On the recordNovember 30, 2011
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I respect the chairman and the gentleman's opinion on this, but I want to be very clear. The only people this applies to is violators of veterans' workplace employment. These are veterans returning home who choose to have union representation, who have fought for that right in uniform and are now being told this. The NLRB said this is no problem being able to be put in. It's at no cost to the taxpayer to be able to do this. And the thing that I hear coming up in the discussion today was we need to have more time to explain it to them. I have tremendous faith in the ability of our folks who served in split-second, life-and-death decisions overseas serving in combat to be able to, after a few days, make a decision with the information they're given whether they want representation or not, not being drug out in litigation for 2 years so they can protect their rights against employers previously cited in the 1 year. These are not the good actors. These are the bad actors. I don't like the underlying bill. I'm trying to make it better. Why are we protecting the 1 percent of bad actors in this at the expense of a veteran who has the right to organize? With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
