Providing For Congressional Disapproval Of A Rule Submitted By The National Labor Relations Board

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Minnesota for his outstanding remarks.

I want to rise to make one thing clear in this debate. My friends on the other side of the aisle once again have taken up the cause of special interests at the expense of hard-working Americans. Once again they are using their new majority in the Senate to find ways to keep the rules rigged against American workers.

Let's look at this. The bottom line is very simple. Middle-class incomes are declining.

One of the main reasons middle-class incomes are declining is the decline of unions. That is what just about everybody who studies it says. We are now 11 percent unionized. We were 30 percent, private sector only 6 percent. The bottom line is we had a lot of poor Americans in the 1920s.

Laws that were enacted by this Congress allowed unions to organize and workers, through collective bargaining, were able to gain some of the wealth from their labor. We had broad prosperity as America was unionized in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and 1980s. What happened was that corporate America learned how to both prevent new unions from occurring in new industries and breaking old unions.

As a result now, middle-class incomes are declining. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, once again, they talk they want to help the middle class, but in all the obvious ways to help the middle class--and unions do, whether the management likes it or not, they manage to give the workers more money--they do not walk the walk.

These NLRB changes are simple. There have not been substantial updates to the NLRB election process since the 1970s. The new changes pull the process into the 21st century, letting unions and employers file electronically and using modern forms of communications such as cell phones. Our colleagues are opposed to this. They want to undo it. My God, the changes will modernize union elections, prevent delays, reduce frivolous litigation, something even the Republican Board members on the NLRB supported in principle in their dissent.

Right now big corporations can use delays in labor elections to try and take advantage to postpone and even deny workers' rights to vote. This is what my friends on the other side of the aisle are rising up against: workers whose incomes are declining trying to get a little more money when corporate profits are at a record. The other side says, nope, side with the corporate profits over middle-class wages. That is what they are saying. That has been the theme in this Congress. It is going to continue to be the theme.

We will make it clear to the American people who is on their side. The congressional review process on these changes allowing employers and unions to file forms electronically, and we have to invoke this unique process, streamlining the process so workers are not kicked around with an army of lawyers?

It is disappointing that my friends across the aisle have made such a mountain out of a molehill with these rules. At the beginning of this Congress, I was hopeful my colleagues were ready to join us and go to work for working families who have experienced a lost decade of economic advancement, whose real wages have declined.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this year Leaders McConnell and Boehner said one of the their primary goals was helping struggling middle-class Americans who are clearly frustrated by a lack of opportunity and a stagnation of wages. If their only answer is to reduce regulations on corporations, lower corporate taxes, lower the taxes of the wealthy, and that is going to help the middle class, I have news for them, that is not going to fly.

I feel in my heart deeply that the decline of middle-class wages is a decline of America. I feel we have to do something about it, but we certainly should not regress. My colleagues, with this motion, it will make it harder for the middle class to grow wages, make it easier to say even a larger share of productivity goes to capital and a smaller share to labor, despite their rhetoric and despite the problems we face.

I see my dear friend from Tennessee. I hate to oppose him in such strong language because I think he is a fine gentleman, but on this issue we disagree.

I yield the floor.

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