Encouraging Employee Ownership Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to H.R. 1675, the Encouraging Employee Ownership Act.

As a young housewife in suburban Chicago, I joined a handful of women in a successful campaign to get freshness dates on grocery products. At the time, expiration dates were coded. The stores knew, but consumers were in the dark about whether the milk they were buying had been on the shelf too long.

Getting that information was really important. It gave us the facts and the power to make the right food choices for our families. Getting information about our stocks--whether those stocks are in the form of compensation or investments--is equally important. Again, information is power--the key to being able to protect the financial well-being of our families.

Simply, workers deserve to know the value of the stocks they are receiving instead of wages. We are living in a time of serious wage stagnation. According to the National Employment Law Project, real hourly wages were 4 percent lower on average in 2014 than in 2009. So it is important for workers who are offered stock compensation to have accurate data about the value of those stocks.

Similarly, we are experiencing a real retirement security crisis. Median savings for all working households is $2,500 for retirement. For those near retirement, it is $14,500--not a heck of a lot of money saved for retirement. So we need to encourage investments. But if we want Americans to invest, we need to give them information. They need to be able to judge the risks and make wise decisions.

Yet, instead of giving American workers or investors more information, H.R. 1675 would give them less. This bill would double the threshold that triggers disclosure of information to workers. It would reduce the requirements for broker-dealers to be accountable for certain information that they provide. It would make it harder to find information on SEC filings, and it would give the SEC unilateral power to overturn congressionally enacted laws to protect investors.

Those are all really bad ideas, and I think we should vote ``no'' on H.R. 1675.

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