National Transgender Day of Remembrance
Floor Speech
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Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding.
I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to join the voices of the working men and women of our country demanding better wages, better working conditions, better benefits. I rise for working families, for those working multiple jobs and struggling to get by while CEOs are making multiple millions of dollars and reaping the benefits of their labor.
And this is all during a time over the past several decades where productivity of the American economy has gone up while wages from those who have created that productivity have stayed flat. And if we want to achieve income equality or less income inequality, the answer is in giving workers leverage on the economy.
So I rise to defend workers' rights, their right to rise up in their workplace and use their collective power to demand better from their employer. That is the leverage that I am talking about.
Right now employers and corporate interests are doing everything they can to strip workers of their protections. In fact, they have already done that. They have already participated in weakening our labor laws and made it more difficult for workers to organize. And Representative Levin of Michigan started to explain the complex ways in which organizing is made more difficult; how elections can run forever; and how employers have an unfair advantage in those elections; and how the will of the workers in the workplace to organize and unionize can be thwarted.
And once unions are formed, there are many efforts to bust unions and silence the voices of workers, which, let me be clear, is illegal. And that is why we need to pass the PRO Act to make sure that penalties are enforced. We do have laws on the books, but there is not enough enforcement. We need to put an end to these antiunion activities.
If we want to reduce economic inequality, support working people and working families and ensure that the American Dream is within reach for all, then let's pass this bill. It is time to reaffirm our support for working people in America.
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