Protecting the Right to Organize Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Madam Speaker, I want to definitely thank my colleague from Michigan and also my colleague from Massachusetts for being here to support workers.

I believe that it is the labor movement that brought us the middle class. The height was really after World War II, where we saw that wages were going up for everyone--the wealthiest, the middle class, poor people could get jobs that would get them out of poverty--and the labor movement, the right of workers to organize, made the difference, to fight together, work together for better wages and working conditions.

So, today, I rise in enthusiastic support before the House of Representatives for H.R. 2474, the Protect the Right to Organize Act, for a vote that is going to take place tomorrow in the House of Representatives.

The right to form a union, which has been eroded over the last several decades, and the right to take collective action in the workplace and the right to exercise one's First Amendment rights in the form of secondary boycotts are fundamental, and it is past time that we as Americans promote their values.

For too long, employers have been able to violate the National Labor Relations Act with impunity, routinely denying workers their basic right to join with coworkers for fairness on the job. As a result, the collective strength of workers to negotiate for better pay and for better benefits has eroded, and income inequality in the United States of America has reached levels that predate the Great Depression.

What is worse is that this is a rather predictable outcome. It is not surprising if workers don't have the right to organize that their wages are not going to go up.

But I want to share a story. It is a story of a woman named Yiran Zhang. She is a graduate worker at Loyola College in my district, in Chicago, Loyola Chicago.

Yiran Zhang's parents raised their child to be a believer that education was the path to a better life. They moved to the United States from China when she was almost 2 years old. So she has grown up here. Her parents moved to the United States to earn their Ph.D.'s and work as graduate workers.

Years later, Yiran decided to follow in her parents' footsteps by pursuing a Ph.D. The philosophy major quickly learned that a lot has changed in the world since her parents were graduate workers like she is now.

We're struggling to make a living. The expectations are the same, but the conditions in higher education are so different.

The expectations of the job, she means, are the same.

She says:

As a graduate worker, I've had to miss paying bills, to skip doctor's appointments, and even work two or three additional jobs to cover living expenses. I'm fighting for a union because I know it is only by standing together with my colleagues that we can change any of this.

So Yiran and other Loyola graduate workers came together to form a union to make improvements in the school's administration. They found that the administration actually dismissed them and used the legal system to fight their efforts.

Yiran sees unions as the only way for graduate workers to be heard. I actually stood with them at a demonstration, and she said:

I've seen that the only way that we've been able to get our administration to listen is by doing sit-ins and walkouts and taking action together. Teachers across the country and people who work at things like Stop & Shop have had the same experience.

In addition to having a seat at the table, Loyola graduate workers are fighting for a higher stipend and the establishment of summer funding, which will give them the ability to do important research and writing over the summer instead of having to take on multiple part-time jobs just to make ends meet. They also want more professional support, including clear grievance procedures and accountability.

So, for young women like Yiran, the ability to join and unionize would mean that she would be able to truly build on the foundations started by her parents. She says:

I am fighting for a living wage, respect for my labor, and a better life. I shouldn't have to seek outside work up to 30 hours a week on top of my graduate worker hours just to make ends meet at the cost of finishing my program on time or being the best scholar and educator that I can be. Academia shouldn't be just for the privileged. Negotiating a fair contract with graduate workers is the first step toward addressing these harmful systemic issues.

I am going to quit. I have taken more than my time, I think. But I wanted to give you a true-life example of a woman who is trying to do her best in her job as a student worker, as a graduate worker, and because she can't organize, she can't get the benefits and the wages that she deserves. This is typical of what is going on in our country and is creating the income inequality that we see right now.

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