On the recordJuly 26, 2011
In just a few hours, my Republican colleagues will bring to the floor the Jobs Outsourcers' Bill of Rights. This piece of legislation is an open attack on workforce protections, a union-busting bill that will open loopholes for companies to ship our jobs, American jobs overseas, and will make historic changes to workers' rights, all to serve the well-connected special interests community. This bill will allow companies to fire workers, workers who think that they might have a better shot of supporting their families in these precarious times by banding together to negotiate with their employers. That right, the freedom of association, finds its origins in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Whether or not you like unions, there is no sense in making it even easier to ship our jobs overseas. If this bill becomes law, a company faced with a few organizing workers trying to form a union could close an entire United States plant and move the work to China, where sweatshop laborers will work for less than even the lowest-paid, nonunion American workers. Actually, that's an assault on America's middle class. I would urge my colleagues to oppose this reactionary and poorly thought out legislation. ____________________
