[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5090-5094]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          OFFICIAL TRUTH SQUAD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Walz of Minnesota). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentlewoman from North 
Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this recognition and the 
opportunity to come in as the Official Truth Squad usually does. I 
didn't bring the Official Truth Squad banner with me today, but I have 
heard enough of the session that has just gone on.
  I see that the 2006 class didn't take very long to be brainwashed by 
their colleagues who were already here.
  I will tell you, I think that maybe every Congress has a theme to it. 
And I would say the theme of this Congress is hypocrisy.
  I served in the State Senate for 10 years, and I have often commented 
on this. We were never allowed to tell an untruth on the floor of the 
State Senate because we would get called down for it. But it happens 
here on the floor of the House every day, and it is truly an amazing 
situation to see, and I continue to be astonished by that occurrence 
when I see it here.
  I want to talk a little bit and give another side of the story of 
this bill that passed here today called the Employee Free Choice Act. 
We have been calling it the Employee Intimidation Act. And what I find 
most astonishing is that our colleagues on the other side are so 
willing to knock down one of the cornerstones of our democracy, and 
that is the right to a private ballot.
  For centuries, Americans, regardless of race, creed or gender, have 
fought for the right to vote and the right to keep that vote to 
themselves. Now, just months after a new House majority was elected in 
435 separate elections, it has just voted to strip men and women of 
this country of their right to a private ballot in the workplace. I 
don't know what could be more undemocratic than that. Again, it just 
seems to me that hypocrisy is running rampant among the House majority.
  In recent polls, almost 9 in 10 voters, 83 percent, agreed that every 
worker should continue to have the right to a federally supervised 
secret ballot election when deciding whether to organize a union; 80 
percent also oppose the Employee Free Choice Act; 71 percent of union 
members agreed that the current secret ballot process is fair; and 78 
percent said Congress should keep the existing secret ballot election 
process in place and not replace it with another process. But that kind 
of feedback means absolutely nothing to the majority in this House. 
They are bound and determined to pay off the people who help put them 
in the majority and they are going to do that.
  Chuck Canterbury, National President of the Fraternal Order of 
Police, issued a press release saying that, ``without the anonymity of 
the secret ballot, the Fraternal Order of Police would probably not 
exist today.''
  The only way to guarantee worker protection from coercion and 
intimidation is through the continued use of secret ballot election so 
that personal decisions about whether to join a union remain private.
  Even the AFL-CIO has expressed support for secret ballot elections 
when workers are presented the opportunity to decertify a union. The 
union argued that ``private ballot elections provide the surest means 
for avoiding decisions which are the result of group pressure and not 
individual decisions.''
  Now, they have expressed their opinion for that, but then sometimes 
they express a different opinion. And we know that the Federal courts 
have repeatedly stated that secret ballot elections are the most 
foolproof method of ascertaining whether a union has the support of a 
majority of the employees.
  In reality, the card check process does not give employees a choice 
at all. Instead, it gives union organizers the choice of whether to 
organize through a card check process. And during this card check 
process, those employees who do not want a union do not have a voice 
and are, in effect, removed from the process of making decisions about 
their own jobs.
  Now, I think it would be useful to talk a little bit about who does 
want this bill, and we have a list. Acorn, which has been very much in 
the news in the last few months and fined thousands and thousands of 
dollars for illegal election practices all over the country. That is a 
really wonderful group to have supporting this bill. I can't understand 
how the people on the majority side want to be associated with such a 
group.
  And then the AFL-CIO, Americans for Democratic Action, Center for 
American Progress, the Democrat Leadership Council.
  But there is a group that has been left off this list, I noticed, and 
that is very important to put on.

                              {time}  1730

  It is the Communist Party. The Communist Party of the United States 
favors this bill. And I think it is very important that the American 
public understand that. Our folks are aligning themselves with the 
Communist Party. The people who support this bill are aligning 
themselves with the Communist Party of the United States. Now, I would 
be a little bit concerned about that if I were them, but it doesn't 
seem to bother them in the least that they advocate communistic 
practices.
  In fact, in our committee meeting last week or about 10 days ago when 
we discussed this bill in the Education and Labor Committee, I made a 
couple of comments about how struck I was by the comments that were 
being made. The folks were trying to make the argument that not 
allowing the secret ballot is more democratic than having the secret 
ballot. And I commented

[[Page 5091]]

that the illusion that came to me was that of certain people in a 
circus. I have often heard the Congress described as a circus. And I 
said that day I could understand people calling the Congress a circus, 
and I knew exactly where the Democratic members of that committee would 
be in the circus if they were part of the circus and we all had a 
place. They would be the contortionists because I had never heard 
people do such a job on manipulating the English language to make it 
sound like no secret ballot made more sense than the secret ballot in 
terms of the democratic process.
  I mean, you have got to be a real contortionist with the language to 
be able to do that. It reminds me of the book ``1984,'' where they 
rewrite history and white is black and black is white, and it was a 
truly amazing display of illogic, not logic, but illogic.
  And then they went on to say, and I don't have the exact quotes but I 
can paraphrase: it is a real shame that there are some people in this 
country who make too much money, and we shouldn't allow that to happen. 
We shouldn't allow people to make too much money; so we have to figure 
out a way to take some of the money from people that we think are 
making too much money and give it to people who are not making enough.
  And, again, that struck me as the definition of communism. And I 
said, That has been tried in lots of other places, and it has never 
worked. It has always failed, and we can see it failing.
  Here we have one of the strongest economies that has existed in the 
history of this country, and people are doing extremely well, which is 
one reason, I think, that people aren't joining the union. We know that 
union growth is going down, and that is one of the main reasons that 
they are pushing this, so that they can intimidate people into signing 
these cards, not have a secret ballot, and force people into belonging 
to a union. And that is the reason that they are doing this. And as 
they gained the majority in the House, they see this as one of the big 
ways again to pay back the unions who helped put them here.
  A lot of people today and in the committee talked about personal 
experiences, and I haven't talked any about any of my personal 
experiences as far as the unions are concerned. But my father, when he 
was working, was forced to join unions and he had a visceral negative 
response to that. It offended him tremendously that he could not go out 
and on his own get a job and be able to work at that job without having 
to go through a union boss, pay union dues, give up a lot of his hard-
earned money to the unions in order for him to get a job. And he was 
very, very much opposed to the unions because he had seen that 
intimidation personally. He had seen money being taken away from him 
and being misused when he could have used that for his family. We 
haven't heard too much about that on the floor today. We have heard a 
lot about other kinds of things, but we haven't heard much about that.
  We have heard, though, that there has been no union violence, no 
harassment, no intimidation. Well, that isn't true. There are at least 
300 incidences of violence perpetrated by the unions on either their 
members or on people who are not members but coming from the union. 
Three hundred per year for the last 30 years. And I am just going to 
give a few examples of that:
  West Virginia miner shot dead for working during a strike. Virginia 
women targeted for working during a strike.
  And I will give some details about the second one:
  When the United Auto Workers Local 149 called a strike against Abex 
Friction Products in Winchester, Virginia, several of the workers 
decided they needed their paychecks and crossed the picket lines to 
work. They were targeted for harassment and intimidation. In one 
instance an employee who crossed the picket line found a severed cow's 
head placed on the hood of her car. Later someone made up a photograph 
with her face superimposed over the dead cow's head and mailed it to 
her. The union paid a substantial settlement to six women for its 
members' harassment of them.
  The same thing with the miner, the union was forced to pay.
  UPS driver beaten and stabbed by fellow union brothers. Worker who 
opposed unionization has his house ``put on the map.''
  Math teacher fired for challenging union president. And let me give 
you the details of this one:
  George Parker taught math in Washington, D.C. and was a member of the 
Washington Teachers Union. In 1997 he challenged union president 
Barbara Bullock's financial administration with the Department of 
Labor, and she allegedly had him fired for doing so. But Parker's 
suspicions were proven correct. Bullock was later convicted of 
embezzling $4.6 million of member dues money and sentenced to jail.
  Laborers Union thug attacks union and nonunion workers alike: 
Laborers Union Local 91 of Buffalo, New York, often relied on Andrew 
Shomers to harm and intimidate workers, union or not, who weren't 
paying dues to the local. Shomers pleaded guilty in June 2005 to a 
series of crimes involving violence and sabotage. His offenses included 
vandalizing the offices of the local housing authority, because it 
didn't use Local 91 labor to install a small section of sidewalk 
outside its offices, participating in a group assault on workers from 
another union, stalking and attacking nonunion workers on an asbestos-
removal project by throwing a homemade firebomb through a window and 
destroying work that had been done by workers from another union and 
ruining their tools.
  Shomers was just one of 15 former Local 91 leaders indicted by 
authorities in 2003. Following his plea bargain, seven other former 
leaders pleaded guilty.
  Electrician fired for asserting his rights. Workers' families, pets 
threatened because they didn't want the union.
  There are many, many examples of union violence and intimidation.
  And one of the things that struck me about the comments that were 
being made here and the comments that have been made on the floor and 
in the committee is the attitude of the majority party toward workers. 
They talk over and over again about the helplessness of workers. They 
talk about employers controlling employees.
  What a bad impression they have of other human beings. It is really 
part of their overall feeling toward us. They feel like the government 
or the union has to do everything for us because we are so incapable of 
doing anything ourselves.
  I find that really demeaning to other human beings, and I don't think 
they even understand that they are coming across like that. But just in 
the session just before now, they talked about the helplessness of 
workers as though the union has to do everything for these poor people 
who can't think and do for themselves. That is just unconscionable that 
they would talk that way.
  Another interesting thing about their approach, though, is how these 
same people who don't want our workers in this country to be able to 
have a secret ballot and vote for a union want that for people in 
Mexico.
  Sixteen House Democrats wrote a letter in August 2001. I am going to 
take one quote out, and I am going to read the letter. This is what 
they said: ``We feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in 
order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a 
union they might not otherwise choose.''
  That is the absolute height of hypocrisy. I have given you lots of 
other examples of it, but to say we want the people in Mexico to have a 
secret ballot to vote for a union, but the people in the United States 
shouldn't have a secret ballot? Where are these people living? I am 
just chagrined at that.
  And they write the letter to the Junta Local de Conciliacion, and I 
won't try to pronounce the rest of it with my very bad Spanish, but it 
was in the state of Puebla: ``As Members of the Congress of the United 
States who are deeply concerned with international labor standards and 
the role of labor rights and international trade agreements, we are 
writing to encourage you to use the secret ballot in all union 
recognition elections.''

[[Page 5092]]

  Unbelievable that these folks would want the secret ballot for people 
in Mexico but not want the secret ballot for the folks in this country. 
Again, I find it absolutely amazing.
  I have pointed out, again, they are aligned with the Communist Party 
of the United States. Those are the people who favor this.
  Now let me see if I can go here and tell you some of the people who 
are opposed to this legislation: the American Hospital Association, the 
Hotel Lodging Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and there are 
many, many, many more.
  Now, what is it that is unique about these people? And I will go back 
to the other chart in a minute. What is unique about these 
organizations compared to the other organizations? These are the people 
that create jobs in our country. We live in a capitalistic country, the 
best country in the world. I don't see anybody rushing out of this 
country because their work opportunities are so rotten and so lousy.
  They talk about how horrible it is in the United States. Well, how 
come we don't have people going to Mexico and to these other countries 
where working conditions must obviously be better if they are so rotten 
in this country?
  It is because they aren't rotten in this country. It is because we 
have the best country in the world.
  To hear these people talk about it, all these folks who create jobs, 
all these employers out there, individual small businesses, even large 
businesses are rotten people and all they want to do is intimidate and 
harass their workers. And yet unemployment is the lowest rate that it 
has been in this country in 50 years. Wages are up. The economy is 
booming. Something has got to be right about this country. But to hear 
them talk about it, it is the most miserable place in the world to 
live. I think they ought to find another place to live, frankly, if 
they think that this is such a rotten place to live.
  I, frankly, love it here. I get teary eyed when we sing the ``Star 
Spangled Banner,'' even when we say the Pledge of Allegiance, because I 
am so grateful to live in a country where people have freedom and where 
they are not harassed and where they can do the kinds of things they 
want to do. But taking the right away for a secret ballot, where is it 
going to stop? Why don't they recommend taking away the secret ballot 
for their leadership elections, for example? Would they like to do 
that? I don't think so. Would they like to take away the secret ballot 
for us voting when we elect people to this Chamber? I don't think so. 
But that is what they want to do for the people who want to elect or 
not elect to have a union.

                              {time}  1745

  I think that it is really rotten.
  Now, I want to show you what has happened in terms of the decline in 
union membership and talk just a little bit about this.
  This is the real reason that there is such a push on to push this 
bill through. We are now at the point where we have 7 percent, I 
believe it is, of private employment where people belong to unions. 
Most of the growth in unions is now in the public sector.
  You can see the total membership. The peak for union membership was 
in the 1980s, and it has been going down steadily since then. My guess 
is a lot has to do with the fact, again, that we have a good economy, 
that things are working very well. Folks have figured out how to 
protect their own rights. They don't need to pay union bosses, who make 
hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, who live in great 
luxury, while the workers make much, much less money than they do. 
People have begun to understand that the unions are not value-added for 
them. They are not giving them something they couldn't get on their 
own. Yet our colleagues across the aisle want to continue to believe 
that poor American workers are so helpless they can't do anything on 
their own without the help of the unions.
  We have said before in the Official Truth Squad that everybody has a 
right to his or her opinion, but they don't have a right to the facts. 
Again, I want to point out, this is what is happening. We can see the 
total membership is going down, the private sector membership 
particularly, and that is what is really getting at our colleagues 
across the aisle.
  I want to talk a little bit about the kind of assets that some of 
these unions have too, because for some reason they accumulate a lot of 
wealth and their leaders, again, are paid huge salaries. The American 
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have total assets 
of $57 million. They have about 1.5 million members and they have 620 
employees. That is pretty good. Some of the other ones have even more 
assets for themselves.
  Let's talk a little bit more about the union violations versus the 
employer violations. The folks in favor of the bill argue that employer 
coercion during union-organizing drives is rampant, while union 
coercion is virtually nonexistent. Specifically, they claim that 
employers engaged in illegal coercion in excess of 30,000 times last 
year alone, while in the history of humankind unions have only engaged 
in coercive tactics 42 times.
  Well, I read you some details on some of those and gave you some 
facts. Again, they have their opinions, but they can't change the 
facts.
  But these allegations are both deceptive and misleading. We know that 
if they are willing to engage in this kind of deception on the floor of 
the House in a campaign where they are trying to get a bill passed, 
where their comments are subject to public scrutiny, we can only wonder 
what type of deceptive tactics they might use in a card check campaign.
  Mr. Speaker, the NLRB, which is not exactly a conservative group of 
people, reports that in 2006, there were 8,047 charges of employer 
discrimination or illegal discharge and 5,405 charges of union coercion 
and illegal restraint, in addition to another 594 cases of union 
discrimination. So we are talking about 8,000 charges against employers 
and 6,000 charges against the unions. And that doesn't account for the 
fact that unions are likely to file more frivolous charges than 
employers.
  One thing is clear, however. The numbers are not as lopsided as 
organized labor and their allies would have you believe. Thousands of 
cases of union intimidation, as well as employer intimidation, are 
filed every year.
  We should all agree that intimidation by employers, as well as 
intimidation by union organizers, is wrong. It isn't right for either 
of them to do it and I don't condone any of it. But while our Nation's 
labor laws may not be perfect, at least they provide a federally 
supervised process by which a worker can make the important decision 
about whether to join a union in private without his or her employer, 
coworkers, or union organizers knowing how he or she ultimately voted.
  Again, I cannot imagine a more basic right than our right to vote in 
private and not have anybody know how we vote. It is a sacred right, 
and we should not allow that to be taken away. What we should be doing 
is strengthening workers' privacy rights in making this important 
decision, not eliminating them.
  Let me now talk a little bit more about the decline in union 
membership. For the past 40 years, there has been a steady decline in 
both union membership and influence. There are several reasons for such 
a decline, the first having to do with employers keeping their 
businesses union-free. Some were active in their opposition and even 
hired consultants to devise legal strategies to combat unions. Others 
put workers on the management team by appointing them to the board of 
directors or establishing private sharing plans to reward employees. 
Another is that new additions to the labor force have traditionally had 
little loyalty to organized labor.
  Because more and more women and teenagers are working and their 
incomes tend to be a family's second income, they have a proclivity 
towards accepting lower wages, thus defeating the purpose of organized 
labor. Another reason is many businesses have gone out of business 
because of union employees, because union-made products

[[Page 5093]]

have become so expensive that sales were lost to less expensive foreign 
competitors and nonunion producers. This results in companies having to 
cut back on production, which caused some workers to lose their jobs 
and hence unions have lost some of their members. Today's workers also 
tend to be more highly educated and tend to be of the professional 
white collar class. All of these have decreased union membership.
  The percent of the workforce in 1948 that were in the unions was 
about 31.8 percent. In 2004, in the private sector it dropped to 7.9 
percent, and in the total workforce it was 12.5 percent. So we know 
that the numbers are coming down and coming down dramatically. That is 
why the folks have gone after this bill to try to force people to join 
the unions by having them simply sign a card and not allow them to be 
able to have a vote.
  As I said before, the hypocrisy that runs rampant in this place is 
mind-boggling. Bills get called one thing and they do something just 
the opposite. The Employee Free Choice Act doesn't provide employees 
free choice. It does just the opposite.
  We have had lots of groups and lots of editorials against this bill, 
many, many people saying this is absolutely the wrong way to go.
  I want to enter into the Record today an article from The Wall Street 
Journal from February 2. I am going to read some quotes from it, but I 
want to put the entire article in, because I think the comments are so 
pertinent.

          [From the Wall Street Journal, Online, Feb. 2, 2007]

                       Abrogating Workers' Rights

                        (By Lawrence B. Lindsey)

       Why is the new Congress in such a hurry to take away 
     workers' right to vote? It seems extraordinary, but the so-
     called ``Employee Free Choice Act'' is right there near the 
     top of the Democrats' agenda. This legislation replaces 
     government-sponsored secret ballot elections for union 
     representation with a public card-signing system.
       Under the act, once a union gets a majority of the workers 
     to sign a card expressing a desire for a union, that union is 
     automatically certified as the bargaining representative of, 
     and empowered to negotiate on behalf of, all workers. In the 
     28 states that do not have right-to-work laws, all employees 
     would typically end up having to join the union or pay the 
     equivalent of union dues whether or not they signed the card. 
     Moreover, under the act, the bargaining process would be 
     shortened, with mandatory use of the Federal Mediation 
     Service after 90 days and an imposed contract through binding 
     arbitration 30 days after that.
       I am sympathetic to the argument that strengthening the 
     negotiating position of workers is good public policy, and 
     that expanding the choices available to them is the best way 
     to accomplish that. So, for example, pension portability 
     unlocks the golden handcuffs that financially bind workers to 
     jobs they may become dissatisfied with after they have become 
     vested. Health savings accounts are an important first step 
     to liberating people from jobs they put up with only because 
     they fear a disruption in health-care coverage.
       When it comes to unions, it doesn't take a very deep 
     appreciation of game theory to understand that a worker's 
     best position comes when a nonunion company has a union 
     knocking on the door. Indeed, one allegation about ``union 
     busting'' by supporters of the bill is that, during union 
     certification elections, one employer in five ``gave illegal 
     previously unscheduled wage increases while a similar number 
     made some kind of illegal unilateral change in benefits or 
     working conditions.''
       In other words, they made workers better off. But, never 
     fear, the Employee Free Choice Act will limit these 
     unconscionable increases in pay, benefits and working 
     conditions by imposing fines of up to $20,000 against 
     employers who make such ``unilateral changes.'' Similar 
     penalties will be assessed against employers who caution that 
     unionization may cause them to shut down or move production 
     elsewhere.
       Sometimes the interests of workers and unions coincide, 
     sometimes they do not. The chief complaint by the bill's 
     sponsors is that unions only win secret-ballot elections half 
     of the time. Apparently workers, after they think things over 
     and when neither the union nor the company knows how they 
     vote, often decide they are better-off without the union. The 
     solution of the Employee Free Choice Act is to do away with 
     such elections. It is hard to see how that ``empowers'' 
     workers. And it is hard not to conclude that this bill has 
     little to do with employee choice or maximizing employee 
     leverage, and everything to do with empowering union bosses 
     and organizers.
       The unions allege that companies use unfair election 
     campaign tactics and that a pro-employer National Labor 
     Relations Board doesn't punish them. But statistics cited by 
     the leftwing Web site, Daily Kos, on behalf of this 
     allegation come from 1998 and 1999--when the entire NLRB had 
     been appointed by President Clinton. In any event, roughly 
     half the injunctions brought against companies by the NLRB 
     were overturned by federal courts: This does not suggest 
     under-enforcement of the law by the NLRB.
       All of this does not mean that there are no legitimate 
     complaints about the union certification process. Companies 
     have been found that fired workers for union organizing 
     activities. One careful examination of NLRB data found that 
     there were 62 such cases in fiscal 2005. This is not a large 
     number in a work force of 140 million, or in a year where 
     there were more than 2,300 certification elections. But it is 
     62 too many, and it would be reasonable to stiffen the 
     penalties for employers who break the law. But it is hard to 
     think of offering more pay or better worker conditions as 
     something that should be punished with draconian penalties, 
     as the Employee Free Choice Act does.
       Most important, it is totally unreasonable to deny all 140 
     million American workers the right to a secret ballot 
     election because some employers break the law. Not only is 
     such a remedy disproportionate, it is counterproductive--if 
     one's goal is worker empowerment. How can a worker be better 
     off if both his employer and his prospective union boss know 
     his views on the union when the secret ballot is replaced 
     with a public card signing? For the worker it is the ultimate 
     example of being caught between a rock and a hard place.
       The political rhetoric in support of this bill is a willful 
     exercise in obfuscation. For example, on the presidential 
     campaign stump John Edwards says, ``if you can join the 
     Republican Party by just signing a card, you should be able 
     to join a union by just signing a card.'' The fact is, you--
     and everyone else--can join any union you want by just 
     signing a card, and paying union dues and meeting any other 
     obligations imposed by the union. But, under this bill, 
     contrary to Mr. Edwards's false analogy, signing a card to 
     join the Republican Party does not oblige you to vote for the 
     Republican ticket in a secret ballot election. The Employee 
     Free Choice Act would take care of that by abolishing such 
     elections. If the Edwards principle was applied to the 
     political process in the 28 non-right-to-work states, Karl 
     Rove and Republican Party organizers could force all 
     Democrats and independents to become Republicans and pay dues 
     to the party if a majority of voters signed Republican Party 
     cards. That is free choice?
       The final proof that this bill is about union power, and 
     not worker choice, is revealed by its treatment of the flip 
     side of unionization: decertification elections. These are 
     secret ballot elections in which workers get to decide that 
     they have had enough of the union. So under the Employee Free 
     Choice Act can a majority of workers decertify the union by 
     signing a card? Not on your life. Here unions want the chance 
     to engage in a campaign to give workers both sides of the 
     story--and maybe do a better job of representing them--before 
     the union's fate is decided, by a secret-ballot vote.
       No one has ever argued that secret-ballot elections are a 
     perfect mechanism, either in politics or in deciding 
     unionization. But they are far and away the best mechanism we 
     have devised to minimize intimidation and maximize the power 
     of the people who really matter, whether citizen or worker. 
     Congress should think a lot harder before it decides to do 
     away with workers' right to vote.

  Mr. Speaker, the article starts, ``Why is the new Congress in such a 
hurry to take away workers' right to vote? It seems extraordinary, but 
the so-called Employee Free Choice Act is right there near the top of 
the Democrat's agenda. This legislation replaces government-sponsored 
secret ballot elections for union representation with a public card-
signing system.''
  Mr. Speaker, another reason union membership is down is because of 
the abuses of the unions, and, as I said before, because our economy is 
so good. We know that we have the best economy we have had in 50 years 
and people don't need the unions in the way they needed them before.
  There was a time probably in the early part of the last century when 
there was a need for unions. There were worker abuses, and that is very 
unfortunate. But we know that era is gone, and we don't need that 
anymore. So we know that we don't need the unions, and people are 
voting with their feet.
  There is another quote that I want to share with you from The Wall 
Street Journal, which comes toward the end of the article, which points 
out another part of the hypocrisy of this bill. Let me again quote from 
the Wall Street Journal article, because I think it says it very well:
  ``The final proof that this bill is about union power, and not worker

[[Page 5094]]

choice, is revealed by its treatment of the flip side of unionization: 
Decertification elections. These are secret ballot elections in which 
workers get to decide that they have had enough of the union. So under 
the Employee Free Choice Act can a majority of workers decertify the 
union by signing a card? Not on your life. Here unions want the chance 
to engage in a campaign to give workers both sides of the story, and 
maybe do a better job of representing them, before the union's fate is 
decided by a secret ballot vote.''
  You see, they oppose a card check for decertification of the union. 
That is just not right. If they want it one way, why don't they want to 
allow it the other way?
  The last paragraph says, ``No one has ever argued that secret ballot 
elections are a perfect mechanism, either in politics or in deciding 
unionization. But they are far and away the best mechanism we have 
devised to minimize intimidation and maximize the power of the people 
who really matter, whether citizen or worker. Congress should think a 
lot harder before it decides to do away with workers' right to vote.''
  Again, I cannot think of anything more undemocratic than saying to 
people, ``We are going to allow you to be intimidated into joining a 
union. We are taking away your right to vote in a secret ballot 
election. We don't think secret ballots are the right way to go in the 
greatest republic in the world. We do think that secret ballots are the 
way to go in Mexico, but we don't think that they are the way to go in 
the United States of America.'' Again, it is unbelievable to me that 
these people can stand up and say it.
  I want to say again, who are the people who supported this bill and 
point out the kind of folks that these people are associating with and 
say again that the fact that the communist party of the U.S. is one of 
the major supporters of this bill should tell us a lot about what this 
bill is doing.
  Elections in communist countries are not like elections in this 
country. There aren't choices given to people. They don't have free 
elections. What they do is have the kind of election that is going to 
come about by people doing a card check for these union elections, and 
that is the kind of election that they want there.
  We have heard again comments made over and over again by the people 
who have supported this bill, but I want to say to you, I am sorry I 
don't have the Official Truth Squad emblem up here tonight, because we 
could have both of them here. We need to set the record straight on 
what is being said.
  Doing this bill, if this bill were to pass the Senate and become law, 
it would be one of the greatest travesties against American workers 
that has been done in this country, and it would be done by people who 
say that they support American workers.

                              {time}  1800

  It would be done by people who treat American workers as though they 
are helpless individuals, unable to do anything for themselves, unable 
to walk away if they don't like a job, unable to bring a suit against 
someone who might have discriminated against them.
  Again, I don't want anybody to think that I would ever tolerate 
anyone being discriminated against or anyone being mistreated; I don't 
support that in any way. However, that is not what is behind this. What 
is behind this is power and money. These people have been bought by the 
unions. The unions got them into office, and they are now asking for 
their payback. And that is exactly what is happening here. And that 
isn't the way it is supposed to be done.
  Our folks on the other side of the aisle have railed against that in 
the past. They rail against it when they accuse us of doing that, but 
they are doing it in ways that are really unconscionable, in my 
opinion.
  And, again, I want to quote from the letter that 16 Members of 
Congress sent to Mexico where they said: ``We feel that the secret 
ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not 
intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose.''
  I cannot, again, hear how they can justify wanting the people in 
Mexico to be able to have the secret ballot to vote for a union and 
take that right away from our great American workers who want the same 
right for themselves.
  I hope that the Senate will do the right thing and vote this bill 
down, if it even ever comes up for a vote, and say to the American 
workers, and hear what Republicans are saying: we respect American 
workers. We will do everything we possibly can to protect your rights. 
We are not going to take away from you the right to a secret ballot. 
That is simply wrong in the greatest Republic that has ever existed in 
the world.

                          ____________________