[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 13201-13202]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               LABOR DAY

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, most of us were in our States over Labor 
Day. I usually come to the floor a few days after Labor Day to talk 
about the importance of Labor Day and what it means to working 
Americans, what it has meant to our country, and what it has meant to 
building a strong middle class.
  I would like to read a letter sent to me by Bill Ross, who is an Ohio 
business leader. Mr. Ross writes:

       I grew up in a first generation immigrant family in a small 
     Ohio town.
       My father, who obtained only an 8th grade education (not 
     uncommon for his generation), worked hard in an industrial 
     job.
       My mother worked at home to care for our family of 5 
     children. When able to do so, she went to work outside the 
     household too.
       We rented a home for $25 a month, ate nutritious meals at 
     home, and all walked to school with clean clothes each day.
       All five children went to college, obtained post-graduate 
     professional degrees, and pursued rewarding professional 
     careers in law, education and business.
       How did that happen?
       Because, first and foremost, my father had a job with a 
     living wage and health care for his family that his union 
     protected. Because we had access to good quality public 
     education. Because we had access to affordable state 
     universities and student loan programs that we could later 
     afford to repay. Because blue collar working people had a 
     chance.
       I hope we can restore all that in America again.

  Bill Ross's story is very much like my wife Connie's story. Bill Ross 
was born in Ashtabula a bit before my wife who was also born there. 
Bill Ross's dad carried a union card and his mother went to work when 
she could. My wife's father carried a utility worker's union card for 
more than 30 years in Ashtabula, OH. Her mother was a home care worker 
who worked, when she could, after the children were a little older.
  My wife, as did Bill Ross, was able to go to school with minimal 
debt. She graduated from Kent State University in the 1970s with not 
much more than $1,200 in student debt.
  The ability of a living wage and carrying a union card gave them a 
reason to celebrate Labor Day because it gave so many working families 
a chance.
  The Presiding Officer comes from a State much like mine. He 
understands the importance of carrying a union card and getting a 
living wage gives people the kind of opportunity that people in this 
country deserve.
  For generations hard-working Americans left their homes every 
morning, and some at night, to earn an honest living. They bent with 
swollen knees to put on steel-toed work boots to provide for loved 
ones. They put up with calloused hands to build a better life for their 
children.
  Middle-class Americans and people struggling to enter the middle 
class labored to ensure that children have enough food and clean 
clothes and an adequate education to thrive.
  We know steelworkers, nurses, mechanics, teachers, and plumbers are 
not always treated with the dignity they deserve--especially, far too 
often, from our elected officials.
  American history is a history of struggle for working people--
fighting for representation and fair wages, for access to good-paying 
jobs, and for the dignity every human being deserves. It is about 
fighting for democracy and civil rights--as we were reminded a few

[[Page 13202]]

days ago when we marked the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington 
for jobs and freedom.
  More than a century ago, when John Patterson Green, an Ohioan, and 
Cedarville native John Henderson Kyle introduced a bill to establish 
Labor Day as a State holiday in Ohio, they were not thinking of any one 
segment of the population. They were focused on the rights of all 
Americans who work hard and play by the rules.
  Since then, we have seen how the middle class grew when we ensured 
that hard work is rewarded with fair pay and decent benefits.
  Seventy-five years ago, President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor 
Standards Act, which ultimately ensured that American workers would 
receive a minimum wage, reasonable work hours, and an end to child 
labor.
  One of the authors of that bill, Senator Hugo Black, sat at this 
specific desk in the Senate and supported Social Security, minimum 
wage, and paying for overtime. He initially introduced that legislation 
in 1932.
  President Roosevelt led us to decades of prosperity by ensuring that 
hard work is met with fair wages and decent working conditions. A 
minimum wage helped to lift millions of Americans from poverty and 
allowed them to join the middle class.
  Today workers face new challenges. While corporate executives and 
Wall Street banks are earning record profits, too many families in 
Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, and across the country are still struggling. 
Some politicians have used the recession and the budget crisis it 
created as grounds for attacking worker's rights. We have seen vicious 
attacks on workers' rights across the country. We have seen it in North 
Carolina. We saw it last year in Indiana and Michigan. We have seen it 
over the last 3 years in Ohio.
  Ohio passed one of the worst attacks on collective bargaining rights 
in Ohio's history, trying to convince people that public employees 
caused the financial crisis, not Wall Street. Workers fought back and 
shattered a record for signatures needed to establish a ballot 
initiative and energized 2 million voters who came out to overturn that 
wrong-headed law.
  Today, because the unity of not just labor union members but the huge 
majority of voters in Ohio, police officers, firefighters, sanitation 
workers, teachers, and other public sector workers continue to have the 
right to bargain and work with management through collective bargaining 
to ensure safety and fairness on the job.
  In Akron, OH, UAW workers at Meggitt do high-quality and efficient 
work which allows them to be competitive with workers in Mexico and has 
prevented operations from being outsourced and helped to attract new 
investment in Ohio.
  In Toledo, Youngstown, Cleveland, and beyond, union autoworkers 
helped bring back the American auto industry. They are building the 
cars of the future that people want to drive. I met with business 
owners across Ohio over this August and the month before and the month 
before and the month before that--during my 7 years in the Senate--Ohio 
business owners who want to pay their workers a fair wage and have 
joined in efforts to raise the minimum wage. They know increasing the 
minimum wage to $10.10 per hour will increase domestic production by 
nearly $33 billion over 3 years as workers spend their raises in their 
local businesses and communities. This economic activity would generate 
140,000 new jobs over the course of 3 years.
  It is no surprise that the American public is anxious about our place 
in an increasingly multipolar, complicated, dynamic global economy. 
People know that after NAFTA and CAFTA and permanent China trade 
relations were passed, plants closed and we lost 5 million good 
manufacturing jobs. Never in history has company after company 
implemented a business plan where they close down production in 
Stuebenville or Toledo or Dayton, OH, to move overseas to Wuhan or 
Shanghai, China, and sell the products back to the United States. That 
business plan led us to this.
  In 1977 manufacturing was 20 percent of our GDP and financial 
services represented significantly less. That flipped by 2010, where 
manufacturing is now only about 11 percent of GDP. Between 2000 and 
2010, because of wrongheaded trade agreements, because of tax policy 
that has given incentives to move offshore, our country lost 5 million 
manufacturing jobs and 60,000 plants closed down.
  Since 2010 we have seen manufacturing jobs grow by more than 500,000. 
That is not good enough. We have to enact an agenda that includes the 
best trained workers, the most developed and sophisticated 
infrastructure, the most robust manufacturing base, and the strongest 
defense against currency manipulation. Until every American worker is 
able to rise out of poverty, we still have work to do. Labor Day, 
celebrated last week, shouldn't simply mark the end of summer; it 
should mark the beginning of a renewed commitment to fighting for 
American workers, American businesses, and strengthening our middle 
class.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

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