Economic Inequality

Floor Speech

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Ro Khanna for organizing this today and holding this particular Special Order about Janus v. AFSCME. But, actually, the larger question is: What kind of shape will America be in if the Supreme Court makes the wrong decision?

We envision, in the Progressive Caucus, an America in which parents can dream about their kids being able to go to college. We believe that you ought to be able to put food on the table. You ought to be able to get a good job and earn a decent pay and have a voice on your job. You ought to be able to turn on the water faucet and drink the water. You ought to be able to drive down the road without busting the axle on your car. You ought to be able to have safe affordable transit to get to where you have got to go.

We don't think this is too much to ask. This is something that other countries in the world have. We think you ought to be able to go to the doctor if you are sick. Now, the guarantor of all those things for so many years has been people coming together and organizing themselves into a group that argued and negotiated with their employer for a fair wage. They negotiated with their employer, and they said: Look, you know, you want us to supply labor? We will do it. You have got to pay us right. You have got to make sure the benefits package is right. You have got to make sure that this thing is making sense, not just for you, but for us, too.

And, for many years, employers who didn't want to see strikes and didn't want to see labor shutdowns, and wanted to stop the turnover that you would see, and wanted to make sure that there was labor peace, came to an agreement, and said: Okay, we will work with you.

And between World War II and right up until about 1970, even a little beyond, that bargain helped create the world's greatest middle class. It wasn't easy to get a cohesive union movement. In fact, there was a time in American history where being in a union was a criminal offense. They called the Pinkertons in. They beat you down. There is a lot of labor blood that has been spilled in this country in order to have a labor movement, but we have got one.

And by 1957, a year that had racism and segregation, sexism and homophobia, had one thing going, and that was about 35 percent of all Americans were in a union, and about 35 percent more were paid as if they were. So the unions were setting the wage scale, and they helped create an American middle class, which really is what we think of when we think of America at its best economically.

The union movement didn't just stop at labor issues. It went further than that. It was the UAW that helped fund the March on Washington. The march for jobs and justice was funded by organized labor. It was labor that stood with those sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, when they were on strike and Martin Luther King came down to march with them. It was AFSCME--AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees--who had the back of those workers in Memphis. And when we lost the great Martin Luther King just about 50 years ago, AFSCME was by the side of those workers. And those workers literally won that strike, and many of them are still around to talk about it today.

These folks made it so that in 1968 you had a rate of poverty that was much lower than it is today. You had CEOs that made about 20 times more than their average worker. Today, that is 339 to 1, and that is just the median. In fact, you have companies like Mattel that make almost 5,000 times--the CEO makes 5,000 times the average worker. McDonald's, the CEO makes 3,100 times the average worker. Kohl's, the CEO makes 1,200 times the average worker.

But in 1968, with its strong union movement, we had an emerging civil rights movement. We had a minimum wage that was probably in the neighborhood, as has been mentioned, that was livable at the time, if you compare it to inflation. You had a rate of poverty where fewer people were in poverty. You had a ratio between workers and CEO which was much more rational.

And something interesting happened beginning in the 1970s; there came an organized concerted attack on labor. And people will tell you that in 1980, after Ronald Reagan was elected, he went out on the campaign trail saying that he was for working people, but shortly after he got in office, he dismissed the air traffic controllers.

When he broke that strike and he broke those workers, it set working people in this country on a trajectory, which brings us to where we are now, which is stagnating wages for literally three, four decades. The CEOs have done great. And if you ask Donald Trump, he will tell you: Oh, yeah, you know, the stock market is booming out of control. We are doing fine.

But, you know, in this America, our America, this largesse is not shared by most people. My colleague, Pramila Jayapal, mentioned earlier that about 67 percent of Americans would not know what to do if they were hit with a $1,000 bill. They don't have it. But there are even other statistics that are as jarring, as equally upsetting. Other statistics would show just how difficult it is for Americans to pay their bills.

Now, I know we are talking about Janus today. I am getting there. But there is a recent story that I want to share with you, and we can submit it for the Record, and the title of this story, Mr. Speaker, is ``More Than 40 Percent of Americans Can't Pay Their Bills.'' That is the name of the story, and it says: ``Donald Trump thinks the economy is doing great--way, way better than under Obama. Actually, Obama created more jobs on his way out the door than Trump has so far.

``But that's besides the point.''

The story says, based on this research, the conclusion of the research: ``43 percent of us struggle to pay our bills, and 34 percent are suffering `material hardships,' including `running out of food, not being able to afford a place to live, or lacking the money to seek medical treatment.' ''

The truth is, Mr. Speaker, is that we live in a Nation that is lurching toward plutocracy. We live in a Nation that is lurching toward oligopoly and oligarchs, because the people who make the hamburgers, they don't benefit in the profits of the company. The CEO does that. The people who make the clothes and work for Kohl's and work their job, they don't benefit. They just get survival wages, and the executives take it all home for themselves.

Part of the reason is a conservative philosophy which says that companies should not have to pay any taxes. They shouldn't have to abide by any regulations. They should be allowed to slam labor cost to the ground, if they can, and then the CEO should be able to walk away with all the money. And then the theory goes that they will use that money to invest in plant and equipment, and then everybody will be better off. But that never happens.

That Republican philosophy, that conservative philosophy, is absolutely and utterly bankrupt. It doesn't work. It is not true. And, yet, we keep on doing it over and over again. But part of this philosophy is the union busting. And they have been on a 40-year trajectory of trying to break the union.

I mentioned PATCO a little while ago, when Reagan broke PATCO. That sent a shockwave that reverberated even until the moment we are in now, and it is culminating in this attack on Janus.

Let me tell you, they have been trolling around for a worker, a public employee, to try to break Janus--break public employees for years. A few years ago, right before the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed, there was a case before the Supreme Court called the Frederick case. And in that case, it is exactly like the Janus case. Why are they similar? Because right-wing law firms are trolling the country looking for any public employee to try to attack the union and attack fair share. That is what they have been doing.

They have been going around: Will you take the case? Can we represent you? Can we represent you? And they finally found somebody, this guy, Janus. And he makes the outrageous claim that he--who benefits from collective bargaining and who the union expends money to make sure he has a decent contract--he is saying: Oh, this is unfair. My free speech rights are going into this union, and I don't want that to happen.

Well, they are not, actually. All they are doing is assessing a reasonable fee that is associated with the cost of negotiating on his behalf to have a better wage. But he says: No, I want to be able to benefit from the work that the union does, but I don't want to pay anything. It is quite ridiculous. But that is the case that is in the Supreme Court right now.

You know, you want to know what is in the First Amendment? The right to freedom of assembly. The right to freedom of assembly is in the Constitution. And if some workers want to assemble together and negotiate for better wages and better benefits with their employer, I believe they have a constitutional right to do so.

What I don't think you have a constitutional right to do is to be a freeloader, which is what Janus is arguing. He is saying: I want to be able to benefit from what the union negotiates on my behalf, but I don't want to pay anything.

He doesn't have to pay into the fund that goes to political stuff. He doesn't have to pay for that. That issue has been decided. It is not required under the law that he help fund candidates or issues that he doesn't want to support. But it is fair, and it is right, and it is reasonable, and the Supreme Court has found in the past that an assessment on employees for the cost of representation is fair and constitutional. Now, this is a case called the Abood case where this was found to be constitutional. What they want to do is flip Abood and say: No, you can now be a freeloader.

Let me just say to my good friend from California, our law has been favoring the employer over the worker for years now. Here is the law right now. If you are an employer and you fire a worker because they are trying to organize a union, that is not legal to do. But guess what? That worker can file, but they can't file a private lawsuit; they have to file under the National Labor Relations Act. They can't get punitive and treble damages. They can't do discovery. They just have to go through the NLRB process, which takes quite a long time, according to most workers who go through it. And when they do go through it, all they can ever get is back pay, minus whatever they earned after they were fired illegally.

This is a very small price to pay for people who are exercising what I believe is a constitutional right to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. But why shouldn't you fire them because, hey, it is the worst of the cost of doing business for some employers who don't want a union?

Another example of how unfair the situation is an employer can tell the workers: You better be in the cafeteria tomorrow because there is a union drive, and I want to threaten you and scare you and tell you all the reasons why it is a bad idea.

This is called captive audience.

Can the union go into the same plant and say, ``Well, now we want to give you our side of why you do need a union''?

They cannot do it. It is not fair. It is like having an election, where the rights of the workers will be determined by the election, and yet only one side gets to be able to go and argue in the negative.

By the way, if the employer said, ``Come to the meeting, we are going to tell you why you do need a union,'' that would be an unfair labor practice.

It is crazy, really. But it is the kind of world that a guy like Neil Gorsuch thinks would be a good one. This is the guy who was, in my view, illegally put on the Supreme Court of the United States-- illegally.

The Constitution says that the sitting President gets to offer a replacement for a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Barack Obama did that, and the head of the Senate Republicans, who was in the majority, said: We will not hear anybody.

Do you know what? The role of the Senate is to give advice and consent. They can say, ``We think that this guy is not qualified''; they can say that this guy has a judicial temperament that is not proper; they can criticize that nominee any way they want to. But one thing they cannot do is say: We simply will not discharge our constitutional responsibility. But that is what they did do because nobody can make them do otherwise.

They did it because they could do it, but it was wrong. It was actually immoral, and it was an abuse of their responsibility as Members of the United States Senate. But they didn't care. They want power--raw, naked power. That is what they did, and somehow they got away with it because they got Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. This is the guy who was a deciding vote in a case that, I believe, is a foreshadowing of what we are going to see in Janus.

Just the other day, a case called Murphy Oil was decided--Monday. Neil Gorsuch cast a deciding vote in a Supreme Court decision that ruled, for the first time, that bosses can forbid their workers from joining together in class action lawsuits to challenge violations of the Federal labor laws. This is an outrageous usurpation.

Bringing a complaint against your boss or your company is expensive and risky, especially for workers who have no safety net. Congresswoman Jayapal just got through telling you how stressed to the wall American workers are, and yet those workers, who don't have much money, are now told that they cannot come together in a class action suit to challenge violations of Federal labor law. They have to pursue these claims individually. They don't have a chance. The bargaining position power is absolutely unequal, and yet that is what we got.

Decisions like this are why Mitch McConnell and Republicans have engaged in the historic obstruction to block President Obama from filling the Supreme Court vacancy for nearly a year. They wanted an ideologue like Neil Gorsuch to tip antiworker cases like this.

So what is going to happen in Janus? I hate to admit it, but even I, who consider myself quite optimistic, believe that: Look, they put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court to destroy public employee bargaining; that is why he is there. I have no illusions about what is about to happen. But it is just like other unjust Supreme Court decisions that have happened, along the lines of Shelby County, which destroyed the Voting Rights Act, or along the lines of Citizens United, which basically said that corporations can dump massive amounts of money into elections.

Who has a massive amount of money? You know. America's corporate elites.

And then it goes all the way back to unjust decisions like the Lochner case or even Dred Scott.

History will look very dimly on this moment in time. I believe that when you crush decency and fairness to earth, it does rise. And I believe that workers of this country, if they are prohibited by the law and the Supreme Court from being treated fairly, they are just going to start going on strike all over the place, just like the teachers just showed us that they would. They are just going to start going on strike, and we will just settle it out in the street. This is unfortunate.

Wouldn't it be much better to have fair bargaining and come to the table and negotiate decent wages and benefits? Of course it would be.

Those teachers didn't want to go on strike. They wanted to be in the classroom teaching those kids.

But whether it is Arizona, North Carolina, or Oklahoma, these people, who dedicated their lives to young people, had to go out on the trail, go out on the strike line, just so that they could get a decent situation for those kids and themselves. Those teachers said: These kids' learning environment is our work environment. Both are bad. So we have to strike. We have been given no alternative but to do so.

So they did, and they got some justice out of it.

This is what the likes of Neil Gorsuch and Janus v. AFSCME are pushing the American labor picture towards. It is too bad, but I have great faith in the American worker. They will not take this lying down, and we will be on the picket line with them.

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