Bill Pascrell: “I stand today in solidarity with the workers who have paid in for years to have retirement security only to have the rug…”

“I stand today in solidarity with the workers who have paid in for years to have retirement security only to have the rug pulled out from under them. Mondelez International, the maker of iconic Nabisco products, like Oreo cookies, has, in recent years, moved hundreds of good-paying middle class jobs to Mexico. Now they have doubled down on shafting their U.S. employees. On May 23, Mondelez-Nabisco announced it would withdraw from their employees' pension plan. How nice. They have participated in this plan for 60 years. This decision jeopardizes the hard-earned retirement security of 110,000 current and future retirees. This decision comes at the same time that this corporation, Mondelez, paid its new CEO, Dirk Van de Put, $42.4 million for 41 days of work in 2017. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Mondelez reaped millions of dollars in tax breaks as a result of the passage of the recent Trump tax cuts. Since 2014, Mondelez has increasingly shifted production from the U.S. to Mexico and taken major jobs with it. On December 15, I wrote a letter to the United States Trade Representative asking them, in the context of NAFTA, to prioritize strong, enforceable labor provisions to discourage this kind of outsourcing to Mexico. Mr. Speaker, this is an epidemic. ____________________”