Employee Free Choice Act

Floor Speech

EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am here to speak for a few minutes in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, which the Senate will be voting on, we hope, this week. I listened to Senator Schumer talk about evening the playing field in the area of energy, where the oil companies have long dominated, and now it is time to give some renewable companies a chance so we can actually have an even playing field for energy, and so we can stop depending on these foreign oil companies and stop spending $200,000 a minute on foreign oil. I am here today to talk about evening the playing field in another way, and that is with the Employee Free Choice Act.

I support this act because I believe we need to level the playing field for working people in this country, and this bill will do that by protecting the workers and by creating a fair and a smooth process for organizers.

It is getting harder and harder for working families in America to get by. Millions of workers have been left behind in this economy. With only a very small number of people doing incredibly well, millions of workers have been left behind. They are struggling to make ends meet with stagnant wages and declining benefits.

I see this in my State. I go to small towns, and about 100 people will show up in a cafe, and I think, why are all these people here? I realize that when the cost of college has gone up 100 percent in 10 years, as it has in our State, when you are a middle-class person and you can hardly make it day to day, you feel it first. When you have gas at $3 a gallon, you feel it in your pocketbook. When health care costs go up 100 percent, as they have in our State, you feel it first when you are a middle-class person. That is what we are seeing all over this country.

Unions help all workers, not just those that are in a union. Unions helped build this country and have lifted millions of Americans out of poverty. As we go forward as a nation, unions will continue to be the friend of working men and women everywhere.

But for too many workers, forming unions at their workplace simply is not an option. Approximately 60 million workers--that is 60 million--say they
want to join a union right now, and the reasons why are clear: Union workers earn 30 percent more than nonunion workers; union workers are 62 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage; and union workers are 400 percent more likely to have access to pension plans.

For millions of workers, access to fair wages and decent benefits is being denied because the current process for forming unions has become flawed. In my State, we are lucky to have some great companies and honest employers that, to a large extent, treat their workers with the respect and dignity they deserve. But there are those companies across this country that don't play by the rules, where workers considering unionization face intimidation and termination from employers.

According to national labor data, workers are illegally fired in one-quarter of all union organizing campaigns, including one in five active union supporters. When workers are systematically denied rights to fair wages and benefits, we all lose, and we need to take action.

In my last job, I was a county attorney in the largest county in Minnesota. For 8 years, I managed an office of nearly 400 unionized employees. I always believed they should be treated with the same level of respect they showed the people we represented, the victims of crime, the people who needed someone there to stand up for them. This bill creates that kind of respect.

This bill will create a process that will be fair and will even the playing field. This bill will help workers. The Employee Free Choice Act places the decision to form a union where it belongs--it places it in the hands of America's workers.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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