Employee Free Choice Act Of 2007--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - June 25, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HARKIN. I thank Senator Kennedy for his great leadership on this issue and so many other issues that pertain to the rights of working families in America.

There is a need for organized labor in our country. When workers join together and act collectively, they can achieve economic gains and worker safety that they would not be able to get if they negotiated individually.

History tells us this: Union members were on the front lines fighting for the 40-hour workweek, paid vacations, minimum wage, employer-provided health insurance and pensions. Organized labor led the way in passing legislation to ensure fair and safe workplaces, and in championing many other safety nets we have such as Social Security, Medicare, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

But, unfortunately, continued forward progress is not inevitable. We have seen in recent years, as union membership has declined, wages have stagnated, the numbers of uninsured have risen, and private companies have been allowed to default on their pensions threatening the retirement security of millions of Americans.

It is clear to me that in order to rebuild economic security for the middle class in America, we must first rebuild strong and vibrant unions; and to rebuild strong unions, we must first reduce the unfair barriers to union organizing. A recent study by the Institute for America's Future confirms this by comparing organizing campaigns in the United States and Canada. The study found that more worker-friendly certification rules resulted in increased union participation.

But, of course, this is all just common sense. If you reduce the barriers to workers joining unions, more workers will join. What does that mean? Well, as the study made clear, by passing this Employee Free Choice Act, by making it easier for workers to band together, more than 3 1/2 million Americans would be able to secure health coverage, more than 3 million Americans would have access to employer-based pensions.

Middle-class families in this country have an increasingly difficult time making ends meet. More than 47 million lack health insurance, that is including 251,000 Iowans, and even those who get it find it covers less and less. This should not be happening in America. When productivity rises, everyone should see a fair share of the gain. But in the past several years, increasing productivity has gone hand in hand with a growing wage gap.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service: Adjusted for inflation, average worker pay rose 8 percent from 1995 to 2005; but median CEO pay at the 350 largest firms rose 150 percent over the same period.

In my home State of Iowa, real median household income fell by 3.4 percent between 1995 and 2005, at the same time productivity increased. So workers are working and becoming more productive, but they are not getting any of their fair share.

By passing the Employee Free Choice Act, by giving workers a seat at the table, we can start to reverse this negative trend. Union participation in the workplace means everybody wins. When employees have a voice, not just to ask for better wages and benefits but to make suggestions on how to do things better, employers benefit also.

Union employees take pride in their work and they work to get more training. They are happy to help find other efficiencies in the operation because they know if they do they get a share of the savings.

Unfortunately, the scaremongers out there are trying to tell us that the Employee Free Choice Act takes away employee rights to a secret ballot. Nothing can be further from the truth. This bill does not establish a new election process. It merely requires employers to honor the employee choice.

Right now a company gets to decide whether it will recognize a majority signup vote. Well, why should just the company get to decide that? Why should employees not get to decide that? That is what this bill does. It levels the playing field. It says the employees get to decide as well as the company.

If the employees want to use the National Labor Relations Board process, they can do that also. But we know from hard experience--the best teacher, hard experience--that process can be threatening and intimidating to many employees.

So in addition to making it easier to form a union in the first place, the Employee Free Choice Act provides for arbitration for the first contract. I know from personal experience how a company can bust a union and cause major hardships for their employees.

My brother, Frank, was a member of the UAW for 23 years. He worked at a plant called Delavan in West Des Moines, IA, for 23 years, a proud union member. He had a good job as a machinist, operating machines, made parts for the military, had good pay, good benefits, a good pension.

In 23 years he had only missed 5 days of work. In 23 years the union never went on strike, never had a work stoppage. But then Mr. Delavan, the owner, decided to sell the plant. And he sold it to a group of investors. One of those investors bragged openly--it was in the Des Moines Register--if you want to see how to bust a union, come to Delavan, we will show you how. He openly bragged about it.

What happened? Well, the investors took over. When the union contract came up, the company put forward conditions with which no union could ever agree. So what was the union forced to do? To go out on strike. For the first time ever in 23 years they went out on strike.

Well, then what did the company do? They brought in replacement workers. Then what happened? There was a long bitter strike. I remember it well. After 1 year, as allowed by labor law, they had a decertification vote. Who votes to decertify? Well, the replacement workers. So they voted them out. They did not want to lose their jobs. So they voted to decertify.

So after 23 years, my brother Frank was out of a job. He lost his union job with excellent pay, vacation, pension. Now, I ask you, what does a 54-year-old deaf man--and my brother was deaf. He is disabled. What does a 54-year-old deaf man do when he loses that kind of a job? I will tell you what he did. The only job he could get was as a janitor working in a store at night in a shopping mall--minimum wage, no union, no pension, no benefits, nothing.

This is a real-life story, folks. That happened to my family. Not only did it just destroy my brother's livelihood, it broke his spirit. That is what happens when unions are weakened and destroyed, jeopardizing our middle-class way of life. That is what is happening today, my friends, to tens of millions of workers all over this country.

I will close with this, from a December 2005 letter by 11 Nobel Peace Prize winners:

Even the wealthiest nation in the world, the United States of America, fails to adequately protect workers' rights to form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions, and thousands are discriminated against every year for trying to exercise these rights.

It is time to level the playing field and to give them a truly fair process.

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