Jan Schakowsky Calls For Childcare Provisions From Employers To Get 'Women More Involved'

3 months ago

During a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) questioned Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo about childcare requirements and the impact on US workforce.

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Transcript

00:00the ranking member from the great state of Illinois, Ms. Schakowsky, for five

00:04minutes of questioning. Thank you. Thank you. Well I'm excited to raise this issue.

00:09I understand that in commerce that what you're doing is requiring child care for

00:18some workers, that it be provided from companies that deal with

00:30semiconductors. Child care, can you talk about that? Yes, thank you. So it's not, we

00:39are not actually requiring companies to provide child care, but what we are doing

00:45is saying to companies, if you want taxpayer money, you need to prove to us

00:51that you'll be successful, that you'll be a good steward of taxpayer money. That

00:56means prove to us that you're going to be able to hire the workers you need in

01:00the timeline that you need them. And so we've asked every company who wants

01:06money to give us a workforce plan. Show us, what are you going to do to train

01:10people? To, you know, hire people from high schools and community colleges and

01:15the like? And how are you going to make sure you have women on the job? Every one

01:22of you knows, in your districts, we are at a historically low unemployment rate. The

01:28unemployment rate in the building trades right now is essentially zero. It's a

01:32couple of percent. If you're building a fab, it'll require somewhere between five

01:36and ten thousand construction workers to build that fab. You will not be

01:40successful unless you find a way to get women into these jobs, and you will not

01:45be successful at that unless you have a child care plan. So what we're saying to

01:50companies is, convince us you'll do a good job of taxpayer money, hiring and

01:54recruiting women, and making sure that they have access to high-quality

01:59affordable child care, otherwise they're not going to get the job done. So I feel

02:03strongly about this. This isn't social policy, this is math. They have to get the

02:08job done with taxpayer money. They have to have women engineers, construction

02:12workers, scientists, technicians, and that means thinking about child care. So though

02:17it may not be required, you are mentioning child care as a way to get

02:23the women more involved, right? Yes, absolutely. Excellent. Let me let me ask

02:29you this, or discuss this. I think it is really important that we are protecting

02:39abroad all the the data and the privacy. We've been working on privacy issues

02:46here in this in the subcommittee and in this in this committee. So I am just

02:53wondering what Commerce is doing to protect Americans' data internationally,

03:02especially from China. Yeah, so first of all I want to agree with you and

03:09Congresswoman McMorris-Rogers that we absolutely need a federal privacy

03:14legislation and I applaud the work of this committee for getting us there.

03:18We're behind the rest of the world, so I support that. On top of that, a couple of

03:25areas where I'm very focused. You saw last week that the Commerce Department

03:29essentially banned Kaspersky, which is a Russian antivirus software company. We

03:37say you can't do business in America anymore because we think the Russians,

03:40Russian government, are going to take America's data and put it back to Russia.

03:45I've recently launched an initiative around connected vehicles. I literally

03:51shudder to think of the risks to America's data and privacy of, let's say

03:56we had a million Chinese cars on the road, all connected, all collecting data

04:01from Americans, all of it going back to Beijing. So we are being very aggressive.

04:07Commerce Department has just put out, we're going through a rulemaking process

04:11on that. So I think, I don't, you know, I could go on and on with AI. It's another

04:16risk. We're thinking hard about cybersecurity and data protection as it

04:20relates to AI. I think we have to move forward with technology, absolutely. We

04:26have to lead the world, but more and more we're getting concerned about protecting

04:30American consumers and children for making sure that our data doesn't get

04:36into the hands of the PRC. Thank you. I want to just go back to that issue that

04:42I had raised earlier about the workers who are concerned that, especially CHIPS

04:50workers. I have been hearing this from labor unions and the Labor Caucus and I

05:00just wondered if you had any comment on that. Look, it is concerning. It's

05:05unacceptable. It is concerning. We're working hand-in-glove with the

05:09Department of Labor. We have put out a set of good jobs principles which we

05:14developed in partnership with the Department of Labor. If we're going to

05:17provide taxpayer money to companies, we expect the jobs that they create to be

05:21high-paying and safe working conditions. So we expect workers in those fabs to

05:29have the right to unionize, should they choose. So it is a priority, President

05:35Biden obviously cares deeply about this and so we're working on it. Thank you so

05:40much. I yield back.

Jan Schakowsky Calls For Childcare Provisions From Employers To Get 'Women More Involved'

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