American Jobs
Floor Speech
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Mr. TONKO. Thank you very much, Representative Kaptur. Thank you for leading us in this discussion. We are going to be joined in a minute with our representative from Rochester, New York, Representative Louise Slaughter, and she and I, we can suggest, live along the Erie Canal Corridor, she at the western end of upstate New York, I at the eastern end.
That corridor became the birthplace of a necklace of communities dubbed ``mill towns'' with the development of the Erie Canal. Product activity, product discovery, product development was the theme ongoing in that region. People tethered their American dream in these mill towns. They came, they worked their fingers to the bone, they came up with product ideas, and that was the pulse of our community. Manufacturing was alive and well.
Then we saw this onslaught of what was called a trade negotiations process, where we would get into this concept of providing for negotiations, but those negotiations have grown a far distance from trade barriers and negotiations on tariffs. It became a way to encourage public policy in a very veiled kind of concept, so that you were addressing far beyond the tariff measures and the trade burdens.
What we have today, as you indicated, is trillions of dollars in trade deficit where these manufacturing jobs have left our home communities in upstate New York and are now, in many situations, in underdeveloped nations or newly developing nations.
When we look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership that is looming as one of the largest, if not the largest, most complex trade negotiation ever, you are going to look at situations where you have a minimum wage of 25 cents, for instance, in Vietnam, or an average hourly salary of 75 cents.
This is not what we want to bring as a condition for our American workers. We can't compete with that, nor should we. We are holding down the workers' rights, the human rights, of these people in developing nations by agreeing to these sorts of agreements.
I think that we can do better. We must do better. I stand for fair trade. This free trade concept where we sacrifice American workers, we find the rusting of manufacturing towns as a result, is not what the doctor ordered for the American economy.
We need to be fair to the middle class. This is the great many of us who have found our American prosperity developed in manufacturing centers where we were able to raise a family and grow a community and develop a neighborhood simply by a just salary, sound benefits, and the security of knowing that your job was your grounding in that community.
Free trade has taken away that American Dream for far too many, and we need to do better. We cannot continue to endure these trade deficits that are of the trillions of dollars and watch the many, many millions of jobs lost in the ensuing efforts because it is an unsustainable outcome.
I have watched as so many manufacturing centers left our area. I represent the Mohawk Valley Capital District region of New York. We witnessed a huge exodus of jobs. I have people telling me today, as they are closing down factories, they cannot compete with situations in China, for instance, where there are many conditions that favor those businesses because of these sound partnerships that they have with their government, where they will buy the factory and, perhaps, pay the utility bill and then further manipulate the currency.
There is a lot of work to be done on these issues. We need to make certain we go forward and have a sound overview by Congress, so that there is an investment by Congress and we are not circumventing our responsibilities and going forth with sound policy that will strengthen the great many of us called the ``middle class of America,'' provide for the American dream to be tethered in these mill towns, where we have manufacturing opportunities that are paying sound salaries, providing great benefits, and not destroying workers' rights.
I thank you for leading us in this discussion and look forward to exchanging many thoughts here in the ensuing hour.
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Mr. TONKO. I was just going to add to that statement, Representative, that there was a GAO study, a report that was called for by Representative George Miller and Representative Sandy Levin. That report clearly indicated that the provisions of these trade agreements have not been carefully and well-enough monitored and enforced. Also, violations that were discovered which require investigations were not done expeditiously. There are huge delays.
That ought to raise some concern to Members of Congress who might just casually dismiss this authority that we should have to review these agreements. These agreements, again, are far beyond tariffs and trade barriers.
They include public policy components that would range from worker protection to environmental concerns to food safety to consumer protection. These are all given dynamics that should not first and foremost be part of these agreements, but because they are, can have devastating consequences.
Again, I think this effort here is about greed. It is about providing for those that can control and manipulate that economy at the expense of diminishing the worker. We have seen what has happened here as we have lost American jobs in our manufacturing base.
The people who have been displaced from the manufacturing centers are now working in jobs that are providing for far less dollars--remuneration--for the hard work that they invest into that new job.
We are also watching the developing nations and their workers getting paid with a minimum wage of 25 cents or an average hourly rate of 75 cents. That is really destroying the workers not only this in country, but around the world.
To this Nation and her needs, it is about growing our middle class, growing our economy, protecting our middle class, and when we are sending off jobs in this casual, dismissive type of agreement concept called free trade, it is not a fair outcome, and fair trade is where it ought to be.
We need to go forward. I agree with the comments made by Representative Slaughter. We need to make certain there is not a Fast Track opportunity where we circumvent the responsibilities of Congress, where we should have debate, where we should allow for amendments, and not just move to a single up-or-down vote.
That is dangerous, that is far reducing the involvement of Congress. It is relinquishing Congress of its responsibilities and its duties and the empowerment that it can bring to the American worker.
So there is much work that needs to be done here. And as one who represents many manufacturing towns that in their heyday provided for great jobs and great opportunity and for the tethering of the American Dream, we need to move forward with progressive responses rather than this attack on working families in this country and around the world.
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Mr. TONKO. As we continue to banter on this importance of trade--of free trade versus fair trade--I can't help but be reminded of the pioneer spirit that has taken this Nation to moments of greatness, where that greatness was written by the American worker, oftentimes by the immigrant who came to this country to pursue the American Dream.
What we need to do here is have history instruct us. Let us understand what the greatness of this Nation is about. Our best days lie ahead of us if we do that, if we are willing to take lessons from American history, where our sons and daughters who, as our ancestors--many of them immigrants--came to these shores. It was their creative genius. It was their integrity. It was their ingenuity. It was their work ethic. It was their passion as they tethered that American Dream that grew these opportunities of manufacturing in our mill towns. They were undeniably the impetus.
Today, we need to be instructed by that pioneer spirit. We need to understand that, if given a fair shot, we can continue to grow upon that greatness, but if we suffocate that American Dream, if we suffocate the American worker, if we deny just remuneration for their sweat equity as they pour themselves into that job, if they are denied that job because of these trade deals, these negotiated outcomes that are denying again the worker across the world, then we all lose. It is important for us to understand that we need to invest in the manufacturing base. This is a walking away from history.
This is allowing greed to take over the equation of job creation. This is about providing for greed for a very few. Look at the relationship between the worker and the owner, the manager of these situations. We have reduced the worker. We see what the average income is looking like. We see what the household income is looking like. We have destroyed this. We have put people into lower-paying jobs as they have lost those manufacturing sector jobs. We have not allowed for the job growth.
We look at the chart that Representative Kaptur has displayed for us here this evening. It is overwhelmingly convincing. When you look at the activity in one direction versus the activity in the opposite direction, it is absolutely, blatantly, obvious that we need to do better, and we don't do that. We don't begin by relinquishing the role of Congress in this process. A Fast Track, as it has been talked about here this evening, denies the opportunity for fair debate. It denies the opportunity for amendments. It requires a simple up-or-down vote. We don't need to put public policy in for worker protection, environmental standards, child labor issues, consumer protection, public safety. All of these items are tossed into these agreements where there isn't the appropriate discussion and where the worker is held down--25 cents for the minimum wage in Vietnam, 75 cents for the average hourly wage, and then tossing people out of the American Dream here that they wanted to tether.
That pioneer spirit needs to be fed. That pioneer spirit needs to be nurtured. That pioneer spirit needs to be respected. That pioneer spirit needs to be revered. When we do that with sound trade opportunities, we will prosper because we have the intellectual capacity as a nation--we have the work ethic as a nation; we have the creative genius as a nation--to prosper. Give us the fair opportunities to grow our economy and allow for trade policy to initiate a new era of greatness for this country. That is when we are going to respond in justice and in fairness--in social and economic justice--that will allow us again to write these new annals of history that will show yet another era of greatness for the American worker.
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Mr. TONKO. The gentlewoman talks about the ownership--the pride of developing community and neighborhood, the investment that the worker made in growing a family, developing a household, building a neighborhood in a strong and powerful and meaningful way. Those are the mill town memories. Those memories guide my heart and soul.
I am from a mill town. I still live in that mill town and represent that mill town here in the House of Representatives, and it was the clamor of that assembly line that resonated to people of all ages in that mill town. It was the activity. It was the hustle and bustle of manufacturing that resonated, that became the pulse of manufacturing, and that became the heart of a mill town. You knew which day the mill was shut--there was silence--but now the silence is deafening, and we need to bring back that resurgence, that opportunity which meant the American Dream, meant an opportunity to earn a paycheck--the dignity to earn that paycheck--and to be able to raise a family and develop and maintain a household. That is what it is all about. It is about economic and social justice.
So we have work to do, and I believe that Washington needs to listen to small-town mill town across this country, to the middle-income community that reminds us it is about the dignity of work; that they want to invest their skill set, that they want to invest their professionalism, they want to invest their work ethic in building a product, allowing us to taste that greatness of manufacturing.
We look at the data that are assembled that should guide us here, and we see CEO salaries and productivity rising steeply upward. Meanwhile, flattened, if not dipping south, is the average worker's salary. Something is fundamentally unjust about that outcome. Something is fundamentally unsustainable about that outcome. If we are going to enjoy prosperity, every strata of the income ladder is affected if we are not dealing with worker fairness. Then and only then, if we address worker fairness, can we rightfully hope to have a better tomorrow. Isn't that what we are about--providing hope, instilling hope into the hearts and minds and souls of individuals and families, of workers--of the mill towns of the American economy?
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