[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12025]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  THE JOBS OUTSOURCERS' BILL OF RIGHTS

  (Mr. TONKO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, in just a few hours, my Republican colleagues 
will bring to the floor the Jobs Outsourcers' Bill of Rights. This 
piece of legislation is an open attack on workforce protections, a 
union-busting bill that will open loopholes for companies to ship our 
jobs, American jobs overseas, and will make historic changes to 
workers' rights, all to serve the well-connected special interests 
community. This bill will allow companies to fire workers, workers who 
think that they might have a better shot of supporting their families 
in these precarious times by banding together to negotiate with their 
employers. That right, the freedom of association, finds its origins in 
the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
  Whether or not you like unions, there is no sense in making it even 
easier to ship our jobs overseas. If this bill becomes law, a company 
faced with a few organizing workers trying to form a union could close 
an entire United States plant and move the work to China, where 
sweatshop laborers will work for less than even the lowest-paid, 
nonunion American workers. Actually, that's an assault on America's 
middle class. I would urge my colleagues to oppose this reactionary and 
poorly thought out legislation.

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