 
if we want to debate, we ought to vote for the cloture motion. That is 
interesting because we have already agreed to a unanimous consent 
request that will keep us from debating that after we vote for it--yes, 
there is an agreement that we will go to immigration after this vote no 
matter what the outcome. So there is no intention to debate this bill.
  It is very unusual. To me it is a realization by the other side that 
this bill to take away an employee's right to a secret ballot is not 
going anywhere.
  I reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I wanted to mention at this time, I know 
my friend from Iowa, Senator Harkin, is on his way, so I will speak for 
just a few moments until he comes about who is affected by this 
legislation.
  We hear these words used around here: ``free and open elections,'' 
``nonintimidation,'' ``under the existing program.'' Let me give you a 
few examples of what is happening in the real world.
  Here is Ivo Camilo, a vend pack operator at Blue Diamond Growers. 
This is from the hearing we had on February 8, 2007. These are his 
quotes.

       In group captive audience meetings and one-on-one talks, 
     company officials and supervisors threatened we could lose 
     our pensions and the other benefits if the union came in. We 
     told them we knew our rights. Less than a week later I was 
     fired.

  This is free and open election that we are talking about. This is the 
real world where the employer has the power, the power of intimidation.
  Then he continues: After they were found guilty and had to rehire me 
and a coworker, they fired another union supporter. Getting a union 
shouldn't be so hard.
  Here is another person: I thought the laws protected workers. I was 
wrong.
  Jose Guardado, a former meatpacker, Omaha, NE:

       My coworkers and I wanted a union at work to fight back 
     against the dangerous working conditions, the lack of 
     respect, and abusive treatment.

  Working conditions are one of the principal concerns that many of 
these workers have, not only the economic rights but the dangerous 
working conditions. He continues:

       The company terrified workers for standing up for their 
     rights. They threatened to fire union supporters, threatened 
     to close the plant, brought in a bunch of strange workers on 
     the day of the election, just to get them to vote against the 
     union.
       Then they began firing workers who had supported the union. 
     This company took away my livelihood, hurt my family, just to 
     keep us from organizing unions.

  This is what was happening in Nebraska.
  Here is a nurse who was pulled away--this is important because it is 
not just working conditions or the economic conditions, but it is the 
patients, what happens to the patients. Here is Linda Merfeld, Dubuque, 
IA:

       Fewer and fewer nurses have been taking care of more and 
     more patients. These staffing patterns jeopardize the quality 
     of care of our patients. In 2003, I joined with other nurses 
     to gain a voice on the job. Managers started holding meetings 
     one on one and in small groups with nurses to spread myths 
     and half-truths about forming a union. Not only were these 
     meetings mandatory--mandatory--the employer mandates that 
     these workers show up at the meeting, but the nurses were 
     pulled away from patient care to attend them.

  Nurses were pulled away from patient care to attend them. These are 
these free and open elections that we just heard referenced on the 
floor of the Senate.
  A nurse with 30 years of experience was fired for speaking out about 
patient care issues. No one should be fired for trying to have a voice 
in the decisions that affect their jobs and patient care.
  I see my friend from Iowa is here. I was just talking about Linda 
Merfeld from Dubuque, IA, Finley Hospital out

[[Page 17206]]

there, and how she was dismissed out there. I see the Senator from Iowa 
here on the Senate floor.
  I yield him 10 minutes. I believe at a quarter after 3 there is a 
previous order. Am I correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. KENNEDY. So I yield the time until quarter after 3.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa is recognized.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank Senator Kennedy for his great leadership on this 
issue and so many other issues that pertain to the rights of working 
families in America.
  There is a need for organized labor in our country. When workers join 
together and act collectively, they can achieve economic gains and 
worker safety that they would not be able to get if they negotiated 
individually.
  History tells us this: Union members were on the front lines fighting 
for the 40-hour workweek, paid vacations, 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 safety nets we have such as Social Security, 
Medicare, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
  But, unfortunately, continued forward progress is not inevitable. We 
have seen 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 in order to rebuild economic security for the 
middle class in America, we must first rebuild strong and vibrant 
unions; and to rebuild strong unions, we must first reduce the 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 resulted in increased union participation.
  But, of course, this is all just common sense. If you reduce the 
barriers to workers joining unions, more workers will join. What does 
that mean? Well, as the study made clear, by passing this Employee Free 
Choice Act, by making it easier for workers to band together, more than 
3\1/2\ million Americans would be able to secure health coverage, more 
than 3 million 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 lack health insurance, that 
is including 251,000 Iowans, and even those who get it find it covers 
less and less. This should not be happening in America. When 
productivity rises, everyone should see a fair share of the 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; but 
median CEO pay at the 350 largest firms rose 150 percent over the same 
period.
  In my home State of Iowa, real median household income fell by 3.4 
percent between 1995 and 2005, at the same time productivity increased. 
So workers are working and becoming more productive, but they are not 
getting any of their fair share.
  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 on how to do things better, employers benefit also.
  Union employees take pride in their work and they work to get more 
training. They are happy to help find other efficiencies in the 
operation because they know if they do they get a share of the savings.
  Unfortunately, the scaremongers out there are trying to tell us that 
the Employee Free Choice Act takes away employee rights to a secret 
ballot. Nothing can be further from the truth. This bill does not 
establish a new election process. It merely requires employers to honor 
the employee choice.
  Right now a company gets to decide whether it will recognize a 
majority signup vote. Well, why should just the company get to decide 
that? Why should employees not get to decide that? That is what this 
bill does. It levels the playing field. It says the employees get to 
decide as well as the company.
  If the employees want to use the National Labor Relations Board 
process, they can do that also. But we know from hard experience--the 
best teacher, hard experience--that process can be threatening and 
intimidating to many employees.
  So 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 a company can bust 
a union and cause major hardships for their employees.
  My brother, Frank, was a member of the UAW for 23 years. He worked at 
a plant called Delavan in West Des Moines, IA, for 23 years, a proud 
union member. He had a good job as a machinist, operating machines, 
made parts for the military, had good pay, good benefits, a good 
pension.
  In 23 years he had only missed 5 days of work. In 23 years the union 
never went on strike, never had a work stoppage. But then Mr. Delavan, 
the owner, decided to sell the plant. And he sold it to a group of 
investors. One of those investors bragged openly--it was in the Des 
Moines Register--if you want to see how to bust a union, come to 
Delavan, we will show you how. He openly bragged about it.
  What happened? Well, the investors took over. When the union contract 
came up, the company put forward conditions with which no union could 
ever agree. So what was the union forced to do? To go out on strike. 
For the first time ever in 23 years they went out on strike.
  Well, then what did the company do? They brought in replacement 
workers. Then what happened? There was a long bitter strike. I remember 
it well. After 1 year, as allowed by labor law, they had a 
decertification vote. Who votes to decertify? Well, the replacement 
workers. So they voted them out. They did not want to lose their jobs. 
So they voted to decertify.
  So after 23 years, my brother Frank was out of a job. He lost his 
union job with excellent pay, vacation, pension. Now, I ask you, what 
does a 54-year-old deaf man--and my brother was deaf. He is disabled. 
What does a 54-year-old deaf man do when he loses that kind of a job? I 
will tell you what he did. The only job he could get was as a janitor 
working in a store at night in a shopping mall--minimum wage, no union, 
no pension, no benefits, nothing.
  This is a real-life story, folks. That happened to my family. Not 
only did it just destroy my brother's livelihood, it broke his spirit. 
That is what happens when unions are weakened and destroyed, 
jeopardizing our middle-class way of life. That is what is happening 
today, my friends, to tens of millions of workers all over this 
country.
  I will close with this, from a December 2005 letter by 11 Nobel Peace 
Prize winners:

       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 and to give them a truly fair 
process.

                          ____________________