Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under the Rule Submitted By the National Labor Relations Board Relating to ``Standard for Determining Joint Employer Status''

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASAR. Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this Republican proposal because across our country and across my home State of Texas, working families are struggling to make ends meet while big corporations boast record-breaking profits.

We should all be celebrating this Biden-era NLRB rule to make sure that those same big companies have to bargain for better wages and better benefits with their workers and that those big companies can't throw contractors in the way in order to evade that baseline responsibility.

Nonetheless, unsurprisingly, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are running to the rescue of those same big corporations and their record-breaking profits. The Republican majority wants to help those corporations be able to deny workers the benefits, the higher wages, the overtime, and the healthcare they deserve.

The most ironic thing that I have heard today from the Republicans who are for this resolution is they keep saying they want to defend small businesses. However, in fact, the Republican proposal today will allow big corporations to throw a small contractor in between themselves and their employees so that they can keep on underpaying their staff and provide fewer benefits than those workers deserve.

I will give you an example from my district, Madam Speaker. In my district, my constituents run YouTube Music which is used by millions of people across the world. YouTube Music, of course, is owned by YouTube and by Google. However, they don't get a check from Google. They get a check from a contractor that otherwise wouldn't exist except for the fact that they are there to essentially pass the check along to workers and shield Google and YouTube from their responsibility to their workers.

That is why these folks who are helping make Google $60 billion in profits just last year make as little as $19 an hour. This Republican proposal is to shield enormous corporations like Google from their responsibility to make sure that the workers who create their profits actually get to share in American prosperity.

Workers have the right to bargain for fair wages and working conditions with every company that controls their terms and conditions of employment, and that is why we should defend this Biden-era NLRB rule to protect workers' rights to bargain.

Workers across the United States are saying ``yes'' to higher wages, they are saying ``yes'' to better healthcare, and they are saying ``yes'' to collective bargaining. It is time for Congress to catch up.

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