Workers Memorial Day

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, today we mark Workers Memorial Day, when we honor and remember workers who have laid down their lives on the job.

I have worn on my lapel since I was in the House, a pin depicting a canary in a bird cage given to me at a Workers Memorial Day rally in Lorain, OH, in the late 1990s.

This pin depicts a canary going down in the mine. It suggests the mine worker taking a canary down in the mines. If the canary died from lack of oxygen or from toxic gas, the mine worker got out of the mines. He had no union strong enough to protect him and no government that cared enough to protect him in those days.

To me, this pin represents the role of government to support the middle class and those who aspire to the middle class. It represents the progress we have made and the society we continue to fight for every day here.

We know the story. Coal miners took the canary down into the mines. Throughout the 20th century, we have worked to change that. We passed workers safety laws and overtime pay. We banned child labor. We passed clean air and safe drinking water laws. We enacted Social Security and Medicare and workers' rights and women's rights and civil rights.

But despite that progress over the last year, too many workers have felt a whole lot like those miners. They have felt like they are on their own.

A moment ago, I mentioned a grocery store worker in Cincinnati, who said: ``They tell me I am essential, but I feel expendable.''

That grocery store worker and thousands of others have been on the frontlines of this pandemic, risking their lives so Americans could keep food on their table and get their packages delivered. They were changing linens in hospitals and driving buses and stocking shelves in supermarkets.

Then workers go home at night and are anxious that they might spread the virus and infect their family.

We know that hundreds of thousands of workers have been exposed to the virus on the job. Thousands have died. It is hard to get an exact count of how many because the previous administration didn't bother to keep track.

We know that food and commercial workers reported last summer that more than 16,000 grocery store workers have been exposed, more than 100 have died. We know those numbers keep going up.

The National Nurses United has recorded at least 3,200 healthcare workers have died. In meatpacking plants, the toll has been horrific.

Last summer, 16,000 workers had been infected; the vast majority of them Black and Brown workers. More than 230 died.

And yet all of last year, the Trump administration and too many large corporations failed to protect their workers. The corporate lawyers that ran the Labor Department from the top down refused to issue workplace safety requirements

Corporations ran a lot of feel-good TV ads saying thank you to essential workers, claiming these workers are the heart of their companies, but workers didn't ask for a PR campaign. They needed protections on the job.

This Workers Memorial Day, today--we celebrate it every year--we remember the American workers who have lost their lives on the job from this virus, sometimes from gun violence, sometimes from workplace accidents.

We honor them best by fighting to protect these workers and their fellow workers to make their hard work pay off.

Yesterday, in the Banking and Housing Committee, we held the committee's first-ever listening session. It was purely a listening session. No Senators got to ask questions. We just came to listen, with workers from Ohio and around the country, to hear how the financial system affects their jobs and their lives.

They shared powerful stories about their work, about how companies and economic policies prevent their hard work from paying off.

We heard from a distribution worker in Ashtabula County, OH. He told us:

We rarely go a few weeks without an injury, largely because of the insane pace we work at. We have suggested that slowing the pace even just a little would improve safety and could save money, to which we were told, ``Injuries don't cost the company much money.''

We heard from a Wells Fargo call center worker who talked about how the bank misclassified her to avoid paying overtime. They put her on salary. They said she was management. They worked her more than 40 hours. They never paid her an overtime dollar.

We heard from a full-time gig worker who works for multiple corporations like Uber and Instacart. He works full time. He has zero benefits because these companies claim he is an independent contractor.

We heard from a Michigan worker who lost her job when a private equity firm bought out her company. They laid off 3,100 workers in the Detroit area, and they pocketed the money.

We heard from a worker in West Virginia who talked about working her whole life and never seeing that hard work pay off. She said the term ``working poor'' should not be two words that go together.

If you work hard, you should be able to get ahead in this country. If you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work.

If even the global pandemic, where America's workers have been on the frontlines--if even that won't get corporations to rethink their business model that treats workers as expendable, it is time to stop letting them run the economy. That is what the new Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee is all about. Wall Street had its chance. They failed. If corporate America won't deliver for its workers, then we have to create a better system centered on the dignity of work. That means safe workplaces.

The Biden administration is taking steps toward finally issuing an OSHA emergency temporary standard. We went a whole year in the pandemic where the President of the United States simply refused and the corporate lawyer who ran the Department of Labor simply refused to issue any standards on workplace safety. Think about that. Now it means laws and policies will reward work, like the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit--the junior Senator from New Hampshire is here and has been supportive of that; a strong overtime rule; ending misclassification that robs workers of their wages and their rights. It means a strong labor movement. Unions give people power on the job. People ought to have the option, if they choose, of joining a union, allowing them to join together to make their workplace safer.

It is workers who make our economy successful. It is workers who allow corporations and Wall Street investors to rake in record profits. It is time for that hard work to pay off for all workers, no matter if you punch a clock or work for salary or work for tips or take care of your parents or take care of your children. Work should be rewarded in this country. When you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work on Workers Memorial Day and the other 364 days of the year.

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