Acting Labor Sec. Julie Su Grilled By Tammy Balwin On Layoffs: They’re Moving ‘Production To Mexico’

7 months ago

Earlier this week, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) questioned Acting Labor Sec. Julie Su on the continued layoffs occuring due to outsourcing production during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.

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Transcript

00:00 Thank you, Acting Secretary Hsu. We will now begin a round of five-minute

00:05 questions, starting with myself and then Senator Capito. Acting Secretary Hsu, I am

00:12 deeply troubled by CNH Industrial's recent decision to lay off over 200

00:19 workers at a facility in Racine, Wisconsin, and move production to Mexico.

00:25 Agricultural machinery has been made by workers in my home state for over a

00:30 hundred and seventy-five years. They have made Case New Holland into the

00:35 international manufacturing powerhouse that it is today. Even after delivering

00:41 record profits for the company, plant workers at Racine are being told that

00:46 their services are too expensive and are no longer welcome. An average worker at

00:50 the Racine plant earns $52,000 annually. CNH spent over $652 million

00:59 in stock buybacks last year, or four times more than the $150 million

01:05 they hope to save by reducing their workforce. Moving production to

01:10 Mexico would not only be a slap in the face to the workers who have given so

01:15 much, but it would destroy the institutional knowledge that the plant's

01:19 workforce has developed over decades of building agricultural equipment.

01:25 American workers are the best in the world, yet they face unfair

01:30 disadvantages when it comes to competing against low-road employers in other

01:35 countries, engaging in a race to the bottom and exploiting workers. So can you

01:40 start by expanding on how the budget would promote a fair global playing

01:46 field and protect workers' paychecks here at home by advancing workers' rights

01:51 abroad? Chairwoman Baldwin, thank you so much and thank you also for your opening

01:57 comments about the President's announcement yesterday in Racine, which

02:01 demonstrates that the race to the bottom is not the only option. We can, with the

02:05 right investments, create a race to the top in which America's workers benefit,

02:10 America's businesses benefit, and our economy and our country are stronger. To

02:14 your question, one of our agencies is ILAB, the International Labor Affairs

02:20 Bureau, and the premise behind ILAB is the idea that the interests and welfare

02:30 of working people in other countries is intricately tied to the welfare of

02:34 workers in the United States. Too often I also hear what you've just suggested,

02:38 which is companies saying that if we demand that workers do well in this

02:42 country, we're going to take our work to another country in which there are even

02:45 more vulnerable workers. And the work of ILAB is intended to create a more level

02:49 playing field. ILAB engages in research and advocacy to make sure that

02:55 conditions like child labor and forced labor in other countries are not

02:59 condoned, that when goods that are made in such conditions try to enter the

03:04 United States, that we do not allow that. We have also been very engaged in

03:10 helping to monitor and assist the country of Mexico in implementation of

03:15 the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement that would help make sure that

03:18 workers in Mexico also have their fair and free choice to join a union and to

03:23 protect their their working conditions. Again, so that we really end the race to

03:29 the bottom, as you mentioned. Thank you for that answer. While we appreciate this

03:33 important work to level the global playing field and discourage companies

03:38 from moving jobs out of the United States in the first place, we also

03:41 recognize the critical needs of these workers who are faced with losing their

03:45 jobs unless CNH decides to reverse course. So I'd like to follow up on the

03:52 WARN Act. This is an important law that if followed can help communities plan to

03:58 provide services to workers affected by mass layoffs. Unfortunately, as in the

04:03 case with CNH, not every company complies with WARN and Department of Labor's

04:10 authority to enforce the law needs to be strengthened. Will you work with me to

04:14 explore how Congress can strengthen the WARN Act this Congress? Yes, absolutely

04:21 Senator. Thank you. We've discussed my desire to secure increased protections

04:30 from workplace violence, especially for our nation's nurses. Unfortunately, nurses

04:36 continue to suffer from rising levels of workplace violence. A 2023 report from

04:42 National Nurses United found that nearly one in five nurses have changed or left

04:49 their jobs due to workplace violence. With Wisconsin facing a projected

04:55 shortage of 20,000 nurses by the year 2040, we must do all that we can to

05:01 protect, retain, and strengthen the nursing workforce. I know the department

05:05 has taken some steps towards issuing a proposed rule on workplace violence in

05:10 health care and social assistance. Can you update us on the actions the

05:14 department is taking now to provide all nurses the protections from workplace

05:18 violence that they deserve and describe your efforts to accelerate the issuance

05:23 of this proposed workplace violence standard? Yes, thank you so much

05:28 Chairwoman Baldwin. So as you note, workplace violence is too often the

05:35 reality for many in our health care settings. I recently made a trip where I

05:41 met in a community in which there was a home health care nurse who had been

05:47 killed on the job. And I also meet with nurses, including those in nursing

05:53 programs, who are passionate and want to do the job but recognize that

05:59 violence is a reality that they should face and that they have to face and

06:02 that should not simply not be the case. This also points to something that we

06:06 believe really deeply at the Department of Labor, which is that sometimes labor

06:10 shortages or people not staying in jobs that they're trained for and

06:15 want to do is a result of job quality issues and we need to make sure that

06:19 every job is a good job. So our efforts include creating a workplace standard

06:24 that would help to reduce and hopefully eliminate the incidents of workplace

06:31 violence when it comes to health care workers. We have gone through the initial

06:36 the small business review process, which is always something that our OSHA rules

06:41 require, and we are doing everything we can to issue a notice rule as soon as we

06:47 can. Thank you.

Acting Labor Sec. Julie Su Grilled By Tammy Balwin On Layoffs: They’re Moving ‘Production To Mexico’

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Transcript

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