The Congressional Black Caucus--African American and the Labor Movement

Floor Speech

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Mr. JEFFRIES. It is an honor and a privilege, Mr. Speaker, to once again have this opportunity to stand here on the floor of the House of Representatives and to anchor the CBC Special Order where, for the next 60 minutes, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have an opportunity to speak directly to the American people on an issue of great significance to us, which is the future of the organized labor movement and how that relates to the economic viability of the African American community and to America as a whole.

Now, today, we've all just returned from the August recess. We are here back at the Capitol, and of course we're in the midst of a very robust period of deliberation as it relates to the administration's request for us to grant authorization for this country to strike militarily against Syria for what appears to be the use of chemical weapons, which is in violation of international law, against the Syrian people. That debate will play itself out over the next few days and, perhaps, even the next few weeks; but while we undertake that solemn obligation to make the best decision for this country and for our constituents as it relates to such a critical issue of war and peace and possible military engagement, we also have a similar responsibility to deal with the domestic issues that continue to impact our constituents as well as the American people.

We know that we are still in the midst of a very sluggish economic recovery and that the American worker has fallen behind relative to the position that that worker was in coming out of World War II and through the sixties and the seventies, into the eighties and the nineties. This is a matter of urgent concern to the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and it should be a matter of urgent concern to everyone who is a Member of this august body. Part of the deterioration of the American worker, I believe, empirically can be shown to be directly related to the deterioration of unionized membership here in this great country. So we will explore those topics.

We are a week removed from the Labor Day celebration, and we are also a few weeks removed from the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, a march that was projected as one both for jobs and for freedom. We often focus on the civil rights aspect of the march--and it produced some tremendous pieces of legislation--but the March on Washington was also about jobs and economic opportunity, and it was put together with the significant assistance of the organized labor movement here in America.

I've been joined by several distinguished colleagues, Members of the House of Representatives, but also of members of the class of 2012--this wonderful freshman class. I believe the first speaker will be the distinguished gentleman--my good friend from the other side of the Hudson River, the always nattily dressed--Representative Donald Payne, Jr.

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Mr. JEFFRIES. I thank my good friend from New Jersey for those very insightful and thoughtful observations.

I think the organized labor movement has a pretty simple objective in that a hard day's work should be compensated by a good day's pay; and anybody that works hard to provide for their family should be able to take care of their family, possibly even with a solidly middle class existence. That seems like that is consistent with the idea of who we are as a country. We, of course, right now have a minimum wage that is so low--$7.25 an hour--that you can work 40 hours a week and a family of four will still fall below the poverty line.

We've seen income inequality reach levels that are as bad as they were during the Great Depression. Part of the reason for these economic phenomena clearly have to do with the decline of Americans and their participation in the workforce as union members. It's something that we just have to confront here in this country in deciding what type of America we're going to become as we move forward into the future.

I've been joined by another extremely distinguished, eloquent, thoughtful colleague from the great State of Ohio, and I'm pleased to yield the floor now to Representative Joyce Beatty.

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Mr. JEFFRIES. Thank you, Congresswoman Beatty, for those very comprehensive, thoughtful, and insightful remarks, and for pointing out, of course, the historic connection between the struggle for civil rights here in America and the organized labor movement.

Of course we know that A. Philip Randolph was very central in the 1963 March on Washington, that great labor leader who, in 1937, formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. A. Philip Randolph once made this observation:

The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement traditionally has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, and the poor.

He echoed those words several decades ago, but I think they ring true today in America in 2013, and we're thankful for that.

I've been joined by another distinguished colleague, a member of the freshman class, my colleague from the Lone Star State. It's now my honor and my privilege to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas, Marc Veasey.

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Mr. JEFFRIES. Thank you, Representative Veasey, for your very eloquent thoughts and observations.

Of course, we understood that Dr. King was very close with organized labor, with 1199 in New York, with the retail workers, and a variety of other unions. And of course on that tragic day down in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was assassinated in 1968, he was there in support of striking Black sanitation workers, so he leaves behind a tremendous legacy. Part of that legacy, of course, includes standing up for the rights of workers to organize and fight for decent wages and health care and a pension. These are all things that Dr. King would advocate for were he around today.

We have been joined by one of the leaders of the CBC, someone who was a distinguished civil rights attorney prior to his arrival here in the Congress and a judge, and now he serves as vice chair in the Congressional Black Caucus, one of the most eloquent voices in the CBC, and I am pleased to yield the floor to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield)

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Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that's been troubling to me and to many of the people that I represent back home in Brooklyn and parts of Queens has been to witness the attack on organized labor, on unions all across the country. Particularly in 2011, 2012, we witnessed it in Wisconsin, we witnessed it in Ohio, taking place in other parts of the country.

And I think that it's unfortunate that there are some forces out here in the country determined to crush the ability of the American worker to organize and fight collectively for a decent way of life.

And I think it's important to point out some of the reasons why all Americans should be thankful for unions and for the organized labor movement. I'm just going to highlight quickly 10.

We should be thankful to organized labor because of overtime pay.

We should be thankful because of child labor laws.

We should be thankful because we now have the 40-hour workweek. We should be thankful because of workers' compensation, there to provide a safety net for folks who are injured on the job.

We should be thankful because we now have the presence, as a result, in significant part, of the organized labor movement, for unemployment insurance.

We should of course be thankful because many Americans, as a result of the efforts of organized labor, enjoy pensions, increasingly under assault, increasingly being taken away, but pensions have provided a vehicle for retirement security important to the American way of life and standard of living.

We should be thankful to organized labor because it fought for employer health care insurance coverage, something that many folks in this country still don't have, and that's one of the reasons why I strongly support the Affordable Care Act, an effort to correct that inequity that exists in America. But the fact that many employers do provide health insurance is an outgrowth that resulted from, in large measure, the effort of organized labor.

We should be thankful to organized labor because of the presence of whistleblower protection laws that give, in many instances, workers the capacity to identify something that's wrong, and to be able to move forward and reveal it, often, in some instances, when public funds are being squandered or the law is being broken; to reveal a wrong without having to have the same level of fear that retaliation would take place as a result of simply doing the right thing.

We should be thankful to organized labor because it fought for sexual harassment laws designed to allow the workforce to be an environment where men and women could exist without fear of inappropriate behavior poisoning the atmosphere. We still have a long way to go in that regard, but we've got some good laws on the books designed to protect against repulsive behavior in the workforce.

Lastly, we should be thankful, and this in no way is an exhaustive list, just a representative sample, but we should be thankful for holiday pay, thankful that organized labor fought for the opportunity for many Americans to be able to enjoy Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's or other holidays with their families, still have an opportunity to be compensated as a result of the ability to get certain holidays, perhaps most significantly, the Fourth of July, where we celebrate the birthday of this great Nation--off in remembrance of who we are and where we need to go in this country.

We've got a lot of reasons to be thankful to organized labor. Several of my colleagues earlier today referenced their own personal experiences as it relates to the labor movement. And as I was listening to those experiences, from Representative Donald Payne and Representative Marc Veasey, I thought about the experience of myself and my own family, growing up in Brooklyn to two parents in a working class neighborhood in Crown Heights.

My parents were married in April of 1967. At the time they got married, they were both members of the Social Service Employees Union, SSEU, which subsequently became Local 371 and DC 37. But they were both SSEU members. They got married in April of 1967.

And just a short while thereafter, the union decided to go out on strike because they were fighting for improved conditions, both for the workers and for the clients that Social Service workers served.

My parents, newlyweds at the time, confronted what I imagine was an extremely difficult decision: Do we strike with our union brothers and sisters, even though we'll have no possible means of providing for ourselves, and we don't know how long we'll be out of work, or do we cross that picket line in defiance of the collective action of the SSEU workers who went out on strike?

I'm proud that my parents joined with their union brothers and sisters and went out on strike. And as I look back at that decision, it's a lot of reason for me and for my brother and for our family to be thankful, because when I think about it, in 1973, my younger brother was born with some heart difficulty, and I'm confident, looking back on it, that it was that union-negotiated health care that helped our family get through what was otherwise a very difficult time. And my brother's alive and well and doing wonderful things as a professor at Ohio State University right now.

And then in 1980, my parents bought their first and only home in Crown Heights, the home that my brother and I grew up in, the home that they still live in back in Brooklyn right now. And it was that union-negotiated salary that helped them put together the money to make the down payment and to pay the mortgage all of these years.

Then in 1988, it was time for me to go off to

college. And one of the reasons why I was able to come out of college relatively debt-free is because my mother borrowed against her union-negotiated pension in order to send her children to college.

And so the organized labor movement never has to worry about whether I'm going to stand up for them because they've always stood up for me and so many others just like me, as we heard from my colleagues in the freshman class here in the Congress. And that's simply representative of stories that so many folks across America could share.

Now, unfortunately, we know that organized labor is under attack. About 60 years ago, in 1953, about 35 percent of the American workforce had collective bargaining coverage. But as of 2010, we went from about 35 percent in the 1950s to just under 7 percent in 2010.

Where has that gotten us?

I think it's put us, not in a better position, as middle class America or working families; it's put us in a worse position.

And we saw the attacks in Wisconsin, and we saw the attacks on collective bargaining in Ohio that the folks had to roll back after the people of Ohio rose up in opposition.

I was proud, as a member of the State legislature at the time, in 2012, to support the effort to unionize by a group of very courageous cable workers in Brooklyn. Organized by the Communication Workers of America, they voted, in the face of significant pressure to the contrary, to join the union and to organize a chapter in order to fight for better wages and for stronger health care and the possibility of a better retirement.

Unfortunately, the courageous nature of those workers has not been met with a negotiated contract. The collective bargaining process has failed them to date. In fact, more than 20 of them were unceremoniously terminated earlier this year, and they were only brought back in the face of tremendous pressure by public servants at all levels of government.

But more than 18 months later, from the moment in which they voted to join the union, they still are in limbo. They have no contract, and in many ways, their lives have been turned upside down. In fact, every other worker in the company that employed these cable workers has been granted a substantial raise, while these individuals remain in limbo.

We're hopeful that we can do better, that we can bring the NLRB back to life, that it can serve as an objective entity to regulate the relationship between the workforce and employers across America.

There are a lot of employers who want to do the right thing. We should encourage that because it's good for America. And in this economic recovery that we have right now, there are a lot of companies that are doing pretty well. But there are a lot of workers who are still struggling.

One of the things that I think we have to confront here in the Congress is the fact that we have a very schizophrenic economic recovery. The stock market is way up, corporate profit's way up, the productivity of the American worker is way up, yet, unemployment remains stubbornly high, and wages remain stagnant.

How can that be when corporate America is doing so well, when investors in the stock market are doing so well, when objective measures show that the productivity of the American worker has increased significantly?

But the American worker, in terms of their ability to live and pursue the middle class dream, has, in many ways, been left behind.

These are questions that I'm hopeful this Congress will confront. As we fight our way through sequestration and deal with the debt ceiling and the potential default, God forbid, that we have to confront next month, and we work our way, deliberatively, through the question of whether a military strike in Syria is appropriate, let's not forget the fact that what makes America great is the capacity for people to work hard, to purchase a home, to raise their family in safety, in security, with the ability to live a life where they provide for themselves and for their families and are able to hand to a generation of Americans that come behind them, hopefully, an America that is more prosperous, not less prosperous.

We in the CBC believe that the best way to get there is not to continue to attack organized labor but to recognize what it has done for this country and to strengthen organized labor as we move forward.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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