Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, later today we will debate the PRO Act, and we will pass the PRO Act to free up American workers to form unions and bargain collectively just because they darn well please without interference from their employer. And when we debate the PRO Act, Madam Speaker, we will get into all the details of the provisions of the PRO Act, which are really incredible, and I am very excited about that. But right now, I want to talk about what a difference the PRO Act would make, why it would be a game changer for the working people of this country. First of all, let's talk about productivity. American workers are incredibly productive. In the whole period during and after World War II when Americans were forming unions, thanks to the National Labor Relations Act, and up to a third of private-sector workers were in unions, wages and productivity rose in lockstep. You can't even separate them. But then in the late seventies when we started deregulating airlines and deregulating trucking, and when Ronald Reagan became President and busted the air traffic controllers union, PATCO, and the union-busting business came up, and union membership started declining, productivity kept zooming up, but workers' compensation was totally flat. Since 1979, productivity has increased 70 percent, but compensation only 12 percent. What about income inequality? We can go to the next one. For the last 100 years, income inequality has tracked union membership almost exactly.…”