[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2895-2896]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     RESPECTING THE AMERICAN WORKER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio 
(Mr. Ryan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, a few years back towards the end of my 
grandfather's life--he was a steelworker for about 40 years--and 
towards the end of his life, he couldn't drive anymore. I had the 
pleasure one day of taking him shopping. In Ohio, and where I come from 
in Niles, shopping is an art form; so we had to go to a certain place 
for the meat and a certain place for the cheese and a certain place for 
something that was on sale somewhere else. So I got to spend the day 
with my grandpa. We had to go and get something, and he said we should 
go to a certain store.
  I said: Well, Grandpa, Giant Eagle is right here. We can just go 
right here.
  He said: We can't go there.
  I said: Why not? It's right here.
  He said: The meat cutters are on strike and we can't cross the picket 
line.
  He didn't go to Giant Eagle out of respect for the worker, out of 
respect for the situation that those workers were in at that grocery 
store.
  And the issue that we are talking about in Ohio and in Wisconsin is 
an issue of respect for the average worker in the United States of 
America. And for us to somehow try to obscure the issue and blame 
workers, firefighters who go into burning buildings while we are all 
running out of them, police officers who we call up when we are in 
trouble, or teachers who we ask in many instances to spend more time 
with our kids than we do, somehow push the blame of the major financial 
meltdown that happened because of Wall Street recklessness, blame the 
teachers for that and ask them to go out and get rid of their right to 
stick together and determine what size of classroom, how many kids are 
in their classroom is ridiculous.
  And at the same time, in Ohio, we have the top person who works for 
the current administration get a $40,000 pay increase from what the 
last Governor was paying, and the secretaries and the people in the 
mail room get a cut. And the firefighters and the police and the 
teachers get a cut.
  While all of this is going on in Ohio, they want to cut the estate 
tax for the wealthiest people who live in the State of Ohio and ask the 
teacher to make the sacrifice. This is disrespectful and unfair to the 
workers in the State of Ohio.
  If we want to have a 21st century America where we compete with the 
globe, where we compete as 300 million people, compete with 1.3 billion 
people in China, over a billion people in India, and we are going to 
tell our teachers that they can't be treated with respect, how are we 
going to get good teachers to come into the teaching profession when 
they are going to be the foil for all of the problems we have in our 
country?
  When we ask them to take our kids who have lice, who haven't eaten 
today, who are hungry, who have a domestic violence issue in their 
family--these children all go before our teachers--and we are going to 
say that they don't have a right to bargain, a right to come together 
to say what size their class is? We are going to pull their pensions 
from them? This is not right. This is not right, and we need to get 
back to where we were when my grandfather was around.
  We realize the world is different and we have to compete globally, 
but the issue is: Are we going to respect work in the United States of 
America? Are we going to respect the workers in the United States of 
America? While all these fat cats have gotten off scot free, we turn 
around and tell the workers in Ohio and Wisconsin and Indiana and the 
Big 10 Conference: You've got to take the hit.
  It is unfair and it is disrespectful and it is not an American value.

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