Maxwell Frost Asks Witness How Unionized Manufacturing Benefits Workers, Industry, And Consumers

Forbes Breaking News

During Tuesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) questioned Dr. Adam S. Hersh, Senior Economist at the Economic Policy Institute, about the effect of a unionized manufacturing workforce.

Transcript

00:00for his five minutes of questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm really glad that my Republican

00:05colleagues want to continue the democratic historic efforts to rebuild America's manufacturing

00:11sector and revitalize local economies, an effort that has led to the creation of over 700,000

00:18manufacturing jobs during President Biden's term. But the goal is not simply just the quantity of

00:26jobs, but also the quality of these jobs as well. We have to be focused on creating manufacturing

00:32jobs and working conditions that allow workers to actually prosper and support their families. This

00:37includes rules for better worker safety, increases in OSHA inspections, an emphasis in prevailing wages

00:45when awarding federal funding, and working closely with organized labor. Mr. Hirsch, how does a

00:52unionize manufacturing workforce benefit workers and the manufacturing industry?

00:57Thank you for the question. It benefits in several ways. Number one is it attracts a high-skilled

01:07workforce with good wages and good compensation, and it retains them so that they can accumulate

01:13skills on the job that get fed back into the production process. Number two is it gives the

01:20workers from the shop floor who understand the production process the ability to contribute

01:26and work with management in designing and more efficiencies and improving production as well as

01:33on innovating in products. And how does the unionized manufacturing workforce also benefit the

01:40people who buy their products and the people in the community as a whole? Well, this is something

01:44that Henry Ford recognized when he started paying a living wage to his workers back at the turn of the

01:50previous century. He recognized that for workers and communities to be able to have the consumption

01:57to meet the growing production capacity of our economy, they needed to be paid a decent wage. So unions help

02:06help provide that decent wage. When unions go away, the wages of manufacturing jobs decline. We have

02:14been adding manufacturing jobs, but on net in large part, these are in parts of the country where labor

02:22standards are quite low and not very well enforced. So while manufacturing has been expanding, the quality of

02:31those jobs has been in decline. Essentially, we're creating American macchia doris.

02:37And union apprenticeships can also help us significantly boost manufacturing by helping provide us with

02:44the skilled and reliable workforce that's needed. Mr. Hurd, what do these moves tell us about the quality of

02:52manufacturing jobs that Trump policies will create? And the moves I'm talking about are the fact that

02:58President Trump has tried to convince workers that his policies will be good for them, while at the same

03:03time working aggressively to attack collective bargaining rights and the agencies responsible for

03:08protecting worker health and safety? Well, I think Commerce Secretary Lutnik has given us a clear vision of what

03:16these jobs will look like from the Trump administration. He says that Americans should be screwing little screws into

03:22iPhones. Now, these are not the jobs of the future that are going to make our country prosperous,

03:27again. The Trump administration also is working aggressively to strip Americans of their regulatory

03:34protections. This is a problem for all of us as industrial hazards go beyond the factory door and

03:40extend to surrounding communities as well. Without these protections in place and in force, these hazards

03:47threaten our drinking water, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the products we use. Some would have

03:52us believe that it's a zero-sum game that you have to pick one or the other. Zero regulation, rolling

03:58everything back, or regulation at the wazoo and no one can do anything. But I think with the use of

04:04a poor technology and a skilled workforce and good workers, we're able to have a world where everybody

04:10can thrive. Mr. Hirsch, how do current regulatory protections keep manufacturing workers safe, not just at

04:16work, but when they're home as well? These regulations exist for a reason, and often they're working so

04:22well that people have long forgotten the problems that they were put in place to solve. When we take

04:28them away, they're going to be problems again. What they will do is shift the costs and the risks from

04:33the companies who are doing this to the workers, to the communities where production is happening,

04:39to the country as a whole and consumers. People don't want to have polluted water and polluted air

04:48in their communities. They don't want their kids playing on a playground where there's toxic chemicals

04:53in the air. They don't want to go fishing where there's toxic chemicals in the water. So these

04:59regulations play an important role in preventing that. And the way we could be using tariff policy,

05:06instead of this chaotic and indiscriminate approach, which is disrupting and causing so much uncertainty,

05:12as we could be using this to create a regime of high standards, whether it's for worker rights or

05:19whether it's for environmental protection, whether it's for stopping the pollution of carbon emissions,

05:26putting those costs back onto the goods that are being produced abroad without those protections.

05:32Thank you. I yield back.

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