The center of this agreement but every trade agreement that ive seen in my timey in Congress NorthAmerican Free trade agreement central American Free trade agreement trade agreement with Columbia South korea and kenema one after another permanent trade relations with china. Everyone of these tradese actios were written fundamentally in secret by corporate interests to serve corporate interests. Workers were never at the center of these trade agreement. One of my votes in the house was against the north American Free trade agreement. I votedtt no for sense because these trade agreements were written by corporations maximize profitspe and to enrich stockholders always at the expense of workers. Communities like mansfield ohio and portsmouth ohio in toledo and youngstown. I was talking to a friend of mine and she knows former senator cafaro knows whats happening with these trade agreements. We all know how they undermines communities and always again because these trade agreements were ripped by corporations in secret. Because of nafta and these trade agreement and because of trump tax policies where you pay a lower tax rate if m you move overseas than you pay in the United States in spite of Ranking Member widens chairman wydens efforts to stop those tax breaks that go to richest people and country but the Business Model as you shut down production in lima ohio and you shut down productions in gainesville or cleveland you move over to get a tax break, you move overseas and then you sell your products back to the United States. Thats been the Business Model based on her trade policy for years. President trump antitrump promised Something Different to renegotiateft nafta. The problem is when he put his agreement in front of us it was the same old, same old. His same old Economic Policy and again with corporate interest in the center of this trade agreement is a trade policy it was like all of our trade policies in the past for it over and over again this president has betrayed workers from his judges that put their thumbs on the scale always supporting corporate interests, corporations over workers always supporting wall street over consumers. As we know down the hall where senator mcconnells office is almost every day he walks down here to try to confirm far right extremist judges always young judges to do the same thing to put their thumb on the scale of justice always supporting corporations over work ers. As i said last year we got an additional draft of President Trumps agreement. The first nafta draft was nowhere near the good deal that the president promised. He hadot negotiated pure and simple another corporate trade deal in nothing for workers and the white house looks like a retreat for wall street executives except on tuesdays and fridays when the white house looks like a retreat for drug company executives. Took senator wyden and Speaker Pelosi and unions months and months and months working together to improve this deal. The president resisted and resisted and resisted and finally approved the deal to put workers at the center for a trade policy. We have a position as senator wyden and i will talk about. It might sound evident never been a trade do before. For the First Time Ever we sell a workers right to strike and its obvious it was never included before but the workers dont have that right to strike. Its not something workers want to do very often if ever there my wife whose death was utility with worker in beginning for 35 years talks about growing up or they went on strike twice when she wasm a kid. Workers never really recover from that strike but sometimes they have to. It needs to be a trade agreement to make sure workers rights are protected. They have improve some bleak leaves that since the beginning was included in our trade agreements to make it nearly impossible to win a case when a country violates its labor commitment. Most importantly we haveely secd our brown wyden provision that is amongst the strongest ever labor in the u. S. Trade you be the for business senator wyden and i wrote is the first improvement to enforcing the labor standards in our trade agreements since we have been negotiating them. We know why companies closed factories in ohio oregon and reopen them in mexico. They take advantage of workers who dont have rights. They have weaker or nonexistent environmental laws. American workers cant compete when Companies Move overseas in exploit lowwage workers. President get a race to the bottom on wages. In order to stop this by raising labor standards in every country buy and selll two in every country with which we trade and export and import raising labor labor standards making sure the standards are enforced. The corporations were forced to pay workers a living wage and treat them with dignity and honor the dignity of work. No matter where those workers are located we take away the incentivess. To move jobs overss but think about this companies in the u. S. The business practice of shutting down production in niles ohio in moving overseas they will be less likely to do that if the workers overseas are paid decent wages. Those workers will be able to buy her products because they are more likely to be in the middle. Thats what its all about. Its a completely new way of Holding Corporations accountable mexico would be able to report a Company Filing better rights and we could determine if their Worker Rights are violated and take action against the company pre applied punitive damages on companies cheat break the law stop workers from organizing and if they keep doing it the final strong enforcement we stop their goods from coming into United States. We have to say okay you are cheating in your breaking law. You are violating workers rights thats enforcement. When mexican workers have the power to form unions and negotiate for higher wages that helps our workers. Will mexican workers right now pay as little as 6. 50 a day. The minimum wage in tennessee oregon and the higher minimum wages higher than that in our country per hour. This is 6. 50 a day and we are asking American Workers to compete with that. We have heard critics say brown wyden will force mexican wages to rise. I know a lot of ceos that make seven or 8 million a year to want to keep wages low and other countries but they accuse us of forcing mexico. It takes away incentives for those. O ceos to the seven, eight, 9 million ceos a year from working abroad to hire cheap labor and to exploit workers and make more money themselves. I want to especially thank senator wyden. Without him and his staff in endorsing the proposal without them pushing aggressively we would not be here. I want to be clear though we will be straight with American Workers. Its not a perfect agreement. When trade deal and democrats fixed over the opposition but the fix is not going to bring back auto jobs. We know the administration always exaggerates successes and doesnt tell the truth about many of the things it does. We know the trade agreement was a corporate trade agreement is not a worker treatment that remit and now workers are at the center. Well will be watching the president. He needs to ensure companies comply with these rules and strengthen them if we need to. When trade deal with the democrats fixed also wont undo the rest of trumps economic policies. A policy as i said with corporations puts over workers. We ever were raised the minimum wage because of the president s proposal. This deal isnt going to fix all that and usmc isnt going to stop outsourcing with President Trumps tax plan that gives companies a tax break to send jobs overseas but im going to keep fighting President Trumps policies just as we did with this. We have more work to do to make art trade agreements more pro worker but i will vote yes. On the outsett id will vote yes for the First Time Ever on a trade agreement because by including brown wyden democrats have taken another corporate trade deal brought to us by President Trump and democrats have made this agreement much more prow worker and as the senator from oregon knows we have set an important precedent to run b widen must be includedn every future trade agreement. Madam president. The senator from oregon. Id like to pose some questions to my colleague from ohio who has done so much to work on these issues and not just in the last few months but for years and years and i want to thank him for his extraordinarily commitment to the rights of workers and for all these communities senator brown who you have pointed out essentially lose their economic heart the byte trade policies that cheat workers. I want to ask you about this. Ive heard and i have heard lots of places, the people have said these ideas seem good but are they really that consequential . You have the knack for more than a quartercentury. We have watched you come out on the floor year after year after year. Let me give you my calculation of what this package that we have worked on that you deserve so much credit for consists of. As far as i can tell and we have worked on it with the staff, this is the fastest enforcement process by more than 300 because of what you have done to speed up the timeline for protecting workers. It is the toughest because for the first time it allows her country to hit the worst actor of the hardest by stopping ripoff artists at individual factory levels. And its strongest because it allows us to hit companies who repeatedly violate the law were able to stop the product of exploitive labor at the border. Now my question to you and i want to ask you a couple but i want to get this overview first. You have been out this for more than a quartercentury. Is there any trade enforcement regime that in terms of those specifics that comes close to what that new regime would consist of . Thank you senator wyden and thank you for your help. Not even close. We have seen trade agreement after trade agreement that even when labor standards look fairly strong they are not ever enforceable. Part of what we recognize, we see this. We went back and looked at what has happened after nafta is not just what people promise that what happened with nafta and what happened with cafta. Any attempt to labor enforcement the companies or the government that dont want toon enforce lar laws find a way. If lawyers are really good at doingaw it. They slow walk so whenever you push them to do something they end up staying in corporate errors in case a Central American case that we went on for in guatemala that i believe went on for 78 years. You know the old saying justice delayed is justice denied. He cant really get enforcement if the people who have done the violationop and committed the violation take forever. Speed is one of things and he mentioned that at the outset and how important it is. Another part of it is one of the things we knew would speed it up number one and would mean enforcement would work was if the workers would have an ability kick off the investigation to lead early call a tollfree number that they can register and they obtain child labor violations. They have seen workers attacked, violence aimed against workers. They have seen wages denied for all kinds of legal reasons. The workers than benan speak out and band together and go to a panel to get action and get quick action. If a companynd to keep doing ite have found cases where a company would get a little slap on the wrist and they do it again and they get a slap on the wrist and do it again. We increase the penalty. The first time they get fined in the finest proportional to the violation so its not a huge penalty. The second time its more in the third time we cant deny that company nafta benefits so essentially if you are going to break the law come if you are going to attack workers and keep the union out illegally and if youre going to do my pay to workers who have earned g it you are going to see her market dry up in the United States. Thats the best incentive to stop. We literally keep thehehe produt out of the market out of the United States. If you are a serial cheater in a company that does that to its workers. I appreciate your taking us through this because faster and tougher get that the individual factory level and stronger because it is repeat offenders to come up with products using exploitive labor and i want people to know and have that highlighted in the record that might take is that given what we have seen over the last 25 years is far far better than anything we have seen before and look you and i have worked on a lot of enforcement efforts over the years. You overcall at one point i chaired the trade subcommittee and we found people tripping over themselves to cheat this they were merchandise laundering. It was a little bit different thannt this. We set up a dummy web site just to try to keep tabs on all the people that were cheating and we would remember you didnt know whether to laugh or cry but all over the world people were coming forward to cheat. But it didnt come close to the breadth of what has been done here and let you just ask a couple specific questions because i think because ive heard lots of people and all the campaigns and the like talking about what this a bold set of changes and now we have just walked through what this is in anything we have seen in last quarter century. If her worker reports as you mentioned about how they can use this hotline to enforce rights if her worker enforces violation of their rights at a call center in the government believes that the complaint has merit my understanding is then the government is obligated under the law to send labor inspectors to that facility. Back crack . Yeah and whether its a call center and auto factory if the violations occur and there is evidence that there are violations and if they are in many cases we know about them because workers have spoken out than inspectors can go into those factories. One of the outcomes of this, we know corporations dont want that kind of punishment. We knowti corporations dont wat to see inspectors looking at their business because there are legitimate reasonable at accusations of lawbreaking. Thats going to mean corporations could be breaking the law or the corporations have decided they move to mexico because its easy to evade labor laws and they can pay low wages. When they see the usmca which senator wyden and i took an agreement that was another corporate trade agreement and fixed it so it has strong labor provisions when we see that we mean business we are going to enforce the labor laws we will pass an agreement that works for workers but some companies will think twice about shut down production in youngstown or toledo or dayton. Thats part of the goal of this enforcement too. If youou would senator brown take us through what kind of actions can be taken against a the facility. In other words my understanding is the labor inspectors find violations when they inspect it. They have a host of remedies. You touched on this in the committee but what kind of actions can be taken against that particular facility . First let me talk for a second about a sector thats imported my part of the country the auto sector. If the Company Seeks an auto facility in a Mexican Community that Company Cheats and we find laborat violations and we take action against the company the actions are not just against that companys facility in that community. If a companyif cheats and is trying to send illegal, the Company Cheats its workers and is broken the law on any number of labor violations that applies to any product that come 20 cents for many one of its factories in mexico. They keep sort of a attempt at Companies Bringing in products from somewhere else. We look at that in a pretty broad way but fundamentally works this way. If we find a violation first there is a fine and the fine is essential proportionate to the violation so meaning its not as punitive. The first offense is not especially punitive. The second and the third offense get worse inhe the second offene the fine is much greater beyond proportionality if you will. The third offense is where we stepped in and denied nafta benefits and denied them access to our markets, denied them the breaks they get under nafta under the tariffs. By the third violation whether to violation of labor law or a violation of labor law by the third violation the enforcement of penalties are such that the companies are going to quit doing it. Thats the whole point. I dont want to levy these fines but i want the companies to obey labor laws that are under the nafta agreement. Senator brown would you be saying that if it is found that there were labor violations at a car factory that penalties could apply to any car that might come states from that factory throughout the investigation not just going forward. Correct. That factory and also other factories owned by the same automaker you cant cheat one place and expect to get all your autos into United States without tariffs. We thought a lot about this and we looked over the last 20 years we looked at what has happened. When we flipped back over the last couple of decades working with a very good staff on the finance committee and with our office it found every possible example we could about how violations occur and how you stop those violations. The tilt in the process and is pretty complicated. Took a while an essay said the president handed down another corporate trade agreement and we werent going to let that happen this time per thats why usmca took a long time to pass. For fullyear they were resistant to good labor enforcement. They wanted to pass it. They wanted to help their corporate buddies. You remember senator wyden there is a provision in there to help the Drug Companies at big giveaway to the