Supporting Federal Workers

Floor Speech

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Mr. NORCROSS. Mr. Speaker, as co-chair of the Labor Caucus, I am here today to speak on something I didn't think we would ever have to. We have to talk about the hard work of our Federal workforce, those workers who get up every day to go to work, the ones who keep our food safe, the water safe to drink, and the air safe to breathe.

Federal workers are nurses. They are doctors. They are in the VA, taking care of our vets each and every day. They are civilian DOD workers. That is right. They are working in the Pentagon and around the world to make sure that our military is ready to go. They are the ones who are processing Social Security checks for our seniors. They are the TSA agents, who we see every time we go to the airport.

Trump is making it hard, almost impossible, for them to do their jobs. He wants them to quit. They dedicated their lives for us. Who is the Federal workforce? They are you and me.

They say they have to come back to the office when it is more efficient for a person, agreed upon with management, to work from a different location.

I suggest, if we really want to know where Federal workers are, look at the offices where the Member is supposed to be showing up. Tell me how many times they go to the office. That is what we are dealing with.

Trump is revoking their union contracts, the contracts which they negotiated legally and tried to enforce. It is so important. Trump doesn't have the authority to change these agreements, but he is doing it. It is going to take our courts to turn this around.

America's civil service is a merit system. Trump signed another executive order to remove jobs from the nonpartisan civil service. Here we are, back again.

These civil servants wake up every day to help us. I am not seeing any of those civil servants flying their private airplanes like Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump. They are just regular people like us, trying to get by.

As we have this discussion with all the Labor Caucus, I want to take a minute to thank Glenn Ivey, who represents so many Federal workers back in his district, and Stephen Lynch, who has been leading our fight at the Postal Service.

At the end of the day, we have to stick together. Right there, carved into the wood, it says, ``Union,'' and that is what we have to have.

God bless them. I thank every Federal worker for what they do.

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