During a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) discussed President Trump’s executive order that ends collective bargaining for federal employees.
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00:00He yields back and now I'll call on Mr. Kosar from Texas for his questions for five minutes.
00:06Thank you. I want to focus my time today on something you won't hear much about from my
00:12Republican colleagues and frankly I don't think we're hearing enough about in the news but it is
00:17what I believe is Donald Trump's most dangerous attack on the rights of working people thus far.
00:25Last Thursday night President Trump signed an executive order that fundamentally undercuts
00:33union and labor rights that Americans have counted on for a hundred years. The executive order
00:39strips the rights to organize and to bargain away from one and a half million federal employees
00:47and that's just where he wants to start. So for over a hundred years Americans have joined together
00:54in unions to fight to win everything from child labor laws to the minimum wage to the 40-hour
01:00work week. For over a hundred years unions have protected their members and lifted up all American
01:06workers. For more than a hundred years our unions have empowered Americans to stand up against the
01:12greedy and the ultra-rich that try to use our government to take away your money. They have
01:19stood up against people like Elon Musk who think everyone else was put on earth to just make them
01:24richer. But again Donald Trump at the behest of the ultra-rich has signed this executive order
01:32robbing one and a half million Americans of the fundamental right to come together alongside their
01:39co-workers to fight for better wages and better working conditions. And if the president is allowed
01:45to exploit a loophole in order to end the federal right to bargain that's not where he's going to
01:52stop. He'll be coming for your right to bargain and to organize next. This attack will not end with
01:59these federal workers unless we put a stop to it. But let's discuss who Donald Trump is starting with
02:05by trying to take away their rights. These federal workers are people dedicated to serving the public.
02:10doctors at the VA, food safety inspectors at the Department of Agriculture, IRS employees who go
02:17after corporations who cheat on their taxes. This includes our janitors, food service workers,
02:22administrative employees, all losing the right to organize and bargain that workers have fought and
02:28bled for and marched for for over a hundred years. This executive order is illegal, full stop. Trump does not
02:36have the authority to take bargaining rights away from these workers and it's already being challenged
02:41in court. But the president is trying to see what he can get away with after stacking the supreme court
02:46with not just right-wing justices but justices picked by some of the richest people and biggest
02:51corporations in the country. This committee should be talking about this. It should really be the only
02:57thing that this committee on quote the workforce is discussing this week. But right now instead we've had
03:04kind of a business as usual committee hearing on health care. So let's talk about how Trump taking
03:11away collective bargaining rights impacts health care. Federal employees will continue to be fired
03:17without due process because they don't have union representation and they'll lose their health care.
03:23CDC employees that are protecting us from the next pandemic can be fired without the security of a
03:28collective bargaining agreement. Justice Department lawyers prosecuting things like health care fraud
03:34can lose their jobs because they're not Trump's political lackeys but they've lost protections in
03:39collective bargaining. These are real impacts and we should be talking about them. So my question
03:45Mr. Chairman is whether we can hold a hearing on President Trump's executive order to strip bargaining
03:52rights away from 1.5 million Americans.
04:03This hearing is about employer health care plans. We will take your question under consideration.
04:13I appreciate that. It would be good for us to talk about since we are the folks here that talk about education in the workforce.
04:201.5 million Americans losing their right to bargain. I can't think of another moment in American history
04:26where in just one day that many Americans have lost that basic labor right.
04:32So I would request that we have that hearing if we could have it at the next meeting or we could have
04:37a hearing about how a Trump executive order has gotten rid of the minimum wage for federal contractors
04:43or the firing of Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioners who are tasked with stopping
04:48discrimination in employment. And so, Mr. Chairman, thank you for taking it under consideration
04:53and I will continue to bring up this issue if we don't have a hearing on the fact that 1.5 million Americans
05:01just lost their bargaining rights. I would be interested in whether the Republican majority is trying to take away bargaining rights from even more union workers or whether they're thinking about giving those bargaining rights back.
05:11But we know union members vote both Democratic and Republican, as they always have, and I just think it's really important for those union members to know whether the Republican majority and President Trump wants to take away their bargaining rights that they've had for over 100 years. Thank you.
05:25The gentleman yields, and now I will, let's see, yeah, okay, so I'll call on Mr. Sanye for a closing statement, yeah.
05:43All right, I want to thank the chairman and I really look forward to, I'm happy to work with my colleagues.
05:49I think clearly the system has worked. I think if we as people
05:53it in Washington, I think that they have worked.
05:54How much do we need to do that?
05:54What do we need to do remember?
05:55All right.
06:01It serves me a lot of attention that we've seen
06:03in the same time.
06:04This partnership can be
06:10because I can