Progressive Caucus Hour

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I had an interesting story today. I was talking with a
young lady named Stacy Mitchell, who is a researcher.

She does a lot of research on this issue of what is the economic
effect of raising the minimum wage because what you hear so many
conservatives say is, if we raise the minimum wage, maybe there will be
a lot of workers who simply will not be employable because they don't
have the skill level to be employed, they don't bring enough value to
the business to pay them $15 an hour.

What she showed--and this is through research--is that low wages lead
to workers who have a lot of high turnover. High turnover leads to
mistakes, leads to errors, leads to training errors, leads to bad
customer service when the workers don't have a firm grip on what they
have been doing. High turnover and the need to retrain then leads to a
loss of money, and they have calculated that to about $12,000 a year
for the average small business.

Now, folks who are interested in learning more about this can contact
the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. This is a small-business
organization that says that we can have more economic viability if we
focus on small business and not just the big-box retailer.

Of course, it is interesting because, whenever you talk to the big-
box retailer about raising the minimum wage or whether you talk to
McDonald's or Walmart, they always say: yeah, we are making record
profits; but what about the small business?

It was pretty surprising to hear that there are a lot of small
businesses that have decided to pay people a better wage, keep them on
the job, and as they stay on the job, they learn the job better, serve
the customer better, and end up making the business more profitable
overall.

A lot of businesspeople, whether it is Costco or Ben & Jerry's, are
challenging this idea by the rightwing conservative business types that
squeezing the most out of the worker, hurting the worker, taking the
most out of the worker, paying the worker the least you can possibly
afford--not any health care, not any sick days--just squeezing the life
out of that worker is not a good business model. There are other ways
to do it. There are ways for everyone to succeed.

Now, sometimes, my friends on the other side of the aisle like to
say: Have you ever run a business? In fact, I have. I am a
businessowner. I ran my own law firm for years. I employed
investigators. I employed legal assistants. I even hired some lawyers.

When people arrogantly talk about, Oh, I know business, and you
don't, it always makes me chuckle a little bit because I actually have
run a business--owned a business--and actually have run fairly large
nonprofits, which are also businesses.

It is clear to me that the real thing that I cared about as a
businessperson is customers coming through the door. I needed people
with money who could pay me. That is what I needed. If nobody was
making any money, they couldn't pay me.

What was always better for me is being in a vibrant, strong community
with an economy where prosperity was shared so that people had some
business for me.

It is funny; I never worried about taxes too much. I can't imagine
too many small-businesspeople staying up all night worrying about
taxes. You know what they are worried about? Customers coming through
the door, clients coming through the door, people who need haircuts,
people who need meals, people who need a lawyer to do their will--that
is what you have got to have.

But if the average working class person is broke because they have
been getting paid $7 an hour or whatever, they can't spend money with
you.

It was interesting to me, when I first got to Congress, this was
right before the real hit in the financial system in 2008. I was at a
committee hearing, I will let the gentlewoman know, and I asked one of
the witnesses at the committee hearing what their opinion was about
Americans having negative savings because I found a statistic that
Americans had a negative 2 percent savings rate.

That meant that you were borrowing to consume. That meant that you
didn't have money, and you had to go to the credit card, the payday
loan, title loan, something like that, to make it through the week.

This person looked at me and said: Well, there is so much equity
people have in their homes; that is not a problem.

This is an economist I will never listen to again. The bottom line
is, when you pay people more, they can save. They can save for
retirement. When you pay people more, that makes them more loyal to
you. I actually paid people as much as I could--way over minimum wage--
and the reason why is I needed my legal secretary to know how to
prepare documents the way I needed them.

I needed her to know how to prepare the document so that I could read
it over, make sure that this divorce or this will or whatever it was
that I was doing for them was right; and the better she got at what she
was doing, the faster I could work. I was happy to pay her because the
customer was happy to pay. The real job was getting customers in the
door, and paying workers better was smarter and more profitable for me.

I absolutely reject this model that you squeeze the life out of the
worker and try to make sure that they don't have anything except for
the bus fare to get back to work the next day. This is absolutely
wrong. Yes, you can run a business like that; you can make a lot of
money like that, but you will ruin society doing things like that.

I actually liked paying taxes so we could have the Metro rail to get
people to work, so the bus would come. I didn't mind being able to turn
on the spigot and have clean water come out of the faucet in Minnesota.

I don't understand these people who claim to be for business, don't
want to pay any taxes, don't want to train anybody, don't want to pay
any decent wages, and hate health care. It is the craziest thing in the
world. It is actually bad for business and leads to very extremes in
society, the extremely rich and the vast ocean of the poor.

How many people have you talked to who sit back and say, You know
what, you used to be able to get into the middle class by becoming a
small-businessperson or getting a good union job?

The conservative rightwing attacks both. The conservative rightwing
attacks unions. The conservative rightwing doesn't like unions, and
they are union busters, so union membership has declined. As they have
pushed this right-to-work garbage, what we have seen is wages go down
at the very same time.

It is a funny thing about these big, big, big business types.
Whenever they come to my office asking for whatever, they always talk
in terms of the small business. I always find it somewhat amusing when
the big businesses that pay poverty wages say: well, if we raise the
minimum wage, it is going to hurt small business.

I think to myself: Man, when was the last time you were ever running
a small business? You don't pay any taxes because you have got lawyers
trying to figure out how to get around them. You don't deal with what
the small-businessperson has to deal with.

They actually have to earn a living and come up with a product or
service that people really want, and they don't get tax breaks the way
you do. They don't have an army of lawyers to help them escape their
responsibility to help fund the U.S. Government.

What does all that have to do with today? Well, low-wage workers have
finally gotten sick of it. Today, over 200 cities are standing together
to call for $15 an hour. Thirty different countries are standing in
solidarity with low-wage workers, calling for $15 an hour.

I am proud that, in my own city of Minneapolis, low-wage workers have
gone out and are on strike to demand $15 an hour. These are the people
who make the hamburgers, they fry the chicken, they sweep the floors.
They do the stuff that, if it doesn't get done, the business crashes.

I am going to tell you honestly, in the business I ran, if I wanted
to go on vacation for a day or two, I probably could; but, if my legal
secretary and my investigator and the lawyer that I hired didn't show
up, I would be in trouble. I couldn't go anywhere.

I guarantee you that you can't show me a CEO of a business that is a
big business who can't show up or go on a long golfing trip, whatever;
but, if you let the people who actually fry the chicken not show up,
this place will grind to a halt.

So I was very glad to see tens of thousands of low-wage workers in
more than 200 cities standing together to call for $15 an hour. These
workers are White, they are Black, they are Latino, they are Asian.
They are young, they are old. Some of them are senior citizens.

These workers, some of them were born in the United States, and some
of them came here from other places. They are diverse, but they are
unified in the idea that in America we ought to have a fair economy
that makes sure that everybody can climb the ladder of success, not
just a few who want to concentrate wealth at the very top.

Then after they get to the top, they don't want to pay any taxes,
they don't want to pay for public services, and they want to divide
people. They want to divide people.

These workers, they don't care if you are straight or gay. They want
to know, Are you down with raising the wage?

They don't care if you are Latino or maybe you are Black. They don't
care. They care about, are you for an economic ladder that everyone can
climb if they work hard.

We are in an America today where the people at the top, many of them
are highly divisive. They want to split the straight from the gay, the
Black from the White. They want to break everybody up because they know
that is the only way they can keep the control that they have.

So we are unified around our common humanity, our love of this
country and our belief that this is the land of opportunity. That is
just not some slogan. It has got to be real, and it has got to mean
something. And anybody who puts in a hard week of work ought to be able
to do well by their family.

Here is one of the most amazing things. This statistic really blew me
out.

And by the way, please just ask me to yield when you are sick of me
going on.

I just thought I would share this little statistic with you because
it really did shock me, because, you know, the conservative rightwing
is very proud of how they claim, Oh, we are self-reliant. We don't ask
anybody for anything. We believe people should work for themselves. And
they are real hard on folks with government assistance.

But did you know that--I am looking for this statistic right here. I
had it just a moment ago. It blew my mind when I saw it.

It showed that if you add up all of the public assistance that low-
wage workers have to rely on because their bosses will not pay them
properly--Uncle Sam has to pay if the people don't have a livable wage.
If they don't have enough for rent and food because their job won't pay
them enough, then these people go on public assistance.

If you add up all that public assistance, it basically is a subsidy
to Big Business, and I think that number is about $150 billion. It is
about $150 billion of welfare, welfare that some of these conservative
corporate types are mooching off the American people.

And their chest is always poked out about how we work for ourselves.
We don't rely on anyone.

Well, wait a minute. These folks work hard every day, getting
splattered with grease, pushing a broom, making hamburgers, customer
after customer, on your feet all day long. These folks work hard, but
$150 billion of accumulated subsidy to the working poor.

I will never forget how Walmart--yes, I said the name. And by the
way, I want to congratulate them for raising the wage. You ought to say
what is good when it happens. Thank you, Walmart, for raising the wage.

But I do have to tell on you a little bit because last Christmas,
which is the spirit of giving, they put out a bucket asking their
customers to put canned goods in the bucket so that their customers
would give canned food goods so that they would distribute them to
their workers. I am sure somebody thought that was a clever business
idea.

Wait a minute. You want the customers to give free canned goods to
your workers because you will not pay them?

You know, McDonald's had this proposed budget that was proposing, I
don't know, all kinds of crazy things that--undignified things people
were asked to do.

At the end of the day, though, I just want to say that these workers
who have gone out, over 200 cities, where workers are going out on
strike, saying that we need to get paid more, I am very proud of these
people.

This is a great American tradition. Civil disobedience, striking has
been something in America, sometimes when you don't have any bargaining
power, when you don't have a union, when the National Labor Relations
Board will not protect you quickly enough because it has been weakened
by the conservative wing, then you have got to strike. What else are
you going to do?

America's elected leaders and CEOs are finally waking up to the
reality that a low-wage economy, in which many can't afford basic
necessities and are forced to rely on public aid, isn't good for
working families, or the economy, or the taxpayer.

Last year, the President issued executive orders that ensured the
minimum wage and workplace protections for Americans working under
Federal contracts.

And over the last few months, what we have seen is that employers
like Walmart, Target, T.J. Maxx, McDonald's, have announced raises for
the employees.

Do you really believe they would have done it without these strikes?
Absolutely not. They wouldn't have given these poor folks a penny. They
had to go on strike. They had to. They had no choice. They were pushed
to the brink.

I am about to yield back to the gentlelady, but I just want to tell
folks about the model employer and labor rights.

In Congress we can help support this movement by continuing to join
workers in their strikes and by fighting for action at the Federal
level.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is calling for a model employer
executive order that gives preference for Federal contracts to
companies that do more than just pay the minimum by providing things
like livable wages, paid leave, health benefits, and respecting their
employees' right to collectively bargain.

That will restore the American middle class.

As I take my seat, I just want to point out to the gentlewoman from
New Jersey, in 1957 there were a lot of things that America needed to
improve. We had racism, segregation. Women could not rise to their
potential. There were a lot of things America needed to do better at.

But in 1957, about 35 percent of the American workforce was in a
union. And guess what? One person could feed a family of four. One
person could feed a family of four.

Now, because people have been pushing trickle-down economics,
Reaganomics, whatever, and we say we are going to squeeze the workers,
we are going to offshore their job, the rich won't pay any taxes, and
we are not going to provide any services, and we are going to break the
unions, now, for 40 years, we have seen wages flat, and we have seen
this thing happen. We have seen these bad outcomes.

But you know what?

Today is a new day. People are wise to it, and they are unifying
together to push back and make a brand new economy where we can have
the public sector and the private sector work together for the
betterment of the American people.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source