Executive Calendar-- Continued

Press Release

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Mr. President, today we are voting on the nomination of William Emanuel to serve on the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB may be one of the most important independent Federal agencies that you have never heard of. They are responsible for protecting the lawful rights of workers to come together and bargain with their bosses for higher wages and better working conditions.

Starting a union is not an easy task. Often, it is a large corporation against its own employees. The money and the ability to threaten retaliation are heavily weighted on the corporate side.

For more than a century, many corporations fought unions tooth and nail, hiring strikebreakers and union-busting thugs and, later on, union-busting lawyers. So back in the 1930s, Congress established the NLRB to act as a referee and to keep the playing field level so that workers would have a chance to form a union if they wanted to.

President Trump picked William Emanuel to fill a vacancy on the NLRB.

Mr. Emanuel has over 40 years of experience practicing labor and employment law. He has represented manufacturing companies, trade associations, logistics companies, hospitals, and dozens of other giant companies involved in labor disputes. He has represented big companies like Nissan, FedEx, Rite Aid, Safeway and Uber. That is an impressive resume. There is just one problem with it: In his more than four decades of practice, he has never been on the side of the workers--not once.

Every party to a dispute is entitled to legal representation, and Mr. Emanuel has every right to spend his career representing corporations, but a guy who has never even once represented workers should not serve on the NLRB, period.

The NLRB is not the Department of Commerce. It is not the Chamber of Commerce. It is not there to help pump up big corporations. No. When Congress created the NLRB, it gave it a simple mission: encourage collective bargaining. An individual who has spent his career working for some of the country's most ruthless union-busting firms, fighting off union efforts at every turn, has absolutely no business at the helm of an agency whose job is to encourage collective bargaining. The deck is already stacked against hard-working Americans.

For the last few decades, productivity has increased, corporations and shareholders have gotten richer, but workers haven't shared in that growth.

Hourly wages have been virtually flat for almost 35 years, and one reason for this is the decline of unions. The impact is everywhere.

Inequality has risen in America. Why? According to the Economic Policy Institute, the decline in unions accounts for about 20 percent to 30 percent of the growth in income inequality over the past several decades. When unions decline, all workers are hurt. For the more than 40 million non-union men working in the private sector, the loss of unions over the past 30 years has been equivalent to an annual wage loss of about $109 billion. It is no wonder that American families are feeling the squeeze.

The decline of unions isn't an accident. It didn't happen on its own or as the unexpected byproduct of some other event. No. Large corporations have called on their Republican buddies in local, State, and Federal governments, and they have launched a quiet but deadly attack on unions. Twenty-eight States have passed laws banning the collection of union dues from workers that the unions represent. The only purpose of these laws is to starve the unions of resources and make it harder for workers to join together and to stand up for themselves.

The Supreme Court hasn't been kind to unions either, effectively decimating the ability of home healthcare workers to join together in 2014. Now with a Republican-appointed majority on the Court, they are poised to deal the knockout blow to public sector unions later this term. And with the nomination of Mr. Emanuel, workers won't be able to count on the NLRB, either.

As a candidate, President Trump promised American workers that under a Trump Presidency, ``the American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.'' He also promised to ``drain the swamp'' in Washington and fill his administration with those who would work for working Americans--not for donors and not for special interests.

When President Trump nominated Mr. Emanuel to serve at the highest labor court in the land, he delivered another gut punch to working people. In fact, Mr. Emanuel is the dream nominee for the donors and special interests. Trade associations for the companies that make their profits on the backs of low-wage workers immediately came out in support of his candidacy. The National Restaurant Association, the International Franchise Association, the National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the National Right to Work Committee, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce applauded President Trump's pick with almost giddy enthusiasm and urged the Republican Senate to quickly confirm him to the Board. Today, unless a few of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle decide to stand up for workers, they will get their wish.
We all know that Washington works great for the trade associations and their armies of lobbyists and lawyers, but it delivers one punch after another to the hard-working Americans who sent us to Washington to work for them. If Congress isn't going to stand up for workers, the very least we can do is give these workers a fighting chance to join together and stand up for themselves.

It is the NLRB's job to make sure that employees can join unions if they want to. That is the law. A man who has spent 40 years beating back workers' efforts to form unions has no business on the Board. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing his nomination.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on the confirmation of William Emanuel to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB. I am glad that we are moving this nomination because, once Mr. Emanuel is confirmed, we will have a full five-member National Labor Relations Board, which has not been the case in nearly 2 years.

The NLRB was created in 1935 by the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, which was significantly amended in 1947 by the Taft-Hartley Act.

It has the statutory mission to promote ``free flow of commerce'' by allowing employees to organize and bargain collectively.

The statute provides that ``employees shall have the right to self- organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities.'' The statute further provides that it is an unfair labor practice for unions to ``restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights.'' After years of playing the role of advocate for organized labor, the new Board should return to the role of neutral umpire. Board partisanship did not start under President Obama, but it became worse under him. When the Board is too partisan, it creates instability in our Nation's workplaces and does not serve the intent of the law, which is stable labor relations and free flow of commerce. The Obama Board overturned numerous longstanding precedents that had been upheld for decades by both Republican and Democrat boards.

Under President Obama, the Board took three particularly harmful actions. First, the joint-employer decision, which was the biggest attack on the opportunity for small businessmen and women in this country to make their way into the middle class that anyone has seen in a long time--threatening to destroy the American Dream for owners of the nation's 780,000 franchise locations. Second, the ambush elections rule, which can force a union election before an employer and many employees even have a chance to figure out what is going on. This rule also forces employers to provide union organizers with a list of employees' telephone numbers, email addresses, employee work locations, shifts, and job classifications--highly personal information that many employees may not wish to share. Third was the microunion decision, which gave factions of employees within single businesses a path to forming their own unions. This decision risks fracturing workplaces and creating the potential for conflict and uncertainty among employees.

The Senate has the opportunity today to help reverse this harmful trend and bring stability to our Nation's workplaces by voting for William Emanuel and filling out the Board--again, for the first time in nearly 2 years. Mr. Emanuel is eminently qualified to serve on the NLRB. He is currently a shareholder at Littler Mendelson in Los Angeles where he works on labor and employment matters. Mr. Emanuel has spent the entirety of his impressive career in the private sector, representing trade associations, hospitals and healthcare organizations, schools, as well as transportation, logistics, and manufacturing companies. Mr. Emanuel has previously represented his clients before the NLRB and has filed amicus briefs on behalf of trade associations.

Mr. Emanuel was nominated to be a member of the NLRB on June 29, 2017. The committee received Mr. Emanuel's HELP application on June 30.

On July 6, the committee received Mr. Emanuel's Office of Government Ethics paperwork, including his public financial disclosure and ethics agreement. Based on these documents, OGE determined that Mr. Emanuel ``is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations governing conflicts of interest.''

We held Mr. Emanuel's hearing on July 13, and he completed all paperwork in accordance with the HELP Committee's rules, practices, and procedures.

Mr. Emanuel offered to meet with all HELP Committee members. Mr. Emanuel met with nine of them, including five Democratic members.

Following the hearing, Mr. Emanuel responded to 62 questions for the record, QFRs, or 101 if you include subquestions, and those responses were provided to Senators prior to the markup. The HELP Committee favorably reported out Mr. Emanuel's nomination on July 19.

I look forward to voting for William Emanuel, who will serve on the National Labor Relations Board with distinction.

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