[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5083-5090]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                        EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from New

[[Page 5084]]

Hampshire (Mr. Hodes) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of 
the majority leader.
  Mr. HODES. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to be here today with other 
Members of the class of 2006, the caucus of the new Democratic Members 
of the House of Representatives, the majority makers, to talk today 
about the Employee Free Choice Act which we passed in this Chamber just 
a short time ago.
  I want to congratulate my colleagues on supporting H.R. 800, the 
Employee Free Choice Act, because it is an act that helps set a new 
direction for our country. If we can see final passage of H.R. 800, it 
will have a profound impact on working people in our country.
  I would like to start with an example of why the protection H.R. 800 
offers is so desperately needed. Last week I was home for a work week 
in my district in New Hampshire and I had the opportunity to meet one 
of my constituents, Emily, a nurse from Concord, New Hampshire. She was 
interested in improving working conditions at the nursing home where 
she worked and where she had worked for a long time.
  So on January 12 of this year, she reached out to a local union to 
talk about organizing the employees, the other nurses, who were working 
in her nursing home. Seventeen days later, despite an impeccable 
history of service and excellent reviews, never had a bad review, no 
problems with her personnel file, she was fired for what the home 
called ``insubordination.''
  Now, Emily works long hours in an industry that desperately needs 
qualified people like her. There is a nursing shortage. She loves her 
job and she cares about her patients and cares about the people she 
attends to, and the folks that she is working with are also my 
constituents. They are people who care about the rights of the people 
who are taking care of them and working with them.

                              {time}  1630

  Emily deserves to have an advocate for safe and healthy working 
conditions, and she deserves to have a voice in her workplace. It is 
people like Emily who need the Employee Free Choice Act. It would make 
what happened to her illegal, as it should be. It would also penalize 
employers who intimidate and harass workers who want to join together 
to negotiate their contracts.
  It is important to note that there are thousands of responsible 
employers in our country who are already complying with the Act on a 
voluntary basis, and that is a good thing. When a majority of their 
employees sign up to join a union, they recognize it. They do not 
discriminate against those who are interested in joining together to 
exercise what ought to be the rights of every worker in this country to 
collectively bargain.
  This law that we have passed, that we are hoping to see final passage 
of, simply brings the rest of America's employers into line with the 
many who already acknowledge that their employees deserve a voice in 
their workplace. This is a bill that honors the integrity of work and 
promotes effective dialogue, dialogue between employers and the 
employees who are working with them.
  Now, opponents of this bill, many of the people on the other side of 
this aisle, point to record corporate profits and soaring executive 
payouts as proof that we do not need the Employee Free Choice Act. 
Well, they are right about one thing. The rich in this country sure are 
getting richer, and in fact, while executive pay has rocketed to 350 
times what the average worker makes in a company, real wages for 
working people have remained stagnant.
  I have got a chart here today, and it is a wonderful thing because, 
as you know, this is one of the first sessions that we have had as the 
new Members in the Democratic majority, the new majority makers, doing 
what the 30-something Working Group has done so often on the floor over 
the past few years, educating the American people and our colleagues 
and each other about what is going on. They have pioneered the use of 
these kinds of charts, and I just want to point out what this chart 
shows.
  This chart shows the value of CEO pay and average worker production 
pay from 1990 to 2005. That is over a period of 15 years, and what it 
really shows is what would have happened to the pay of workers if their 
pay had kept up with what has happened to the pay of CEOs in America. 
You can see down here, right down to my far right where we start, we 
start together at the zero point, and this top line shows what would 
have happened to worker pay and where it would be now if it had risen 
at the same rate as CEO pay has risen.
  The bottom line shows what the actual worker pay, what has happened 
to actual worker pay. It has risen in this bottom red line very, very 
little. If it had kept pace with the CEO pay at this point, instead of 
an average actual worker pay, as shown here, of $28,315, and I want you 
to think about what it means to raise a family on $28,315 and pay for 
the kinds of things we have got to pay for today in this country in 
terms of gas, transportation, health care, schools, food and everything 
else.
  The average worker pay would be at $108,138. Clearly, this gap is 
something that we all ought to be concerned about.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HODES. I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, the reference that the gentleman from New Hampshire just 
made is an interesting segue into something that has been of very great 
concern to me, because often when we hear from those who are touting 
the glory of the American economy, and certainly, we are all proud of 
our American economy throughout history, but on many occasions, they 
say the economy is doing so well, the stock market is at record levels, 
or at least it was until earlier this week, and productivity is great 
and corporate profits are great, why is it that the middle class is 
complaining? And there is this disconnect between those people who say 
we look at these big numbers and statistics and the average lives of 
everyday Americans.
  One of the things that occurred to me when I was on the campaign 
trail all during last year, one of the incidents that I heard about I 
thought was a perfect example of why this disconnect sometimes exists.
  We had a situation in which a warehouse, a distributing company, with 
800 employees was sold to a company from out of State. The new employer 
came into that company and said, all of you employees have had your 
jobs terminated, they are now terminated, you can all reapply, you can 
reapply for 20 percent less salary and you will have no benefits.
  I said, well, now according to macroeconomics and statistics, there 
are going to be 800 new jobs created because these are all new jobs. 
Now there are 800 jobs lost. That is in another column somewhere, but 
the 800 jobs are created. Unemployment stays exactly the same because 
those same 800 people are employed, and yet 800 people had their lives 
devastated, their standard of living decreased by 30 or 35 percent, and 
yet all the numbers look rosy.
  So sometimes, as we all say, statistics can say whatever we want them 
to say, but in fact, when we talk about productivity and corporate 
profits and all of those things, it is oftentimes, and in most cases, 
does not reveal a lot of the stress that the middle class and the 
average working family are under, even though the administration touts 
these wonderful figures from above.
  Mr. HODES. Thank you. I am happy to yield now to my colleague, Betty 
Sutton from Ohio.
  Ms. SUTTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I 
thank him for the education that he is giving us about why it was so 
important that we passed this bill today.
  As you can see from this chart, the productivity in this country 
continues to rise. The workers are working harder, but unfortunately, 
the wages are staying the same. There are those who say that we are 
going to make it in this world if we can just get productivity up and 
up and up, but unfortunately, that chart is showing that that is not 
necessarily the case.

[[Page 5085]]

  What we are seeing go up and up and up is that income inequality that 
is existing, and more and more people falling from what used to be the 
middle class that was frankly built by organized labor in this country, 
fought for by the people who brought us great advancements like the 
weekend, the 40-hour work week, ended child labor laws and improved 
safety in working conditions, who fought for Social Security and 
disability and pension benefits for people, fought for the salt of the 
earth folks back in my district to help them have a life that would be 
good for themselves and their families.
  So I am very, very proud of what we did today in passing the Employee 
Free Choice Act, and I have to tell you, I had the pleasure before I 
came to Congress to represent some of these workers. I was a labor 
lawyer, and I have to say, there is nothing like fear, the fear of 
losing your job, and unfortunately, I had to see that fear quite a lot 
because when you are a labor lawyer, that is when people come to you, 
when they are being threatened or harassed because they are trying to 
organize or engage in union activity to try and uplift themselves, 
their families and their coworkers and they are being threatened 
because of that activity that they are going to lose their job.
  I will tell you, you shared with us one of the stories that came from 
your district. There is a gentleman back in northeast Ohio by the name 
of Dave who is a journeyman, and he is a highly skilled tradesman. When 
he got involved in trying to create a union in his workplace, the 
company went to great extents to keep it out. They put Dave, instead of 
using him for the trade that he plies in, highly in demand, they had 
him cleaning up cigarette butts at the company headquarters. They did 
not stop there either. In a long and sordid tale, that ended with 
Dave's wife actually being harassed so much by the company that she 
ended up hospitalized, all of this to keep out a union shop.
  I guess the beauty of this, if there is any in this story, is it does 
not have to be this way, and we have heard there are examples out there 
where industry giants have recognized and respected union membership or 
the employees who want to engage in union activity and have a union to 
represent them and to be like Cingular who are still doing very well in 
the market and to these like Kaiser Permanente.
  It does not have to be this way, and this bill actually takes us down 
the path to greater harmony in employment and employer and employee 
relationships. So I am really proud about this, and I would like to 
just yield over here to my friend Keith Ellison.
  Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for kicking it to me because, I 
just want to elaborate on one of those stories you just told. I think 
it is very important to tell the stories, and for the freshmen who come 
to this Congress as the difference makers, we have to tell the stories 
of the people because it is from the stories of the people that we make 
the difference.
  We have to remember that the difference that we are sitting here to 
make is rooted in the real life experiences of the people who sent us 
here to act, which is why I was so overjoyed to cast that ``yes'' vote. 
We saw a vote of 241-185. That is not close. We are here to send a 
message and to make a difference, and the Employee Free Choice Act is 
just that.
  But let me share this with you. Ten employees of the Brink's Home 
Security, Minneapolis branch, met in secret in 2004 to discuss problems 
with their employer. They feared for their jobs if the talk about the 
union became public, but they decided that a life with a living wage, 
some health care and a pension plan was worth the risk. They signed 
authorization cards to have the IBEW represent them. This was back in 
January 2005.
  The National Labor Relations Board certified the IBEW as the 
employees' bargaining agent, and that was in March 16, 2005. Contract 
negotiations began with Brink's that April and have dragged on for 
nearly 2 years now with no contract. This is a company whose average 
monthly income is $27 million.
  The employees have a simple question for their employer: Why should 
they work for a company who insists on contracts with its customers but 
not with their own employees? That is a question I think needs to be 
answered, and the answer lies in the Employee Free Choice Act because 
dragging it on, taking employees down a slow dance, dragging it out, 
not getting down to a real contract is something that the Employee Free 
Choice Act is going to remedy.
  But I am going to tell you all why it is that some employers resist 
the union, even after one has been authorized, and I think the answer 
lies in this simple chart.
  The Union Advantage, Median Weekly Earnings, what we see is unionized 
employees make an average of more than $800 a week, and yet nonunion 
are down here just above $600. That is quite a bit of difference, 200 
bucks a week. That is the difference between fixing the window that is 
broken, fixing the garage door, patching the roof, sending your child 
to school with good, decent clothing. That is the difference between a 
nice meal or, you know, spaghetti every single night. It is the 
difference between a quality of life and not.
  I just want to tell you all that I am proud to stand here with you. 
We are the difference makers. Therefore, we should make a difference, 
and I would like to recognize my good friend from Iowa, Congressman 
Braley.
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Minnesota. It 
was a great thrill for me to walk on to the floor today and fulfill a 
campaign promise I made, and that is by wearing a pair of 26-year-old 
boots that I first wore when I worked for the Pauchet County Road 
Department in my home county building bridges and roads and farm-to-
market roads for the people of the small county where I lived.
  One of the reasons I wore these boots today is because it is very 
personal to me what is happening in the Employee Free Choice Act.
  When I worked there during the summertimes back in the late 1970s and 
early 1980s, a lot of the people that I worked with would complain 
every year that they did not feel like they were getting a fair share 
for the work that they were performing, and they were always talking 
about whether or not they needed a union to represent them. I am very 
proud of the fact that now those same secondary road workers in my home 
county are represented by a union, and they benefit from collective 
bargaining in the workplace.
  One of the reasons that I wore these boots today was a reminder of 
the hard work and sacrifice made every day in this country by working 
men and women who are simply executing and exercising their 
constitutional right to freedom of association. That is what collective 
bargaining is all about, and that is what the Employee Free Choice Act 
does. It gives those hardworking men and women greater protection to 
exercise their freedom of association by providing for majority sign-
up, first contract mediation and binding arbitration and tougher 
penalties for violating the provisions of workers rights.

                              {time}  1645

  Now, let's talk about why this month is so significant. This month, 
we will celebrate in a couple of weeks the 75th anniversary of the 
Norris-La Guardia Act, one of the first acts that recognized as a 
matter of law that workers have a right under the Constitution to 
collectively organize and bargain with their employers. That act was 
sponsored by a Republican senator from my neighboring State of 
Nebraska, George Norris, who had the vision and the foresight to 
recognize that, unless we protect workers rights, none of us will reach 
our full potential as human beings.
  George Norris was one of those eight brave Members of Congress that 
John F. Kennedy featured in Profiles in Courage because of the 
courageous actions he took without regard to partisan politics, because 
it was the right thing to do. That is why we are here today to 
celebrate, 75 years later, a new protection for workers that will have 
just as much impact on their lives as the Norris-La Guardia Act did 75 
years ago by making sure that they

[[Page 5086]]

have protection in the workplace for labor negotiations in the 21st 
century.
  Seventy-five years ago, it was yellow-dog contracts that everybody 
was concerned about, which was a method that employers were using all 
over the country to say: You cannot get a job here unless you sign an 
agreement in advance not to join a union. That is how bad it was 75 
years ago. And yet, under the past 25 years, through the interpretation 
of the existing National Labor Relations Act by conservative judges, we 
have seen an erosion in the right of workers to collectively bargain, 
to organize, and to protect their rights in getting first contracts.
  That is why I was proud to be an original cosponsor of the Employee 
Free Choice Act, because there is another story to these boots that I 
am wearing. I wore a different pair of boots the first 3 years I worked 
for the Poweshiek County Road Department. And when I graduated from 
college and got accepted to law school, I thought I wasn't going to 
need those boots anymore, and the last day I worked that summer, I took 
my boots out in the yard and I lit them on fire and said good-bye to 
them.
  When I started law school, I lost my father and his parents within a 
3-month period of time, and I ended up going back and working for that 
same county road department after my first year of law school and I 
needed a new pair of boots. These are the boots that I wore that year. 
I made a vow to myself I was never going to get rid of them; and that 
is why I am proud to be with my new members in the Democratic class of 
2006 here on the floor celebrating this historic day for workers of the 
United States. And I am so proud to be here with you.
  Mr. HODES. I thank the gentleman. That is a remarkable story. I am 
glad you kept your boots. I am glad your boots got you here to be with 
us to share those stories.
  And what you are talking about gets me thinking about the history and 
how we got here. Think about how those in my generation; I am 55, on my 
way to 56. I am one of those baby boomers who was born at the beginning 
of the 1950s, grew up through the 1950s and 1960s. And think about what 
it meant in this country for hard-working families to have organized 
labor on their side. Think about the factories, the manufacturing, what 
it meant to us as kids to have ``Made in the U.S.A.'' And what the 
contribution organized labor and the growing rights of working families 
meant to this country.
  This country and its great prosperity that some are enjoying today 
was built on the back of an organized labor movement throughout the 
20th century. And in my particular State in New Hampshire, some people 
say that the organized labor movement isn't as large as it is in other 
places. But it is certainly vibrant.
  But it is not just the organized labor movement we are here to talk 
about, because really, the Employee Free Choice Act is about all 
working families. It is about all who are in the middle class or want 
to get into the middle class that are so important to this country, 
because today, the squeeze on the middle class is real. Working people 
in this country have endured blow after blow, including astronomical 
health care costs. They are up 50 percent a year from the year 2000 to 
the year 2007. They have been going up at astronomical double digit 
rates. Think about fuel costs from the year 2000 to today, going up in 
double digit rates. Ever increasing tuitions. College tuition at public 
colleges is up 40 percent over the past 5 years. We have seen spikes in 
housing prices, inflation is on the march. And now, in the first years 
of this administration, there was terrible job loss as we saw this 
flight of jobs away from our shores and going offshore. Now, some of 
the jobs have come back. But what we have seen is the great jobs have 
been replaced by people taking part-time jobs, by more people working 
longer hours, more people working harder, more two-income families. 
That means more caretakers out of the house, leaving more kids to fend 
for themselves.
  So working families and workers are working harder, they are working 
longer, and they are sometimes working many, many multiple jobs.
  So when we hear the statistics about the rise in productivity, it is 
true, American workers and working families have contributed to a great 
rise in corporate productivity. And this chart talks about U.S. 
productivity and wages and the change from the year 2000. It is a 
pretty simple chart. And what it shows is, very simply, median income 
right down there, the lower line of median income has actually declined 
over this period of time. Median income in real wages has actually 
declined the productivity of American workers and the contribution to 
the profits that have gone to the very top at the wage scale. That top 
2 percent who have really enjoyed a terrific time over the past 6 years 
has gone up, and it has been fueled by more people working harder and 
harder, more people working longer hours, more people working double 
jobs with fewer benefits and a greater squeeze.
  So the Employee Free Choice Act is really a matter of fundamental 
fairness. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about 
leveling the playing field so that our workers who are dealing with 
their employers have a chance to talk in an organized way, have a 
voice, have some fundamental fairness when it comes to bargaining for 
the kinds of wages that they need to make a living, to send kids to 
school, to put the food on the table, to get from their jobs to do the 
things that we know are important to building a prosperous economy.
  At this point I will throw it over to John Yarmuth.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my distinguished colleague. And you talked about 
kind of historic developments and how we got to where we are.
  One of the things that we also lose sight of sometimes is that the 
widespread concentration and consolidation of corporations in this 
country has also made it more of an unlevel playing field for the 
American worker. When we have a corporation, we might have a small 
business that is then bought out by a larger business that is then 
bought out by some corporation from four states away, and all of a 
sudden not only is that worker detached economically from the bosses, 
but he is also detached geographically from those bosses. And he or she 
is not even able to negotiate anymore with the people who set the 
policy for the corporation.
  So as we have had this massive and widespread consolidation of 
corporate power in the country, we have also seen the playing field get 
more and more unlevel for the average worker. And it is not like a 
century ago when employers had two or three employees. Now, there are 
thousands and thousands of employees, massive policies, corporate 
stock, shareholder driven motivation to make more and more profit. And 
the power of the individual worker to shape his or her own destiny is 
reduced even more.
  And one of the things that I think is unfortunate about the debate we 
had today is we tend to speak in polarizing terms, and it makes it seem 
like we who supported this act think that every corporation is evil and 
every employer is evil and that every union is without sin.
  And of course, that is not the case. And, in fact, in my district, 
there are numerous examples in which corporations and their unions have 
dealt with the issues of the economy in an incredibly cooperative 
manner. And when times got rough, the employers went to the union and 
said, ``Here is the situation.'' They were transparent, they explained 
the situation. The unions said, ``We don't want the company to go 
bankrupt. We want to help.'' They made concessions. They agreed to 
match wages that may have been in other lower priced settings. And the 
converse has happened. When we have had good times and the employers 
say, ``Wow, we have got all this work. Let's renegotiate the contract 
because we need to get more employees in here and we need help.'' So it 
can work.
  And I get the impression that when those people who oppose the 
legislation that we passed today, and I haven't had the opportunity yet 
to say how proud I am of what we did and I am extremely proud. But 
those people, when they oppose this bill, it seems to me they are

[[Page 5087]]

saying we want to protect the employers who aren't good because the 
employers who are good and bargain in good faith and treat their 
employees well will have no fear from this legislation, they will 
welcome it, because they are already dealing with their employees on a 
good-faith basis. It is those people who don't bargain in good faith 
that we need to pass this bill to resolve.
  Ms. SUTTON. That is exactly right. As I mentioned, there are industry 
giants who are working well with their employees. And just as in your 
district, in my district there have been unions that have sacrificed 
for the prosperity and, frankly, just to keep the business going 
another year, another day, another month. And when times turn good, the 
hope is, that ongoing relationship carries them all through.
  I mentioned that I was a labor lawyer, and one of the toughest 
things, but probably the most common thing I had to do was try to find 
ways that we could work things out together, because we really are in 
it together. And this bill was just about putting us in a place where 
we could work constructively together.
  So, instead of having those employers out there who would choose 
perhaps instead of working with their employees to a better future, and 
instead choose to work against them, it is about leveling that out and 
progress for all.
  So I see the gentleman there has pulled up a chart that is labeled 
``Myths.'' And we heard a lot today on this House floor that, frankly, 
just did not represent the facts, and I would just urge the gentleman 
to kind of correct the record there.
  Mr. HODES. I am happy to do that. I think first, before we talk about 
some of the myths and the real facts, let me just turn it over to 
Congressman Ellison.
  Mr. ELLISON. Thank you, Congressman Hodes. I am looking forward to 
correcting some of those myths, too. It is very important, Mr. Speaker, 
that the public knows the truth from the myths.
  But before we go back to correcting the Record and making everything 
clear, I just want to tell another story, if I may, because I think it 
is important again for us to root our presentation in real-life 
experience.
  In 2003, employees of Walker Methodist Health Center in Minneapolis 
voted 61 percent to unionize. They did so in part because of their 
disgust with the health center that punished them for taking time off 
to be with ill family members. Quite ironic for a health center.
  Anyway, the employees were immediately harassed and intimidated; they 
had all kinds of problems that they had to deal with because of their 
effort to unionize. And today, management continues to appeal the 2003 
election, despite losing every appeal with the National Labor Relations 
Board. But their appeals have prevented the will of the workers to have 
their union recognized. And I think again, it is very important that we 
focus on what real people are dealing with.
  Meanwhile, employees acting on behalf of their union have been 
harassed and disciplined, as I said, even fired for their union 
activity even though they voted and have gotten the union by a 2-1 
margin. And I think it is time for companies like the ones we have 
talked about to step up to the plate and recognize the union. It is 
time to have something like the Employee Free Choice Act to make there 
be a vehicle to have a contract.
  And I just want to associate myself with the comments of Congressman 
Yarmuth. It is absolutely right that there are many employers who 
understand the importance of respecting the right to organize. We don't 
want to demonize them. What we are looking for is all Americans, 
workers and employees, to do well. The great Senator Paul Wellstone is 
known for saying, ``We all do better when we all do better.'' So when 
the employers do better, workers should also do better, and, all 
around, Americans should say the common good is a good idea and we 
should continue to focus on it.
  Mr. BRALEY. I know that you share my concern of protecting workers 
rights as an element of protecting human rights. One of the first 
things that I did when I started running for Congress was do as much as 
I could to educate myself about the history of the labor movement in my 
State of Iowa, and one of my friends presented me with a book that 
cataloged those things.
  One of the most striking stories that I read about was an African 
American worker at John Deere who decided to make a living driving a 
truck instead, and drove with a group of other truckers who were part 
of a union to the State of Illinois where they stopped to get lunch. 
This African American truck driver was told he could not eat lunch in 
the same restaurant with his white co-workers. And his white co-workers 
from this labor organization informed the owner of that restaurant in 
no uncertain terms that either they would all be served together, or he 
would experience what it was like to see a semi drive through the front 
door of his establishment.

                              {time}  1700

  One of the things that we all know is that when we protect workers' 
rights, we are really advancing the cause of human rights, and I was 
just asking if you could comment on that, and what role, what we did 
today, how that played in moving the cause of human rights.
  Mr. ELLISON. Well, Congressman, I want to thank you for that 
question. It is an excellent question. Labor rights are human rights.
  I think it is important to know that Martin Luther King, who lost his 
life in Memphis, Tennessee, April 4, 1968, was actually helping 
sanitation workers gain their rights in an effort to unionize and have 
collective bargaining. That union, which was mostly African American 
membership, received help from their main-stream headquarters union, 
which was in New York, but got a lot of help that way.
  It is important to remember that when Martin Luther King lost his 
life that the union drive and the strike did not end. It continued on, 
and the strike was successful. It is important to know that the right 
of human dignity, human rights and labor rights, are inextricably 
linked together.
  One of the first things that my father and mother would tell me as a 
child is that Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, is a place where 
Walter Reuther of the UAW and Martin Luther King of the Southern 
Christian Leadership Conference walked down the street arm in arm with 
Reverend C.L. Franklin demanding labor rights, human rights, civil 
rights. It is all one thing, and that is what we have all got to be 
about.
  Mr. HODES. What we are talking about is fundamental American values. 
We are talking about values of equal opportunity and fairness and what 
lifts us all up together.
  One of the common misconceptions that is sometimes advanced when 
people have opposed the Employee Free Choice Act, or they stand in 
opposition to organized labor or the rights of working class families 
for fairness, is that somehow it is damaging to business if the 
employees in a business place come together and are allowed to express 
themselves and advocate for their cause that there is great fear out 
there, but there is really no good reason for that kind of fear.
  Let me tell you another story that comes to mind. On the same trip 
back home last week, I had occasion to meet another group of workers. 
They were cameramen at the local statewide television station. The 
local statewide television station is a wonderful station.
  I have enjoyed being on the station. I know the folks on it; they are 
good people. They do a great job of reporting. They are a part of an 
organization that owns a number of stations. They are a good-sized 
business.
  When a couple of years ago these cameramen decided that they wanted 
to have a voice together, join together to be able to talk about some 
reasonable suggestions and thoughts and fairness so that they could 
have a voice to talk to the management of the station, which had been 
purchased, and they wanted to come together to talk, they

[[Page 5088]]

were surprised to find that management, probably out of fear of what it 
meant, was using tactics that some might call intimidation, but I might 
tend to see more as fear based on wanting to protect something that 
they didn't know about.
  One of the things I say to people sometimes is that people prefer the 
misery of the known to the mystery of the unknown. When you haven't had 
an organization come together for employees to talk with management, 
sometimes that can provoke the kind of fear of what that means.
  So what happened was over the course of a couple of years, the 
management in this organization would take camera people aside by ones 
and by twos, and they would say things like if you come together to 
form this union, this company is going to be in real trouble. We are 
going to lose money. If we lose money, we are going to have to lay 
people off. If we have to lay people off, it might very well start with 
you.
  They did this over a period of time by ones and by twos and delayed 
the process, and delayed the process and delayed the process. I have to 
tell you, when it finally came to pass that these folks got together 
and were able to get their union, without the benefits of the Employee 
Free Choice Act, which would have made it much easier, which would have 
made it fairer, which would have made it smarter for them to get 
together by simply having a majority of them get together to sign the 
cards and form the union and have the union recognized, they didn't 
have that process at the time. So they were delayed when they did come 
together and get their union and sit down and talk with management.
  You would be surprised, I think, but I wasn't, to say that the 
company didn't suffer. Their profits aren't down. They are treating 
each other fairly. They are having a great dialogue together. But this 
company is doing just fine. In fact, since that time, unions have been 
formed, they have had productive discussions. Really what it is, it is 
about the respect. It is the respect for the dignity of working people.
  If we cannot give working people in this country the dignity and 
respect that they deserve in the workplace, then what kind of country 
are we. That is why the Employee Free Choice Act that we passed today, 
on a bipartisan basis, I might add, with some of our colleagues who had 
the courage to join us from the other side of the aisle, that is why 
when we passed the Employee Free Choice Act in this House. We are 
expressing something about the new direction that we are going to take 
this country, one in which working families are accorded the dignity 
and respect that we know as Americans they deserve.
  I give it back to Brother Braley.
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. One of the things we are talking about in terms 
of these myths is really the fundamental shift that happened here 
today, that now, under the Employee Free Choice Act, it will be as 
difficult to certify a union as it is to decertify a union, because one 
of the myths that you have up there is that somehow by passing the 
Employee Free Choice Act, it will be harder for companies that no 
longer share the support of the workforce to have that union represent 
them in a collective bargaining agreement, that somehow what we did 
today will make it more difficult to decertify the union. In reality, 
it has always been fairly easy to decertify a union and nothing about 
the Employee Free Choice Act changes that.
  So I would ask my friend from Kentucky if he could talk about some of 
the other myths that we heard today and throughout the week during the 
discussion that we know aren't based on fact and aren't based upon 
changing anything about the law that currently exists under the 
National Labor Relations Act.
  Mr. YARMUTH. I thank my colleague. Before I get to that, I want to 
get to another part of the myth, and this is related to my colleague 
from New Hampshire, who talked about kind of the stigma attached to 
unions, and so much, I think, of what the stigma that is attached to 
unions and also the psychology of management is that if you are an 
entrepreneur, if you are building a company and you are running that 
company, then you think you should have a say in exactly how it has 
been run.
  I have been an entrepreneur, my late father was, my two brothers are; 
and I know the mentality, that you started something and all of a 
sudden you think you should have nobody else telling you the rules. You 
should be able to set all the rules, and ultimately that is a self-
defeating proposition because the only way to get the buy-in of your 
employees and to get really loyal employees is to treat them as part of 
the entire endeavor that you are involved in.
  I know that a lot of people in this country tend to form their 
impressions of certain dynamics in society by what we see in the 
movies, and a lot of people probably look at ``On the Waterfront'' and 
old movies and say these are the unions that we are threatened with.
  I had a great experience at the beginning of the last campaign. I had 
a meeting with six or seven labor union leaders, and I took my son, who 
was then 22. We had a wonderful 2-hour meeting in which we talked about 
all the issues from all different perspectives.
  On the way home, my son, who had never been exposed to any union 
activity, said to me, Dad, that was really interesting. The only thing 
I ever knew about unions was what I saw in the movies. These guys 
aren't at all like those people in the movies. These guys are really 
smart.
  Of course, that's the truth, and not only were they and are they 
smart people, but they also understand economics. They also understand 
the pressures that are on employers as well as on employees.
  As I said before, there are all sorts of myths that permeate the 
labor management debate in this country, and most of them are not true. 
We have several we have heard throughout this debate on the floor, 
including the one my colleague from Iowa discussed, the whole notion of 
the secret ballot and eliminating the secret ballot.
  Of course, this law does not eliminate the secret ballot if the 
employees choose to have a union organization process that involves a 
secret ballot. They are perfectly entitled to do so. It is just that 
they are not burdened with that exercise if they don't want to be.
  This seems to be the height of fairness. We are not denying them the 
secret ballot. If they want a secret ballot, the majority of the 
employees, they can have a secret ballot. But we haven't heard that 
from the other side.
  Mr. HODES. You know, 69 percent of Americans are supportive of what 
we did here today. I think the secret ballot issue is an important one. 
I just want to highlight it because it is myth number 1 on this chart 
which I have up here that the Employee Free Choice Act somehow 
abolishes the National Labor Relations Board secret ballot election 
process.
  What this really does, what we are doing today, and what we have 
done, is it gives employees a choice between using the NLRB election 
process or the majority sign-up process. Under current law, employees 
can use the majority sign-up, but the employer can veto that majority 
employee choice and force the employees through the broken, 
undemocratic NLRB election process, which is open to employer delay, 
intimidation, and coercion.
  It is the kind of thing I was talking about when I talked about those 
constituents of mine from New Hampshire who had to form a union and had 
to deal with their organization. Under this act, under H.R. 800, the 
Employee Free Choice Act, employees can still petition for an election. 
But if a majority signed cards saying they want a union now, they get a 
union, and the employer must respect that choice.
  So somehow this myth out there that what we have passed is somehow 
undemocratic could not be further from the truth. It opens up choice, 
it makes the process easier, it reduces the kind of temptation to 
intimidate and harass or coerce that we have seen, and it promotes 
better dialogue and more fairness in the workplace.

[[Page 5089]]

  I now hand it over to the Congressman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).
  Mr. ELLISON. Congressman Hodes, I just want to agree with you there. 
The fact is that this Employee Free Choice Act actually provides more 
opportunity, more choice, not less. It is critical to understand that.
  Again, I want to recognize good employers who work cooperatively with 
their unions, but I also don't want to turn my eyes to the fact that 
there has been intimidation, but by and large, not on behalf of the 
union. In fact, I have a whole stack of horror stories that go along 
with workers trying to organize.
  But I wanted to just talk a little bit, before we begin to wind up, 
about how important the Employee Free Choice Act is for working-class 
and middle-class prosperity. I want to start out my comments just by 
pointing out that over the last 6 years of this administration we have 
seen poverty increase by about 1 million people every year.
  Right now we have got about 39 million Americans who live below what 
the government calls the poverty line, 39 million. That is a lot of 
people, and that is unacceptable in America.
  Now, you might say we are not talking about poor folks, we are 
talking about workers. Well, let me tell you what a worker is. A worker 
is a person who works hard every day and makes a decent salary. Let me 
tell you what a poor person is, a worker who lost their job and hasn't 
gotten their paychecks for a little while.
  So the ranks of the poor and the ranks of the working and middle 
class are tied together. So many people are only a few paychecks away, 
if not one paycheck away, from disaster. So we cannot ignore the rise 
in poverty during the Bush administration and say that it is not 
connected to workers' rights. It is directly connected.
  We also have to talk about how the ranks of the uninsured have 
increased every year during the Bush administration. This, again, is 
tightly tied to the fortunes of the working class people, our folks. We 
have to be clear that if we have an Employee Free Choice Act in which 
people can organize and people can form together, build a union, what 
they can do is they can parlay that organizational power into greater 
benefits for American people.
  We can now begin to form the basis of a real universal health care 
system, a system in which everybody can have health care in our 
society. We can parlay it into a real credit reform system where people 
are not subject to the vicissitudes of what some creditor lending 
institution wants to do with regard to lending practices, payday loans, 
all these kinds of things that sort of eat away at what working-class 
people are doing.
  They can pull up, they can build a little fence around the fortunes 
of the working class, which I think are so important, and really sort 
of redirect the focus of our country towards the common good, which is 
where it should be.

                              {time}  1715

  So let me just say that the myths are important to address and I am 
glad we have done that. But I just want to say that this Employee Free 
Choice Act is giving working people a hedge, a fence, a wall, a 
protection in order to improve the lives of everyday people.
  And I just want to turn our attention to this chart I have to my left 
which shows real median household income. For those of you who don't 
know the difference between real and unreal, it just means adjusted for 
inflation.
  When we take inflation into account, we see that the median household 
income of Americans has dipped between 2000 and now and has gone down 
precipitously, dramatically, and we cannot allow it to continue.
  If you have unionized workers, they don't need us to go pass a 
minimum wage law. They don't need us to think about some of these basic 
things. They do it for themselves. They have the power in their own 
hands when they can organize.
  Mr. HODES. Mr. Speaker, let me turn it over to Congressman Braley for 
some closing thoughts. As we have a few minutes left in this, our first 
session as members of the Class of 2006, the majority makers, members 
of the new Democratic freshman class, are going to come to the floor of 
the House on a regular basis to talk with the American people and with 
each other and with any of our colleagues from across the aisle who 
choose to come and talk about the issues that are facing us in the day. 
I would be happy to hear from you and have some of your closing 
remarks.
  Mr. BRALEY of Iowa. Well, I think one of the things that we deal with 
every day in this hallowed body are issues of human dignity. And to me, 
that is the essence of the vote we took today on the Employee Free 
Choice Act. It is not about giving one side in the bargaining 
negotiations an unfair advantage over the other side. It is about 
leveling the playing field so that all people have the means to reach 
their full potential as human beings. I believe with all my heart that 
that is what the Employee Free Choice Act helps to achieve.
  I think it gives workers trying to enter into their first contracts 
greater assurances that their rights are going to be protected and 
their voices are going to be heard. I think that it puts more teeth 
into protecting those workers when employers choose to engage in 
tactics that have been prohibited under existing law, but have not been 
enforced as they should have been. And I think that when the rules are 
clear, and the penalties are clear, then everyone involved in the 
collective bargaining process has greater motivation to do the right 
thing. And, after all, that is what this is all about, giving people on 
both sides of the negotiating process the motivation, the incentive to 
do the right thing, to treat each other with dignity and respect and to 
give them the best opportunity to achieve a good and profitable 
business venture that benefits the employer and the employee.
  To me, that is what today's vote was all about, and that is why I am 
hopeful that the bill will be sent to the Senate and receive the same 
type of respect and debate that it did in this body, and that it will 
get sent to the President for his signature and be signed into law, so 
that all workers in this country will know that they have the 
protection that they deserve to reach their full potential as human 
beings.
  Mr. HODES. Mr. Yarmuth, any final thoughts?
  Mr. YARMUTH. Yes, I do. I associate myself with the remarks of my 
distinguished colleague from Iowa and also from Minnesota and Mr. 
Hodes, you as well.
  We face a situation in this area of labor management relations, just 
like many of the other situations we face in this country, where 
oftentimes, the problems are very complex and there are no perfect 
answers. And I don't think that any one of us here today thinks that 
this is a perfect answer, the Employee Free Choice Act, or that we are 
going to in any way, in one step of this body, correct the inequities 
in the economy. We always are looking for the best possible answer. We 
are trying to be fair. We are trying to make life better for the most 
people we can and the greatest number of people we can. And this does 
that.
  As the world gets bigger and bigger, as corporations consolidate and 
get bigger and bigger, the power of every man and woman to determine 
his or her own fate gets less and less. And in our small way today, a 
significant way, but in a small way, I think we have begun to reverse a 
slide of imbalance in the economy and a slide to total inequity and 
helplessness on the part of American workers.
  During my many stops at picnics last summer, I ran into a man who was 
in his early 50s, and he had worked for Winn-Dixie, the grocery 
company, 23 years. And Winn-Dixie had gone out of business. They had 
gone out of business because of competitive reasons. Nobody was going 
to help that. And yet, he had built up $150,000 in his pension fund. 
And when Winn-Dixie went out of business, he was left with $30,000, so 
he had lost 80 percent of his life savings because of the situation 
with Winn-Dixie.
  He was forced to take another job, a job he was not prepared for, not 
physically or emotionally, probably, and he was struggling to get by.

[[Page 5090]]

  But the point of the story is, that we are not going to be able to 
correct every wrong and right and save everybody's pension or protect 
everyone's livelihood through our actions. But we can take steps, when 
we see institutionalized imbalance in the economy, an imbalance of 
power, particularly when it is balanced against the working men and 
women, we can take steps like the Employee Free Choice Act and make a 
difference and make a difference for millions of Americans.
  So once again, I salute this body today for the action that it took. 
It is a significant step on behalf of the American working man and 
woman, and I am proud to be a part of this body today.
  Mr. HODES. In closing, I just want to take 1 minute to thank my 
colleagues, Mr. Braley, Mr. Yarmuth, Mr. Ellison, Ms. Sutton, who was 
here earlier. I want to thank you all for coming to the floor of the 
United States House of Representatives to work on this bill and to 
stand together today to talk about the importance of this bill to the 
American people.
  And I just want to close by pointing out that the issues of economic 
and social justice that we are dealing with, and we are now dealing 
with a Democratic majority, are not partisan issues. We were joined in 
passing a rise in the minimum wage by our colleagues across the aisle. 
We were joined today by our colleagues across the aisle.
  The American people sent us here to work in a bipartisan fashion, and 
we have worked in a bipartisan fashion, and will continue to because 
these aren't issues of left or right. These are American issues. And 
when we respect the dignity of working families and help the middle 
class in this country, everybody is helped from the top to the bottom.
  So I congratulate my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who 
aren't here right now, but I want to congratulate them for coming today 
and working with us to pass this.
  And I urge everybody who may be listening and may be watching today 
to voice their concern to the Senate. Reach out to the administration, 
and let them know your thoughts, that this is an American issue that 
respects fundamental values of dignity and respect for working people, 
and that working together, we can lift the middle class, we can help 
this country continue prosperity and distribute fairness in a way that 
helps us all.
  I thank you all for being here today.

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