Steve Lynch: “I am indeed new to this body; but I am by no means new to this issue. Prior to the great honor of serving in this body…”

“I am indeed new to this body; but I am by no means new to this issue. Prior to the great honor of serving in this body as the elected representative of the 9th Congressional District, I served as an iron worker for 18 years. I worked in the Quincy shipyard just outside of Boston. I worked in the steel mills in Michigan and Illinois, worked in United Auto Workers plants in Framingham, Massachusetts, and again in Michigan. I have seen a lot of those jobs and a lot of those plants where I worked at one time disappear. I have seen them relocated. Good, highly skilled, well-paying jobs moved mostly to Mexico, but to other countries as well, in a race to find the lowest-paid worker and the least-strong labor standards and environmental standards. First of all, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior), as well as the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) and my own predecessor, John Joseph Moakley from Massachusetts, for their great work in fighting against this so-called Fast Track and also against NAFTA, which has served to really lower the working standards in some foreign countries that we are now dealing with as a result of NAFTA and which we seek to expand through this Fast Track legislation. The proponents of this bill say that this is dearly tied to our fight against terrorism, but that cannot be further from the truth.”