During a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) slammed the Modern Worker Empowerment Act and the Modern Worker Security Act.
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00:00Thank you. So, just to break down what my colleague from the Republican majority side of the aisle just advocated for, is this bill that they're calling, you know, Modern Worker Act that's going to help you, but really, at the end of the day, let's break down what it is the Republican majority wants to do to the American worker.
00:22They want to make it so that multi-billion dollar companies don't have to pay their taxes. Instead, you, their employee, has to pay more in taxes. That's what their bill is all about.
00:36The Republican majority's bill that is attacking the labor standards that we won after the Great Depression under FDR. What they want is to say, big multi-billion dollar companies don't need to pay overtime to you. No, you need to work over 40 hours a week and not get paid anything extra for it.
00:55So, that's, at the end of the day, what this bill is all about. You're going to continue to hear, under this Republican majority, that they are for letting you be your own business owner.
01:06And if people are, indeed, independent contractors and small businesses, we should absolutely support them and support that.
01:13But what they want to do is to make it so that people who are employees of large corporations can instead be mislabeled as small business owners.
01:24But if you're just an employee being told where to go work, when to go work, and to just go do your job for a big corporation, call it a big corporation in big tech, or a big corporation in big pharma, or a big construction company,
01:38they want to be able to say, you're your own business, so you pay the taxes, instead of the big corporation.
01:43They want to say, you're your own business, and so you don't get overtime protections.
01:47You just have to labor away until the job is done and get paid whatever you're told.
01:51So we should not buy some of these continued attacks on what workers won in the 1930s.
01:59I've seen this happen in my own district, where a group of workers that clearly basically ran all of YouTube music,
02:08and YouTube is a part of Google, wanted to organize into a union.
02:12And what we heard from Google was, these aren't our workers, even though this contractor that they work for
02:21only exists because of Google, only exists to run YouTube, but they wanted to deny their ability,
02:27deny these Austin, Texas-based workers their ability to negotiate for higher wages and higher pay.
02:34So don't buy this stuff about how we're trying to help small businesses,
02:39when really what this bill would do would make it so that the American worker cannot negotiate with gigantic corporations like Google.
02:46There are ways that we could support small businesses and independent workers.
02:52I have spent a lot of time working on how big agriculture is jacking up prices,
02:57not just at the grocery store for consumers, but it's screwing over small businesses and small producers all over America.
03:04And so I have a bill that I thought we could get a lot of Republican support for
03:08because many Republicans, small ranchers and small farmers and small producers and small processors are all for it,
03:15to say let's take on the gigantic companies that are paying less and less to small businesses for their product
03:22and jacking up prices at the grocery store.
03:25You can get almost no Republican support for that kind of proposal.
03:28But what we are seeing Republican support for is letting companies off for child labor in that same sector.
03:35So the Fair Labor Standards Act should actually be protected and supported and expanded for the American worker.
03:43And what I've heard this whole committee, I've been watching it from my office,
03:46came down here and watched some of the testimony from the other side of the aisle just a moment ago,
03:50is all about taking us to pre-1938 labor standards.
03:55That's what's in Project 2025.
03:57That's what's being executed right now,
03:58is making it easier to put children on the cutting room floor to do child labor jobs,
04:05not making sure our kids can have a good education
04:08and making sure their parents are paid well enough
04:10that they don't feel pressure to send their kids to go work in the factory or at the meatpacking plant illegally.
04:16We should be talking about giving people more overtime pay.
04:19But the bill that's being advocated for right before I got to talk here
04:22is to deny more and more Americans their own overtime pay.
04:26And in the moment where we're talking about taxes here in Congress,
04:31the Republican majority's tax bill is to give billionaires an enormous tax cut.
04:35You'll be hearing lots about it.
04:37But what people watching at home haven't heard enough about is this bill.
04:41This bill that's being pushed by the Republican majority
04:43to make it so that workers don't get paid for their overtime
04:47and then have to pay tons more in taxes
04:49because they get called independent contractors
04:52when they're really employees.
04:53So let's not fall for this scam.
04:55Let's actually support our small businesses
04:57and support workers by taking on big monopolies
05:00and making sure that working people and small businesses
05:02get to keep more of their money in their pockets, not less.
05:06Thank you. Now you'll back.
05:08Mr. Messmer from Indiana.