00:00With that, I recognize Senator Sanders. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, panelists, for being with us. I don't have any good uber stories.
00:08But what I do know is that in America today, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of the United States.
00:18We have a situation where the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 93%.
00:23CEOs of large corporations now earn 350 times more than their average workers.
00:33According to the Rand Corporation, not a socialist operation, over the past 50 years, $79 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
00:50Today, quite unbelievably, the average American worker makes less, less in real inflation accounted for dollars than he or she did 52 years ago.
01:04So that's where we are right now. There are a lot of reasons for that that we're not going to get into today.
01:10But one of the more important reasons why the working class in America is worse off than they were 50 years ago, despite huge increases in worker productivity,
01:20is the fact that corporate America has been waging a war against the trade union movement for decades.
01:28According to the latest Gallup poll, 70% of the American people support labor unions,
01:35and yet only 6% of private sector workers belong to one.
01:41All over the country, people want to join unions, and yet in the private sector, that mere 6% are in unions.
01:48Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, I'm afraid that the bills that we are considering today would only make a bad and unfair situation even worse.
01:55These proposals would make it easier for large corporations to misclassify workers as independent contractors
02:03in order to avoid paying them decent wages and decent benefits.
02:09These bills are not about giving workers the freedom to work.
02:13These bills are about giving corporations the freedom to deny workers the right to form a union.
02:19They're about giving corporations the freedom to pay workers poverty wages and denying workers the overtime pay that they are owed.
02:26In other words, they would give corporations like Amazon, Uber, and Lyft the freedom to exploit their workforce.
02:34The reality is that the safe harbor provisions included in this legislation would give large corporations a blank check to break our nation's labor laws.
02:44A few years ago, I met with truck drivers in California who were misclassified as independent contractors.
02:52Never forget that big lineup of trucks in near the harbor.
02:57One truck driver told me he worked 100 hours a week, and not only did he not get paid for that work week,
03:04he ended up owing the company a check.
03:07What was his crime?
03:09The trucking company forced him to lease the truck he was driving for an outrageously high fee
03:13and then fired him for speaking out against that injustice.
03:17And that's happening all over the country.
03:19At yesterday's hearing, we heard concerns from Senator Hawley about how Amazon drivers are misclassified as independent contractors
03:26and denied the right to form a union even though they wear Amazon vests, drive Amazon vehicles, deliver Amazon packages,
03:34and have their work schedule controlled by Amazon.
03:36He was right.
03:37Instead of denying workers the right to form a union, we should make it easier for workers to organize and bargain for better wages and benefits.
03:46Virtually every major union in this country supports the PRO Act, the right for workers to join a union without being illegally attacked by their employer.
03:56Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record letters opposing these bills from the AFL-CIO, the SEIU,
04:05the National Nurses Union, United, the National Employment Law Project, and others.
04:10Without objection.
04:11Instead of denying workers the right to decent wages, we should be raising the minimum wage to at least $17 an hour.
04:19Instead of denying health care to workers with pre-existing conditions, we should do what every other major country on earth does, guarantee health care to all people as a human right.
04:28If we're serious about addressing the retirement crisis, which is what we're talking about today to some degree,
04:34the way to do that is to bring back defined benefit pension plans.
04:39Now, I know that a lot of young people in the audience may not even know what a defined benefit pension plans.
04:44Guess what? Your grandparents, when they went to work, if they worked for a large company, when they retired, they had a pension plan.
04:53They knew exactly how much they were getting for the rest of their lives.
04:59According to the Congressional Research Service, in 1975, 44 percent of private sector workers in America had a defined benefit pension plan
05:08that guaranteed a monthly income in retirement.
05:11Today, that figure has dropped to just 9 percent.
05:14This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and we should not have millions of people reaching retirement age with nothing in the bank
05:23worrying about how they're going to make it through their last years on earth.
05:28And that has got to change, and that is why I've introduced the Pensions for All Act this morning.
05:33This legislation will provide comprehensive retirement coverage to the more than 56 million working-class Americans
05:39who currently have no pension plan through their employer.
05:42If we can guarantee a defined benefit pension plan for members of Congress—not a bad plan, guys—
05:49we can and must provide that same level of retirement security to every worker in America.
05:56That is precisely what this legislation would do, and I am proud that it has the strong support of the UAW,
06:01the Alliance for Retired Americans, and the Association of Flight Attendants.
06:04I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
