Providing for Consideration of H.Res. Expressing Disapproval of the Trump Administration's Harmful Actions Towards Medicaid; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Protecting the Right to Organize Act of and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief and Puerto Rico Disaster Tax Relief Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in support of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or the PRO Act.

I am the daughter of a garment worker, so the fight for workers' rights has always had a special place in my heart. My mother toiled every day in the sweatshops in New Haven, Connecticut, sewing shirt collars and dresses. And she was a pieceworker, which meant she got pennies on the dollar. As chair of the Appropriations Committee's Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, I work every day to ensure that her early struggles were not in vain.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the PRO Act introduced by the chair of the committee, Congressman Bobby Scott. It strengthens the rights of working people to come together in union to secure better wages and better working conditions.

The single biggest economic challenge of our times is that people's pay doesn't keep up with their rising costs of healthcare, education, and childcare. From 1980 to 2017, average incomes for the bottom 90 percent of households stagnated to a 1.1 percent increase while skyrocketing more than 180 percent for the wealthiest 1 percent in this country. It is no coincidence that, at the same time, union membership fell to a record low of 10 percent.

Economists at Princeton found that the alarming rise of income inequality since the 1970s can be at least partially attributed to the decline in union membership.

The PRO Act is about leveling the playing field for working people. It penalizes predatory corporations that violate workers' rights and streamlines procedures at the National Labor Relations Board to more effectively deal with violations. It protects workers from being misclassified as independent contractors. It helps working people secure a winning agreement as part of a union. It protects union elections against interference. And it empowers unions and employers to negotiate agreements that collect fair share fees.

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Ms. DeLAURO. It establishes a mediation and arbitration process to help ensure corporations and newly formed unions reach a first contract.

As Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said: Inequality is not inevitable. It is about the public policy choices we make.

Madam Speaker, it is not globalization, and it is not technology. We have the opportunity today to choose a public policy that, in fact, will defend and protect working people in this country.

Madam Speaker, pass the PRO Act.

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