Date: 2011-11-30
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Chairman. Members of the House. during the depths of the Great Depression. Congress gave the American worker the right to ban together with coworkers and to bargain for a better life. For more than 75 years. the National Labor Relations Act has vested the ultimate decision on whether or not to form or belong to a union with the workers themselves. The principle underlying this law is that when workers decide they want to have a union. they should get a union. These rights and this law have served this country well. They built the middle class. They brought us the 40hour workweek. They brought us safer workplaces. The exercise of these rights ensured economically secure families and the prospect that our children could build an even better life. These rights have been an unqualified success. They helped to create an economic engine unparalleled in the history of the world. But especially this year. forces have gathered that will do anything to take away those rights from American workers. from American families. These forces subscribe to the perverse ideology that says workers should just accept whatever the powerful decides is good enough for them. and thats the end of the discussion. They use real crises as an excuse to gain more power. Weve seen them try it in Wisconsin and in Ohio and all across the country. where the real goal was to take away the rights of workers. not to solve the economic problems of those States. where the real goal was to constrain workers in the collective bargaining process. not to deal with the economic problems of those States. and where they dont control the statehouses and State legislatures. they have come to the Congress of the United States. This bill today is part of that scheme. This bill is part of a national effort by the Republican Party. by the Chamber of Commerce. and much of the business community in this country to strip workers of their rights at work. to take ordinary working men and women and tell them they will have no rights to join a union. they will not be able to gather for an election because this legislation prevents that election from happening. How does it do that? It does that. one. by having the employer decide who will be in the bargaining unit. not the employees as is dictated under the law and as affirmed by this Congress over and over again that decision belongs to them. How does it do that? So it stuffs the ballot box at the outset. and the employer making up the bargaining unit as opposed to the employee. Then they throw in the ability to have whatever frivolous appeals. whatever frivolous issues you want to raise. no matter how frivolous. they must be raised before this time. before the election. and all of the appeals must be decided. So while they talk about how this gives you a tight time frame. in fact what we see is endless delays. Its the endless running up of legal costs of attorneys on both sides. all in the idea of buying time for the employer to intimidate the employees from joining a union. to constantly hold businesses and the workplaceface to face. businesses to advocate against the union so that they can turn around the decision that the employees essentially have made when they say. We want to go to an election. we want to have a union. this is our bargaining unit. And thats the goal here is to destroy the ability of this law to function. You cannot have a situation where that exists in this country. because this law is not only important to employees in the workplace. Its important to millions of Americans who are in the middle class in this economy today. These are people who are there because of the collective bargaining rights of people over the last 75 years in this country to bring the benefits. to bring the wages. to bring the job security. to bring the health care benefits. to bring the pension benefits and the protections to middle class families. We have seen. as the unions have declined. so have the wages. so have the benefits of workers to their own productivity. The American worker continues to increase their productivity. They are the most productive workers in almost every sector of our economy in the world. and yet more and more of their productivity is being syphoned off by the 1 percent. if you will. by the employers that decide they need more bonuses. by the employers that decide they need bigger paychecks. by the employers that decide they need more shareholder dividends. by the employers that decide that they need more golden parachutes. they need more arrangements to get rid of people at the elite level. Thats what this is about. Its about stealing from the American workers and not giving them a right to continue to bargain for the benefit of their families and their communities. and we ought to reject this bill today.