Speech #1040201753

If suddenly the procedure fails at this time. we will come back to it tomorrow or the next day. whatever it may be. But since we want to talk about the substance of minimum wage. I think It is important then just quickly. if I may. to talk about it in connection with immigration. because the other day in debate the Senator from Massachusetts talked about janitors. Do you know what happened to janitors in the last 15 years? Janitors in Los Angeles in public buildings were making $12 an hour or $14. You know what they make now? $6. You know why? Because we in this body have allowed a glut of immigration to come to the United States and especially to that city. and the union janitors no longer are in a job at $12. The nonunion foreign immigrants came and knocked off the union wage. Now we have the situationif we are wanting to talk about the plight of janitorsthere is a study by the General Accounting Office noting that Janitors in downtown Los Angeles office buildings had won excellent wages and working conditions through their unions since World War Il. By 1983. the prevailing wage reached $12 an hourthis Is a GAO report. The ability to deliver credible threats to strike if wage increases were not forthcoming played a very important role in that success. I know where Senator KENNEDY is on that one. But Congress. those of us in Congress. overriding the recommendations of a Federal commission on which Senator KENNEDY and I served. continued a legal immigration program that poured hundreds of thousands of foreign workers into the country annually during the 1980shundreds of thousands. Thus. Washington. thus us. inadvertently provided the opportunity for aggressive. nonunion businesses to take the jobs or deflate the wages of union workers. union workers in the Los Angeles area. taking over the office building contracts. Most of the native born workers were then driven from their jobs. Real wages for the foreign born and remaining native born have fallen further toward and even down to the minimum wage. There is a tie here somewhere. and we will get to it. We will discuss it.