Andy Levin

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak about the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a crucial piece of legislation that we will take up tomorrow on the floor of this House. It is so important that we take up this bill because the American economy is not working for most American families. While corporations and the wealthy continue to capture the rewards of a growing economy, working families and middle class Americans are being left behind. From 1980 to 2017, average incomes for the bottom 90 percent of households increased just 1.1 percent, while average incomes for the wealthiest 1 percent increased by 184 percent. This inequality is not a natural product of a functioning economy. It is not all due to globalization or technology change. It is the result of policy choices that have stripped workers of the power to join together and negotiate for decent wages, benefits, and working conditions. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act restores fairness to the economy by strengthening the Federal laws that protect workers' rights to form a union. You know, our basic labor law, the National Labor Relations Act was passed 85 years ago in 1935. It was a core part of the New Deal. A lot of credit is due to the man for whom it is named, Senator Wagner of New York. Also, in addition to FDR, our President, our amazing Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins deserves of a huge amount of credit. And after the Wagner Act was passed, or the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, within just 12 years, one-third of American workers were members of unions. And that figure, about a third of all workers being in unions, persisted for some time. But then employers went on the attack to try to undermine that law. In 1947, over President Truman's veto, the Taft Hartley amendments were passed, and they gutted a lot of what workers wanted in 1935. And then in 1959, the Landrum-Griffin amendments were passed in the Eisenhower era, and they further eroded workers' rights. So that while a third of workers were union members in the late 1940s and early 1950s, by the time that I started organizing workers in 1983, about 16\1/2\ percent of private sector workers were in unions. And today, in 2020, just 6.2 percent of workers in the private sector in our country have the voice and power of a union. And this has decimated the American middle class. And it has made the American Dream recede from view for so many American workers. So we are going to spend some time tonight talking about the PRO Act, and I want to invite my esteemed colleague from the great State of Minnesota, Representative Omar, to join me in saying a few words about the PRO Act. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Minnesota such time as she may consume.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Omar for being such a champion of workers in Minnesota and throughout this great Nation and, indeed, throughout our world. Madam Speaker, I will take a few moments to talk about the breadth of this bill. What has happened to workers in this country over the last several decades is the result of many administrative actions by various administrations, regulatory actions that administrations have taken that stripped workers of their rights, judicial decisions from the lower courts all the way up to the Supreme Court, and laws passed by the Congress and the States, to the point where millions and millions of workers aren't even covered by the National Labor Relations Act, can't even exercise their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, and the rights that they have are so badly eroded that, functionally, workers don't have the freedom to form unions in this country. And Representative Omar referenced Chairman Scott. Chairman Scott and the staff of this committee have done such an incredible job at looking at the complexity of the workplace in 2020 and including the many ways in which we need to make changes to help workers. I want to highlight several things: The first is the problem of multiple employers and protecting employees of multiple employers. The PRO Act will make it so that two or more persons are employers under the National Labor Relations Act, if each codetermines or shares control over the employees' essential terms and conditions of employment. It basically codifies the joint employer standard in the NLRB's Browning-Ferris decision of 2015. And this is extremely important because in a lot of industries, employers have tried to evade their responsibility to workers under the National Labor Relations Act through various schemes of corporate organization so that the company that really is in charge, that really determines what uniform they wear, what route they drive, what kind of products they serve, everything about their job, is not considered an employer under the act. The PRO Act will fix that, and it is very important to help millions of workers get their rights under the NLRA. Another huge problem of excluding workers from accessing their rights is misclassification of workers as independent contractors. The PRO Act will fix this problem by using a simple three-part test to determine whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor. And this will help, again, another set of millions of workers gain access to their rights and clarify that they are covered as workers, as employees under the National Labor Relations Act. So they can form a union, bargain collectively, get a contract, and get justice. Another major area of the law involves protecting workers in their right to engage in protected activities. So let's talk about workers going on strike. The PRO Act will prohibit employers from permanently replacing workers who go on strike. This is hugely important, because permanent replacement of strikers has been a tactic used over the last, really, 40 years to deter workers from engaging in strikes at all and taking away this very core right of withholding your labor as a way to try to get better working conditions. I remember what happened in, for example, the meat packing industry, which used to be a largely unionized industry. And the workers' organizations were largely destroyed by preventing workers from engaging in strikes, to the point where their wages and benefits were cut massively and many of their facilities were moved, and they couldn't do anything about it. Another thing that the PRO Act will do is prohibit offensive lockouts. Under current law, employers may offensively lock out employees in the absence of a threatened strike with the goal of the employer being to curtail the workers' ability to strike by removing workers control over the timing and duration of a work stoppage. Current law also permits employers to hire temporary replacements during an offensive lockout. So if the employer thinks there might be a labor dispute, even if the workers hadn't planned to go on strike, they lock the workers out and temporarily replace them, stripping them of their ability to make their own strategy about how they want to enforce their right under the act. The PRO Act prohibits any lockouts prior to strike but it maintains employers' rights to respond to strikes with defensive lockouts, which is appropriate. Another key change that the PRO Act would put into law after all these years from the Taft-Hartley amendments is removing limitations on secondary strikes. The idea here is that the Congress in 1947 said that workers of one company can't engage in collective activity in solidarity with workers in another company. Workers might picket or strike or support a boycott in solidarity with other workers to improve the other workers on their own, perhaps, wages and working conditions. Being allowed to protest however you want in America about what some other company might be doing is a fundamental First Amendment right. This has been something that has bothered me for decades. It is fundamentally unfair in this country, and the PRO Act would fix this by allowing workers to have their full freedoms to engage in secondary activity. A crucial thing that the PRO Act would do to help workers vindicate their rights under the National Labor Relations Act is prohibiting captive audience meetings. So it is hard for people who haven't been through a union organizing campaign to really understand how absurd it is to claim that a union election is sort of just like a political election, where you go down to the local school or church or wherever you vote, and you get in line and they check whether you are on the voting rolls, and you cast your ballot in a little booth. You wouldn't dream of putting your job at risk or that anybody could do something to you for how you vote in America; it is a core thing. That is not how it works in a union election. And one of the things that employers have been allowed to do is they can force you to attend a meeting, the sole purpose of which is to pressure you not to vote for a union. They can do that every time you go to work. They can do it for your whole shift. If you say, ``I have been to five of your presentations about the union; I don't want to go anymore,'' you can be fired for not going to the employer's propaganda offensive against forming a union. It is something, without parallel, in American law and in our economy only to prohibit or try to prevent workers from forming a union. So the PRO Act will change this at long last and say that people have their First Amendment rights, we are all grownups here, and your employer cannot make you go to an antiunion captive audience meeting on pain of termination. I am sorry it took until 2020 for us to get to this point, but at long last we are saying captive audience meetings have no place in workers' decisions about forming unions. There are a lot of other really important provisions I want to get to, but at this time I want to invite my esteemed colleague from the great State of Massachusetts, Representative Ayanna Pressley, to join in this discussion of why it is so important that we pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Pressley).

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Pressley for being such a great champion for workers in Massachusetts and in our whole country. Madam Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Schakowsky for her words. I am so glad she shared that story from Loyola. It reminds me of another situation of graduate employees that many of us, our colleagues, are working on right now. Graduate employees of Harvard, in all kinds of labs, in the social sciences and in the arts, all the different departments, formed a union and were recognized something like 18 months ago by the Harvard administration, but they have never achieved a first contract. I think something like over 20 colleagues joined me in sending a letter to the president of Harvard University, 20-some of us who are graduates. I am a graduate of Harvard Law School, and other people are graduates from the law school, undergraduates from Harvard University, the Kennedy School, doctors, whatever. We all sent a letter to President Bacow saying we are happy that you recognized the union, but unless workers get a first contract, what have they really achieved? And we hope that both sides will come together and achieve a first contract. We continue to watch that situation. So graduate employees, like others, need the freedom and the ability to form unions. I want to hit on a few other areas that the PRO Act deals with, and my theme tonight really is what a comprehensive jobs bill does in trying to fix problems that prevent workers from exercising their rights. Here is another one. The PRO Act will eliminate employers' ability to unilaterally withdraw recognition from a union. Now, this is problem created more recently. On July 3, 2019, the Trump NLRB issued a decision in Johnson Controls, Incorporated that would allow an employer to announce that it will withdraw recognition of a union within a 90-day timeframe before the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement, based on its own idea that the union has lost majority support. This is just such a good example of what has happened over and over with workers' rights being chipped away at. And so the PRO Act would overturn this decision and prohibit employers from unilaterally withdrawing recognition of a union, unless there is an election to decertify the union; just like the workers would have gone through an election to create the union in the first place. Speaking of first contracts, almost half the time when workers organize in this country, they don't have a first contract within a year or two. And if you don't have a contract by then, you are not likely ever to get one. If you can't bargain collectively, what have you really accomplished by winning a union election? So it is really crucial that we have first contracts. The PRO Act fixes this problem. It basically sets up a system of mediation and arbitration to ensure workers get a contract. It goes like this: Upon a written request from the union, they have to commence bargaining in 10 days. If, within 90 days, they haven't achieved a first contract, either party can request mediation. After 30 days of mediation, if there isn't a first contract, the case will be referred to arbitration; and the arbitration panel must be established within 14 days. And there are sensible procedures about a three-person arbitration panel, fairly picked, with each side picking one and then agreeing on the third. Bottom line here: In 144 days, 7\1/2\ weeks from when the election is decided and the union is certified, there will be arbitration. There is no timeline for a decision, but that is reasonable because the arbitrators do this as a profession; they know how to do it; and I think we can count on them to be timely. And the decision of the arbitrators is binding for 2 years. So bottom line, if the company doesn't want to negotiate, if the workers are having a hard time getting the company to the table, they can go to mediation and arbitration, and in 7\1/2\ weeks, they can have an arbitration panel hearing their case. It's a complete sea change from today, and very important. Another right that workers have been denied is the right to collective action in the courtroom, to sue their employer, to go to court to vindicate their rights. The NLRA protects workers' rights to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of mutual aid and protection. It is that broad. But, on May 21, 2018, the Supreme Court held in Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis that, despite this explicit protection, employers may force workers into signing arbitration agreements that waive the right to pursue work litigation jointly, collectively, or in a class action, despite the specific language of the NLRA. So, the PRO Act would overturn that decision by explicitly stating that employers may not require employees to waive their rights to collective action in the courtroom, including class action litigation. I started organizing unions in 1983, and I remember learning about the Excelsior list; the list that employers have to provide unions so that they can know who the workers are and help them organize the union. You can only get this list after you have a showing of interest required under the act, so there is a whole process for this. But the lists we got were often garbage. They were wrong. They would only have a person's first name or last name. They didn't have the information required. So the National Labor Relations Board decided in 2014 that there has to be certain information in a list, and it has to be searchable in electronic format; very common sense. Employee's full name, their home address, work location, shift, job classification and, if the employer has it, their land line and mobile telephone numbers and email addresses. What is the context here? I can tell you from personal experience, when we talk about workers having the right to organize, they don't actually have the right to have access to union organizers in their workplace. When I was organizing for SEIU, and in the 11 years I served as the assistant director of organizing at the national AFL-CIO, if we were helping workers at a facility organize and we walked on to that property, the employer would arrest us for trespassing. Workers in the United States have no right to actually have access to unions in their workplace; so their only way to talk to representatives of the union is on the phone, or email, or at their homes. So the PRO Act makes clear that those lists have to be adequate, it's another thing that may seem small; but if we fix it, we are going to help a lot more workers exercise their rights. Another thing that happens very often is that employers gerrymander the bargaining unit that the National Labor Relations Board finds in which to hold an election. So the PRO Act codifies the National Labor Relations Board's 2011 decision in Specialty Healthcare, and prevents employers from doing this gerrymandering; prevents them from including individuals in the voting unit who have no interest in joining the union, but they are simply put there to try to pad the ``no'' vote to prevent the workers from succeeding in forming a union. Another thing about union elections that are different from any normal election in a democracy is the workers usually vote in their workplace after an intense campaign from their employer to try to stop them from forming a union. So the PRO Act enables the board to hold union representation elections electronically, through certified mail, or off-site, at a neutral location, to ensure that the employees can cast their ballots in a neutral, non-coercive environment. It may seem incredibly basic in any election, but I am telling you, for the last 50 years, all union elections have taken place under physical conditions of pressure and coercion in an employer's workplace, almost all of them. A related matter that, again, seems shocking to many; if you took a civics class or any class about government or American history and you learned how elections are supposed to take place, this is a unique aspect. In a union election, where it is just supposed to be workers deciding whether or not they want to form a union, under our system, the employer has been a party to the election. The workers file a petition. The employer is deemed a party, and then they get to engage in litigation, delay, in order to advance their interest, which always is to stop their workers from forming a union. So the PRO Act says no more. We are not having outside entities interfering with employees' decisions about whether to join a union or not join a union. It is just up to the workers. This would harmonize the NLRB's procedures with those of the National Mediation Board under the Railway Labor Act, which governs labor relations for railways and airlines and in this area it works much better. Another question is: What do you do if an employer is found to have systematically interfered with the workers' right to form a union? What has happened regularly is the employer does anything to destroy a majority who may have signed cards seeking union representation, which leads to the election, and to get the workers to vote ``no'' even if a majority of them signed union cards. A showing of interest to obtain an election for workers doesn't require a majority. It requires, I think, 30 percent. But what the PRO Act says is, if a majority of people said they wanted to have a union, an absolute majority, they signed authorization cards, and then the employer set about and destroyed the majority through means that the National Labor Relations Board determined were illegal, the NLRB has a remedy that it shall issue an order requiring the employer to bargain, taking away the incentive and the ability of employers to destroy workers' majorities through illegal activities. Another area that has been so lacking in our labor laws has to do with penalties. And again, if you are a civil rights lawyer or activist concerned with women's rights, or the rights of religious minorities, or the rights of racial minorities, you wouldn't believe this: In all other areas of civil rights laws, laws protecting rights of Americans, there are various forms of penalties to try to disincentivize violating American's rights; pain and suffering, treble damages, different--it depends on the statute and the area. Here is the way it works under the National Labor Relations Act. If I am fired for trying to form a union, and the employer does it totally on purpose, just to destroy, scare everybody else, they succeed in killing the union drive, that was their goal; and there is litigation, the union backs me up. If, 3 years later, a judge finds they absolutely fired you for union activity, they violated your rights, you are right, you get your remedy. The remedy is this: Single back pay minus anything you made in the meantime. It is shocking. Working people aren't going to stop working in the hopes that someday they will be found to have had their rights violated. They have to feed their family. So employers basically have gotten away with violating people's rights, and the penalty has been, often, virtually nothing. So under the PRO Act, if an employee has been discharged or suffered serious economic harm in violation of the act, now the NLRB will award back pay, without any reduction, front pay, consequential damages, and an additional amount as liquidated damages equal to two times the amount of damages awarded, which is, essentially, the normal kind of punitive damages awarded in this kind of case, to incentivize the employers not to violate the law. Also, the workers cannot have their relief denied if they are an undocumented worker. So let me just mention one other area where this law will help workers so much; just to vindicate their basic right of association and speech in the workplace, to come together and form a union and bargain collectively. It refers to the same situation I just mentioned. If they fire you for trying to form a union, what happens? Their principal motive really isn't about you as an individual. It is about the group. They are trying to scare you out of forming a union. They will fire the ringleaders. They will fire one, five, however many people they think are necessary to basically have the workers fear moving forward to vindicate their rights. Often in these cases, the courts ultimately may determine 6 months, 1 year, 5 years later that you were fired for union activity, but the union drive was killed long ago. It is immediate. It was killed within a day or weeks. So the PRO Act requires the NLRB to seek temporary injunctive relief whenever there is reasonable cause to believe that an employer unlawfully terminated an employee or significantly interfered with employees' rights under the NLRA. And the district court is directed to grant temporary relief for the duration of the NLRB proceedings. Essentially, they are saying: I am firing you because you did something wrong on the job. That can be determined after the election, but we are not going to let employers fire workers to scare their coworkers out of exercising their rights. Madam Speaker, these are just a few of the ways that the PRO Act will help American workers at long last exercise their freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. I am telling you, we have passed so much legislation that would help American workers and their families, the Raise the Wage Act, protection for people with preexisting conditions, lowering prescription drug costs, but there is no bill that comes close to this one and the impact it could have on American families and workers. MIT did a study, and it found that just under half of nonunion workers say they would like to form a union if they just had the freedom to do it. Gallup every year studies people's attitudes toward unions. They have been doing this the same way for decades. They found the highest approval rating of unions in decades, yet just 6 percent of private-sector workers have unions. If workers were free to form unions in this country, and not half of all nonunion workers but just a fraction of them so we got back up to say a third of workers being in unions in this country again, our economy would be completely transformed because when workers form unions it is not just they themselves who benefit. Other employers raise their wages to compete to attract workers or to try to get their workers not to form a union. That is fine. It benefits all workers in this country. It benefits their children and their communities. It is just an honor to be here to talk about the PRO Act. I am really proud of being one of Chairman Scott's lieutenants in this effort. Tomorrow, we are going to pass this legislation and give a leg up to all the working people in this country who just want to get their little piece of the American Dream. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Weber) for yielding. Mr. Speaker, when we remember the Holocaust, we look backward and forward. We look backward to remember those who perished, 6 million Jewish men, women, and children, every one of whom has a story and loved ones who may have survived the horrors of the Holocaust but were left with the searing wounds of these losses. Many other people--Slavs, LGBTQ people, political dissidents, disabled people, and others--would lose their lives to Nazi terror before the war ended. At the same time, we must look forward. We can't simply pledge ``never again''; we must live ``never again'' day after day. Why is this so important? Kurt Messerschmidt, a Holocaust survivor, recalled encountering a crowd of people in the aftermath of what we now call Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, one of the most horrific anti-Jewish attacks in history. Over 2 days in November 1938, mobs across Germany and parts of Austria and Czechoslovakia destroyed synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses, homes, schools, and cemeteries. Under instructions from the Gestapo, local authorities did nothing to stop the violence and destruction. The crowd Messerschmidt came across was watching an older man who had been ordered by Nazi soldiers to clean up the broken glass outside his own store. Messerschmidt, who helped the man, would later say: ``I am sure that some of the people standing there disapproved of what the Nazis did, but their disapproval was only silence, and silence is what did the harm.'' Today, let us remember the danger of silence. We must loudly and consistently call out anti-Semitism in all its forms, whether it comes from our adversaries or our friends and whether it is promulgated intentionally or unknowingly. We must strive to do so in a way that truly fosters understanding. Let us also recommit never again to allow people, any people, to be obliterated by otherness. Let us fight the rising menace of ethnonationalism across the globe, and let us do everything in our power to protect all those who have been deemed ``other,'' from the Rohingya people of Burma to the Iraqi nationals in my own district facing deportation and grave danger. Only when we have done this can we truly say that we lived up to our promise of ``never again.''

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this joint resolution, and I congratulate the gentlewoman from Nevada for her leadership on this issue. Secretary DeVos and this administration have proven that they will go to the ends of the Earth to defend predatory for-profit colleges at the expense of our students and taxpayers. This holds true for the DeVos borrower defense rule, which creates unnecessary obstacles for students seeking debt relief from predatory for-profit colleges. It even punishes students with approved claims by allowing these colleges to deny students their transcripts and refuse to verify their earned credits. Passing this joint resolution is a crucial step, and I urge my colleagues to support it. But we also must build on this work by bringing our Higher Education Act reauthorization to the floor. Next up, we have to pass the College Affordability Act with even stronger protections for American students. Mr. Speaker, I want to add a personal note. From 2007 to 2011, I ran the workforce system of the State of Michigan. In those years, fraudulent, for-profit higher education programs emerged as a major problem in Michigan and in our Nation. As a former State program director, I can tell you that our States do not have the resources or the authority to remedy this problem. The Federal Government must act. Mr. Speaker, again, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to speak in opposition to Mr. Allen's amendment to delay the effects of this bill. We do not need a study to tell us that a substantially higher burden of proof for some forms of discrimination makes it far more difficult for workers to get their day in court and to prevail. People may be winning cases, but they are not going to court in the first place in huge numbers. When cases become materially more difficult to win, attorneys become much less willing and able to represent workers in those cases. We have already had a 10-year delay in restoring justice. No more delays are necessary or warranted. Age discrimination in the workplace is disturbingly pervasive. According to an AARP study released last year, three in five older workers report that they have seen or experienced age discrimination on the job. That is 60 percent. Nearly two-thirds of women and more than three-fourths of African American workers age 45 and older say they have seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace. Three-fourths of workers age 45 and older blame age discrimination for their own lack of confidence in finding a job. Mr. Chairman, I ran the workforce system in the State of Michigan for 4 years. Over and over again, I met workers who had lost their jobs because of age discrimination. Most of them weren't even contemplating taking legal action. They were just seeking help to find a new job. I remember a gentleman from Bay City in Michigan who had been in college years earlier when his dad died of a heart attack suddenly. His mom said to him: ``Sorry, son. You know everybody has to help keep the family afloat.'' So he dropped out of college, and he went to work in retail. I met him 30 years later. He had been a manager at a sporting goods store, and the corporation looked at him and said: ``We can get somebody way younger than that to run this store for half the money,'' and they fired him. Thankfully, we had the No Worker Left Behind program in the State of Michigan, and he was able to go back and finish his bachelor's degree. But he wasn't even contemplating taking legal action under this statute. I ran into those cases over and over, Mr. Chairman. The enactment of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, or ADEA, in 1967 was an important part of Congress' work to define and protect civil rights in the 1960s. Over the years, the courts have failed to interpret the ADEA as a civil rights statute and, instead, have narrowly interpreted these protections and broadly construed the statute's exceptions, compounding the barriers facing older workers. The Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act is a bipartisan proposal that realigns the legal standard for proving age discrimination, to simplify the requirement so employees have a genuine mechanism to fight back under the law, just like with the standards for proving discrimination based on sex, race, or national origin. It is that simple. This amendment is designed to keep this bill from going into effect indefinitely. There is no deadline for GAO to conduct the study this amendment requires and report back to Congress. It is a delay tactic when we already have mountains of evidence telling us that older workers are facing discrimination at work. They need protection now. Finally, this Congress has been holding hearings on this issue for years. We have had four hearings over the last 9 years. It is time to act. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I remind everybody that this is a bipartisan proposal, and it has undergone substantial debate since it was first introduced over a decade ago. Over the past 10 years, Congress has deliberated on this bill through four legislative hearings, including two hearings in the Education and Labor Committee. Both the House and the Senate have introduced and gradually improved this legislation in the 111th, 112th, 113th, 114th, 115th, and now the 116th Congress. It is long overdue that we take action. Mr. Chair, I urge all colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, my amendment requires, within 5 years, a comprehensive report to Congress by the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, regarding the actions the Agency will take to clean up and remediate PFAS contamination sites once we pass the important bill before us into law. I would like to begin by thanking my friend Chairman Pallone and his staff for working with me on this, as well as my fellow Michiganders, Congresswoman Dingell, Congressman Upton, and Congressman Kildee, for their bipartisan leadership on this bill. I am proud that this bill includes my bill cosponsored with Representative Khanna, the PFAS Safe Disposal Act, which prohibits unsafe incineration of PFAS. We need to ensure that when PFAS chemicals are destroyed by incineration, PFAS particles are not emitted into the air. The monumental effort of PFAS cleanup will be for naught if PFAS is simply transmitted from water and soil into the air we breathe. We in Michigan know all too well the growing threat that PFAS chemicals pose to our communities and our water resources. They have been linked to cancer, damage to both reproductive and immune systems, developmental issues, and changes in liver, immune, and thyroid functions. The troubling reality is that both industry and the EPA itself have known about the risks from PFAS chemicals for decades. We know, for example, that industry studies have demonstrated the adverse health effects of these chemicals since as early as 1950. That is 70 years ago. We also know that even though the EPA has recognized the risks of PFAS since at least 1995, the Agency is continuing to allow new PFAS chemicals onto the market to this day. By passing H.R. 535 into law, we can finally begin to reverse decades of the EPA's failure and finally deliver the protections impacted communities need in both the short and long term. But after decades of the EPA failing to treat this matter with urgency, we need to make sure that the cleanup process that will be set in place, once we finally designate PFOA and PFAS as hazardous substances, is both timely and effective. My amendment is a commonsense transparency and accountability measure that requires the EPA to submit a comprehensive review to Congress after 5 years of cleanup efforts. The report required by my amendment will include the number of sites that have to be remediated, the types of PFAS chemicals present at each site, an analysis of discrepancies and cleanup between Federal and non-Federal contamination sites, and more. For the sake of our constituents and after so many years of inexcusable threats to their health, Congress must ensure that EPA's PFAS cleanup efforts are effective. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), who is the Speaker of the House.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, while people may have all kinds of opinions on the underlying issue, this amendment is simply about sunshine. It simply is about good government: Will our Federal agencies tell our Article I body here what they are up to? I think it just makes all kinds of sense to ask them to give us a comprehensive report after a reasonable period of time, so I hope everyone can support this amendment. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution sponsored by my good friend from Michigan, Congresswoman Slotkin. The Trump administration's foreign policy failures have brought us to the brink of war. The administration has provided no evidence to demonstrate what imminent threat made Qasem Soleimani's assassination and the perilous, predictable fallout necessary. But they have demonstrated a shocking dismissiveness as to what is at stake. On the threat of retaliation from Iran, Secretary Pompeo said it may be that there is a little noise here in the interim. President Trump said, if it happens, it happens. To the parents who are worried sick about their kids serving in the Middle East, it isn't a little noise. Their children's lives are at stake. Those stakes make today's vote necessary. The question before us is simple. Can we let this President drag us into another war that will cost billions of taxpayer dollars and, most importantly, American lives? Will we at long last stand up and fulfill our constitutional duty to make decisions on war and peace? Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for this resolution.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. The threshold question for any NAFTA replacement must be whether it will finally stop the outflow of American jobs and raise the standard of living for Mexican, Canadian, and, of course, American workers. My Democratic colleagues have worked tirelessly to ensure NAFTA's replacement leads to positive change, and I thank them for their efforts which have improved the deal President Trump originally negotiated. But these improvements will not be enough to overhaul the entrenched system in Mexico that denies workers their rights, keeps wages unconscionably low, and, consequently, incentivizes companies to ship jobs to Mexico.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. It incentivizes companies to ship jobs to Mexico and out of our communities like mine in southeast Michigan. Mexico has not demonstrated the will, meaningfully, to reform its labor system, and the weakness of USMCA's enforcement mechanisms mean that we will not be able to hold Mexico's feet to the fire when promised reforms do not occur. I genuinely hope I am wrong about this, but I fear we can expect the USMCA will perpetuate the harms of NAFTA for Mexican and American workers alike; therefore, I oppose this legislation.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Speaker, today we proclaim that no person is above the law, not even the President of the United States. Donald J. Trump abused the power of his office and violated his oath of office by extorting a new and inexperienced President of a vulnerable foreign ally to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump's domestic political opponents. He then obstructed the Congress, this equal branch of our government, from undertaking our duty, outlined in the Constitution itself, to investigate and check these violations. Today, we do nothing more and nothing less than fulfill our duty to our country and to our Constitution. Mr. Trump has allowed foreign powers to interfere in our domestic affairs. He has endangered our national security and our democracy itself. Madam Speaker, for those reasons, we must impeach this President.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution. Mr. Speaker, last month, I visited Israel and the West Bank. I talked to Israeli Defense Forces leaders; Israeli settlers; members of the Knesset from many parties; U.S. Ambassador Friedman; Palestinians' top negotiator, Dr. Saeb Erakat; human rights activists; and ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. My trip left me more committed than ever to seeing, in my lifetime, a two-state solution: a democratic Jewish state living in peace alongside a democratic Palestine. That is why I am here today. My colleagues have spoken a lot about the need to safeguard Israel's security, and that is also why I am here today. We are at a moment when the prospects for a peaceful two-state solution--something that has long had overwhelming bipartisan support in this country and from Presidents from both parties--could be fading. If we let them fade, prospects for lasting security in Israel will fade as well.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Because, make no mistake, without a two-state solution, Israel's future as a secure democratic homeland for the Jewish people will be in jeopardy. And Israelis, like the ones I visited in Netiv HaAsara, will continue to live in fear of rocket fire that gives them 8 seconds to reach a bomb shelter. We need to express our support for a two-state solution, and I thank the chairman and my colleagues, Representatives Lowenthal, Bass, and Connolly, for their leadership.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Chair, my amendment ensures that our incredible healthcare and social service workers are aware that they are legally protected from retaliation by their employers. I begin by thanking my colleague, Congressman Joe Courtney, for his hard work on this outstanding bill, and Chairman Scott for leading this issue and bringing the bill to the floor today. Healthcare and social service workers are some of this country's most precious workers, taking care of us and our loved ones, sometimes under some of the most trying conditions imaginable. H.R. 1309 will help protect these workers by requiring employers in the healthcare and social service sectors to develop workplace violence prevention plans. My amendment will require that mandatory violence prevention plan trainings include the critical information that these workers, when faced with any violent or unwanted behavior in the workplace, can safely report the incident without fear of retaliation. Bureau of Labor Statistics data tell us that private-sector injury rates from workplace violence in healthcare and social service sectors increased 63 percent between 2006 and 2016, in just a decade. And due to underreporting, injury rates and workplace violence are widely assumed to be higher than the reported levels. This is a huge problem for workers but also for those they care for, as violence in healthcare settings compromises quality of care. We cannot expect healthcare and social service workers to be able to deliver essential lifesaving services under the threat of violence and assault and fear of repercussions for reporting any incident that may occur. The same goes for social service workers. A safe and violence-free workplace is essential to a functioning social service system that will help our communities thrive. We cannot expect workers to come forward with reports of violence if they fear retribution. My straightforward amendment aims to ensure that healthcare and social service workers covered by this bill are aware of their right to come forward and report any incident of violence at work without fear of retribution. Madam Chair, let me add that this is really personal for me. I don't want to reveal my age, but I started organizing healthcare workers for SEIU in 1983, and I remember my very first campaign at Shore Haven Nursing Home in Grand Haven, Michigan. Some of the workers in the nursing home did face violence on the job, and they really had no way to handle it. So Mr. Courtney's bill, his leadership on this, is so essential for all the health and social service workers of the country. Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Chair, I am sure we can all agree that retribution for people reporting violence in the workplace is something that is important, that people should not face retribution, that they should not fear reporting when they personally or their coworkers face violence on the job. So I hope that we will have broad support for this amendment. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the great State of Illinois for organizing this special session to talk about what I consider to be the single most transformative piece of legislation that we are considering right now, the PRO Act, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. And why would it be so transformative? Because, as Representative Garcia mentioned, inequality of wealth and income has grown to proportions we have not seen in 100 years in this country. From 1980 to 2014, income for the bottom half of earners, the whole bottom half of American workers, grew 1 percent; whereas, income for the top 1 percent grew 205 percent. And why? Because workers have lost all voice and power in this economy. Workers do not have the freedom to form unions. At its high-water mark in the late forties and early fifties, a third of American workers had collective bargaining, and they built the middle class in this country over the post-war decades. Today, 6 percent of workers in the private sector--6 percent--have collective bargaining, have unions, and so they have no real ability to get their fair share of the American pie and to rebuild the American Dream. The PRO Act would do so much to change this. Truly, it reminds me of my days organizing nursing home workers, kind of a long time ago, in the 1980s, in Michigan and Indiana and Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It was so hard for workers to form a union. Their employer could do almost anything, and that is true to this day. So, for example, your employer can make you go in a room, and if you refuse to attend, they can fire you. And the sole purpose of the meeting is to tell you how bad forming a union would be for both of you. They can make you individually go into their office and tell you that the union would be a bad thing. This kind of intimidation tactic has led to a crisis in our economy. And people like to talk about free markets and capitalism. All I want to see is a free market for worker organizing in this country. And all the best research suggests that if we really had one, about a third of workers would, again, be in unions, and it would completely transform the economy. So let me just hit a couple of the things that the PRO Act would do that would be so important. First of all, it would recognize the realities of the 21st century economy. Workers could organize and bargain with whatever companies share control of their employment. So, hello, McDonald's franchises, hello, Courtyard by Marriott. Any companies that have franchises, both the franchisee and the franchisor could be joint employers. Employers could not prevent workers from organizing and could not avoid the responsibility for workers by misclassifying them as independent contractors. That is rampant in today's economy. Employers under the PRO Act would not be able to just call their workers supervisors willy-nilly to deny them the right to organize. And workers' rights to organize would be recognized in all the electronic formats that we use to communicate today. Another thing that is key is that at long last, the PRO Act would end the right to freeload, a disease that has been spreading in this country since the late 1940s that says that in our system, even though a union has to represent all the employees in a workplace, it prevents union employers from negotiating contracts that simply say that all the workers have to pay their fair share for administering the contract. We would end 60 years of efforts to destroy the labor movement simply by allowing what I learned in law school as the freedom of contract. An employer and a union are free to negotiate that all the workers pay their fair share. The list of improvements in the core area of an organizing campaign is really impressive. Just to pick a couple of them. Employers couldn't gerrymander the bargaining union to pick out who is for or against the union, so to choose the voters in a sense. Elections would have to happen much faster. If a worker is fired for organizing a union, as I saw happen so many times, the NLRB would have to go for an immediate injunction to get them reinstated. If the workers felt intimidated by having an election on the employer's work site, then the NLRB could have it at a neutral location. So many commonsense things just to allow workers to organize freely. So let me just sum up and say, I would love to talk about all the provisions, but it would take me all night, and I want to yield to my colleagues. All we are asking for is that workers in this country have their rights recognized across the globe in the international labor organizations provisions so that they can have freedom of assembly, freedom to organize, and freedom to bargain a contract. And, Representative Garcia, that would do more to make our country more just and beautiful than anything else we could do. Mr. Speaker, I am so proud to stand up tonight for the PRO Act, and I thank Representative Garcia for his leadership in making this happen. Mr. GARCIA of ILLINOIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Levin for sharing that story, his own personal knowledge and experience of working to empower working people so that they have good wages, good working conditions and very critically what is at the heart of the PRO Act, organizing to have leverage to level the playing field and to arrive at what is the best contract for workers in a worksite setting. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), who happens to be the chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor.

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan

Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.