On the recordMarch 31, 2011
I thank my colleague for yielding. I am just sitting here, listening to this debate and people talking about fairness and 75 years. I did a little math, and 75 years ago, the Railway Labor Act was enacted by a very heavily Democratic Congress in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. And now we are told that they were unfair and unkind, and so on, to organized labor. This is something that was passed by the Congress. The law, the National Labor Relations Act, has always--until now, for 75 years--been interpreted to mean that a majority of those affected had to vote to certify a union. I think if we want to change it, if our sense of what's fair has changed over the last 75 years--and it has in other areas--it should be done by an act of Congress and not by the National Labor Relations Board and the National Mediation Board in this fashion. It clearly upsets the balance that was struck and has served us well for several generations. Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. When people read this record, they really need to know what this amendment is about and what we are talking about. What we are talking about is that the rule that the Mica bill repeals is that if you have 100 people who work for a company and you have an election and 70 of them show up and 65 of them vote to certify a union, the union loses because you don't get 50 plus the universe.…
