Mark Takano: “I thank the Congressional Black Caucus for holding this important discussion. For the past 4 years, courts have held…”

“I thank the Congressional Black Caucus for holding this important discussion. For the past 4 years, courts have held that public sector unions can charge a small fee to workers that benefit from the collective bargaining agreements that unions negotiate and enforce. Reversing that precedent is not an honest shift in legal interpretation. It is a political attack against American workers and the organizations that represent them, and it has been years in the making. For decades, a relentless, coordinated campaign supported by large corporate interests, advanced by political partisans, and funded by the Koch brothers has tried to rebrand union membership as a burden on American workers. Their campaign is as cynical as it is misleading. For nearly a year, the United States Senate refused to give the highly respected Judge Merrick Garland even one hearing, then overruled at least 100 years of Senate tradition to steal a seat on the Supreme Court. That seat is now the difference between a Court that upholds the rights of public sector unions and one that undermines their existence. Today, President Trump, the real estate billionaire who promised to be a voice for American workers, has pursued the most aggressive antiworker agenda in recent memory. Thank you to my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus for holding this important discussion. This evening I am speaking--not just as a strong supporter of public sector unions--but as a former union member myself.…”