John Kline: “I yield myself such time as I may consume. Of course I always hate to oppose something presented by my Minnesota…”

“I yield myself such time as I may consume. Of course I always hate to oppose something presented by my Minnesota delegation colleague, a veteran himself, but again I think we have a misguided amendment here. In the last amendment, we were sort of taking an Occupy Wall Street moment to express our outrage at the salaries or bonuses or compensation for executives, and we were going to punish workers because of our outrage. Unfortunately, we're sort of doing the same thing here. If you're a veteran and your employer has harmed any number of your rights under Federal labor law, they've broken the law and action ought to be taken against them. But now with this amendment, this would give this activist NLRB an excuse to undermine the free choice of your coworkers in a union election. I don't think we want to do that. We want to support the rights of all workers. As the distinguished minority whip said, employers and employees ought to get a fair election. We want a fair election for employers and employees, for workers--whether they are veterans or not veterans. I, having spent some time in uniform myself, have a special place for veterans. I want to make sure they get everything, everything that's coming to them. We owe them so much. But this amendment, unfortunately, would end up punishing them and their coworkers in, I think, a misguided effort to help them. We shouldn't do that. Let's support the underlying legislation and oppose this amendment.…”