Chuck Grassley: “I rise to speak to the legislation now before this body that is called the TEAM Act, which is an amendment to the…”

“I rise to speak to the legislation now before this body that is called the TEAM Act, which is an amendment to the Minimum Wage Act, which, in turn, is tied to the legislation to decrease the gas tax. I speak in favor of the TEAM Act. It is a very good piece of legislation. That position puts me opposite a union that I used to belong to. The union was the International Association of Machinists. I was a member of that union from February 1962 to March 1971, when the factory I worked for closed down and shut its doors. I was an assembly line worker making furnace registers. We were a sheet metal operation. The International Association of Machinists, along with most other unions, are against passage of the TEAM Act. I am a Republican and I am proud to be a Republican. When I was a union member, I was proud to be a union member, and if I were still working there today I would be proud to be a union member as well. But unions do not always speak for all workers, and this is an example, where the labor union leaders in Washington, DC, supposedly representing their members back at the grassroots, are not speaking for the rank-and-file members.”