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Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021

Floor Speech

Date: March 9, 2021
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Labor Unions

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Mr. DeSAULNIER. Mr. Speaker, I am a proud former member of Teamsters Local 170 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and a former member of AFL-CIO Local 2 in San Francisco. From that experience, I know personally the value of being a union member.

I am also a former small business person who knows the value of having good-paying jobs in a community represented by union members to small businesses.

Mr. Speaker, the wealthiest Americans continue to take home a larger and larger share of America's wealth. According to Fed data, the top 1 percent of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion, which is 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans. One percent has more wealth than 160 million Americans.

This is unparalleled in our existence and must be addressed if you really care about working people. This inequality has contributed to what is called diseases of despair by public health experts and has worsened the behavioral health crisis exponentially in this country.

At the same time, union coverage today is half of what it was 40 years ago, and research shows deunionization accounts for up to one-third of the inequality of which I speak.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that deunionization has led to working people losing $200 billion per year, and that money goes to make inequality greater and goes into the already exceedingly disproportionate wealth by those in the 1 percent. It hurts all of us, including them.

Strengthening access to unions and American workers being able to organize will help restore the balance of power between workers and employers, wages and capital. The research is clear that when workers collectively bargain and organize, their pay goes up. On average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 13 percent more than a peer in a nonunionized workplace.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for yielding me the time, and I ask my colleagues to enthusiastically support this initiative.

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