Senate Committee Hears Testimony from Workers, Experts Today

by Seth Michaels, Mar 10, 2009

A standing-room only crowd is watching today as the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee holds a hearing, “Rebuilding Economic Security: Empowering Workers to Restore the Middle Class,” that will take a close look at our economy, our labor laws and the need for the Employee Free Choice Act, which will be introduced in the U.S. House and Senate today.

Sen. Tom Harkin opened the hearing with a powerful statement—greeted by applause from the large crowd—about the need to make sure the economic recovery includes everyone, by ensuring that workers have the ability to bargain for a fair share of the value they create. “The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into progress,” Harkin said, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. He said workers can’t get ahead unless they have the ability to choose a union and bargain.

How do we craft a recovery that includes real workers? How do we make sure everyone can participate in our economy? It’s time to make sure that work pays. We win as an economy by having the smartest, best-trained workforce, and by making sure workers get a fair share of productivity gains.

Unions can help us get there—they ensure a better, more productive workplace. They will help us rebuild our middle class. As we’ve been more unionized, workers have had a better standard of living.

If you want to know what created the middle class in America, just look at unions.

The committee will hear testimony from economic experts, as well as workers who have faced challenges in their efforts to form unions. Stay tuned for more blogging throughout the day.

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