Donald M. Payne: “as I had indicated, there are a number of moves that have been done in this Congress. I started to talk about the fact…”

“as I had indicated, there are a number of moves that have been done in this Congress. I started to talk about the fact that there is a Section A(2)(a) in the National Labor Relations Act which gives the board equal footing. It is pro-labor, it is pro-corporate. But there is an attempt now to weaken the labor part of the National Labor Relations Act. We have seen the TEAM Act, which is a bill that would allow the employer, the boss, to select a negotiating team. I think that we know that if you have the ability to pick the people who will negotiate with you, you will indeed select the weaker person. There is an attempt in the District, in an appropriations bill, there was an attempt to eliminate Davis-Bacon on school construction in the District of Columbia. Davis-Bacon was a bill passed by two Republicans who wanted to keep the prevailing wage for working people when scalawags and carpetbaggers came in to drop the wages from the South into the North. Here we see an attempt to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. We have seen an attempt to end salting. Salting is simply a union worker who works in a nonunion shop, holds a card and on his time off, after work, on lunch hour, he may talk to other employees about perhaps becoming a member of a union. There is a bill working its way through the House to make it illegal for a person who is a salter to work. We have seen the comp time. I worked on the clock. I drove a truck.…”