Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the National Labor Relations Board

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be here to speak one more time on Senate Joint Resolution 8.

I will make two points again. One of the things we see here is we have new rules which continue a trend, and that is you are fundamentally changing the way things have been for 70 years. In the past, unions have done a good job of organizing.

We have added union representation to things, but one of the things that businesses want and that America wants is consistency. One more time, after having no big problems for 70 years, we are turning things fundamentally around. Now, why is that bad?

The gentlewoman from Oregon just said this is no big deal because businesses all have lawyers on staff or whatever.

Two comments on that: First of all, businesses don't all have lawyers on staff; and, secondly, I think it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how business works and why it is so difficult to go into business today and why it particularly targets small businesses when you come up with new regulations.

This would be a problem even for a big company that did have a lawyer on staff and say it is no big deal; but, of course, who is less likely to have a lawyer on staff? A small business who doesn't have full-time HR representatives and that sort of thing. This is targeting those small businesses.

Again and again and again in this country, one thing that bothers me is the degree to which people don't have sympathy for small businesses. When you change things, they are the ones who have to go out, hire an outside lawyer, get up to speed on things, pay the big legal bills, and pay the price.

That is one reason why, in certain industries, you do see, over time, big businesses continuing to grow because little businesses can't keep up with all the little rules.

I will remind people one more time that this invades employee privacy. It is something they are not asking for. There is no reason for outside groups to be able to get somebody's home address or that sort of thing.

In any event, I will ask the other people present in the room to go back home and ask, particularly their small employers, when they have to run to a lawyer--first of all, to ask their small employers whether or not they have a lawyer on staff because I think the vast majority of businesses in this country don't have a lawyer on staff; and, secondly, whether they do or don't have a lawyer on staff, if they have to go run to a lawyer, whether they think its no big deal, because I think it is an awfully big deal.

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