have to move afford it has to be more than just enforcement. >> you don't have to get into specifics, but what would be the areas-- he said it would not only be border security, what other areas will be-- >> i've testified on the hill many times on employment verification and we support that. we negotiated that with chamber members, but we would need-- nothing will get out of the senate without steps to legalize the undocumented who are here now. it would be tight steps. through a probationary. i think the question-- i'm not an essay where the chamber is on citizenship versus the right to stay here and work is one that could break a long jam. of course, the children of those who are legalized here to work would be citizens. we would never cross that bridge last year.

i think it's a negotiating point that is out there. as you know, a span of temporary worker program was a huge issue last year and i don't equate quite explained it as well as we can explain a worker program, but it also comments border security border security. are they all part of one big train with little boxcars behind each one? probably. >> any other questions? last chance. if that is the case we will end on that positive immigration note and thank you all so much for coming. we really appreciated it and hope you got a lot out of hearing for these two experts. if you have any follow-up questions still hesitate to contact the press office. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> if you missed any of the discussion you can see in its entirety on a website shortly. go to c-span.org and usa today is reporting that tomorrow's jobs report is shaping up to be among the most pivotal in recent memory with economists predicting strong payroll gains that could nudge the federal

reserve into raising interest rates in september for the first time this year. we will be watching the jobs report and will have the numbers tomorrow when they come out. you can read the rest of the story at usa today.com. >> with the house and senate returning from their summer break next week, join us tonight at eight eastern. we will preview for key issues facing congress assault, federal funding to combat the zika virus >> women in america today wanted to make sure that they have the ability to not get pregnant. why? he cut the ravage pride women. >> today they turned down the very money that they argued for last may and they decided to gamble with the lives of children like this. >> of the annual defense policy and programs built. >> all of these votes are very vital to the future of this nation and a time of turmoil and a time of the greatest number of

refugees since the end of world war ii. >> gun violence legislation and criminal justice reform. >> every member of this body, every republican and every democrat wants to see less gun violence. >> we must continue to work the work of nonviolence and demand an end to senseless killing everywhere. >> and the resolution for congress to impeach irs commissioner. >> house resolution 828 impeaching john costigan, commissioner of the internal revenue service for high crimes and misdemeanors. >> we will review that expected debate with sirs-- susan riccio, senior correspondent for the washington examiner. join us tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span for congress this fall. >> book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask embers of

congress what they are reading the summer. >> so, right now i just picked up a book called white donkey by a veteran of the iraq war and he also has a very famous comic strip among marines called terminal land, so it's a story that he wrote about not necessarily him, but experiences he went through in iraq and his friends went through, so i'm very excited to read that. >> what do you to that book? >> as an iraq war veteran i'm always trying to understand what i went through and what other men and women went through and i think pro or be delisted to friends that i started with the thought it would be a good book for me to read. >> got anything else on your list? >> i'm going to try to bone up on many-- as may hamilton books as possible and then i was recently in chile, so i've been following and reading a lot about the country. >> i have a reading list for the

summer and one of the things i am starting with is the constitution and so many of my constituents are reading through the constitution and the declaration. they are doing that with their kids this summer and so we are going to have some fun with that and do some things, working towards constitution day in the fall. i think that's exciting that summary families are going back and looking at those first principles and founding documents, so that's at the top of the list. some other things also, there is a daniels book i want to read. its "bring out the best in people" and i think every once a while it's like to get a new perspective on how you lead the team. i always say you lead people and you manage assets and i have always been a big fan of the

books with the leadership principle and so i read a review or two of this and i think that was going to be a good one to read, kind of motivational. that's on there. there's an interesting book, also. it's by-- it's "fluke" and it looks at the mathematics and science behind odd occurrences, so i went to read "fluke". it's interesting how sometimes something just seems to happen. >> let's see, this summer i have kind of ports for a couple good books are currently i'm in the middle of a book-- i'm a university of michigan graduate, so i been reading a book called "in zone" by john bacon and it's great if you're a michigan fan. i also have a favorite that i go to frequently and it's the master of the senate by robert caro.

i find it's the autobiography of lyndon baines johnson, so i'm a history not. i love reading history. that's my favorite historical book. >> i have been reading three books right now. kind of a eclectic reader. been reading dead weight by erik larson, a book about the sinking of the lusitania. i just finished three felonies a day, which is a book about how policymakers when they are not specific can create legal problems for our citizens that were unintended. it's a fascinating book for a policy maker like me to read and finally i'm reading a book entitled "the fire" and it's a book about the 11 recalcitrant prisoners of war in vietnam including colonel sam johnson, one of my car is in the house, about with their experience was like in vietnam. >> watch through you to those three books? >> i just read all kinds of

different things. i'm a bit of a history buff, so defined and deadweight were things that would be normal and also the authors of those books have a tendency to draw me. erik larson wrote in the garden of beasts and i think isaac's storm and things like that, so he has been good and the one, three felonies a day, i have a libertarian streak in me, so i wanted to make sure that when it comes to criminal justice reform that we do those things right and getting historical perspective. >> book tv wants to know what you're reading this summer. tweeter short answers at book tv or you can post it on our facebook page, facebook.com. /book tv. >> a discussion now that existing department of education guidelines on protecting students and educators, religious freedom under the law. the family research center hosted this event recently. >> hello. i'm doctor kenyn cureton dirk we

would like to welcome you, those of you who are here and those of you watching to the family research council lecture series. the topic today is very timely since many children are preparing to go back to school. i know it's early, but believe it or not the kids in my community went to school last monday. so, ready or not it is back to school time. if we love our neighbors as we love ourselves as a jesus commanded us, we will care about what happens to the students and the teachers and administrators in that arena, especially when it comes to their god-given first amendment freedom to believe it and to live according to those beliefs. as we all know, and-- infringement on religious liberty in public schools is an escalating problem. students are told they cannot pray, they can't read their bible, they can't share their faith and talk about their faith in class, but it turns out that most educators who repress

religious expression do so because they are unaware of the united states department educations clear guidelines, which protect their students religious freedoms. thankfully, there are thousands of dedicated educators in the public schools who are also committed christians, plus most churchgoing families send their children to public schools. that means literally millions of christians are already there. imagine the impact of that educators and students could have if churches across america equipped them with the federal guidelines on sunday, so that they could take them to school with them on monday. here to help us become more effective stewards of our influence in the public schools is my friend, eric buehrer. eric is the president of gateways to better education whose mission is to create a better future for children by keeping god in their schools. as a former public school

teacher, eric can relate to both sides of the religion in school debate and for over 25 years he has written and lectured extensively on the topic. eric's work has been featured by numerous ministries including focus on the family. the colson center for religious worldview, american family association, alliance defending freedom and of course family research council. visit gogateways.org/frc forevermore-- for more information. eric is here today to present promoting religious liberty and your public schools, which will be followed by some q&a and we will have a roaming microphone, but please stand so where friends who are here with us from c-span can get you on camera. would you please give a warm welcome to eric buehrer. [applause]. >> thank you. thank you for the invitation and thank you bethany for all of the hospitality. appreciate it.

promoting religious liberties in public schools. a lot of people within the christian community feel like, well, public schools are a lost cause and we should promote homeschooling, promoting private schools. why can we do to impact public schools why should we care? would like to address that with a few interesting facts of why we should care. first of all according to research, barge group polling research found a 4% of church attending families send their children to public schools. 84%. in my own experience i found even churches that might host a christian school on the campus still probably half of the students in the church attend the local public schools. another reason we should care is because that's where the future generation is being educated.

50 million children attend public schools. only 6 million are in private schools and if you drill that down even further, those schools could be classified as conservative christian, well under a million students. so, the vast majority of the next generation of americans are coming from the public schools. another reason we should care is that again according to barnard's research, nearly 50% of public school educators are church attending christians who say that their faith is important in their lives. folks, that's about a million and a half educators in our public schools. in fact, one of the operating principles of our work is that there are christians in every public school classroom. our schools are filled with christian superintendents, christian school board members, christian administrators, christian educators and of coarse, christian parents and

teachers. we often in the christian community look at the public schools as an us versus them mentality. the moment for me years ago was realizing it's not us versus them. we are them appear we are the teachers, administrators, the superintendents, but so often we don't know how to appropriately promote religious liberty in our schools, how to appropriately integrate teaching about the bible and christianity and its influence with academic integrity and so we say nothing. what our organization does is equipped those christians within the system with what they can do within existing law and with academic integrity. the other reason we should care is that this generation of young people need to understand and cherish religious liberty. we are moving today into a climate where often times we look at religious freedom really

being freedom to worship. you can believe what you want as long as it's their own home or in the four walls of your church , but living it out in public not too sure about that anymore. well, if we want this generation to grow up to cherish religious liberty, let's not just treat it as civics lesson, let's actually help them live it out in their world, which is the public school campus and had to do that appropriately. is it any wonder that today when you go into a store during the christmas season or even in private businesses people are hesitant to say merry christmas. somehow they think it's inappropriate. is it any wonder because the generation of employees grew up in a world, kindergarten through 12th grade where they were conditioned to believe that say merry christmas was an appropriate. somehow a violation of the

separation of church and state. so, then they carry that into their adult life and that's what we have today. so, why don't we then reverse that by saying let's help the students understand what their religious liberties are and actually live it out in the world in which they occupy in their public schools, so it's what i just an intellectual exercise in acidic-- civics class, but they are actually living there religious freedom. what we do as an organization is we focus on two key things, academic freedom and religious freedom. the academic freedom to teach about christian history, culture and now use across the and the religious freedom to promote protect students freedom of religious expression. we so into greater's had to do this all within existing laws and existing academic standards. i tell educators all the time when we do some errors are on the, i'm not asking you to smuggle bibles into a close country. this is not about doing something sneaky that no one will know. what we teach educators to do is

defend any colleague to a parent to any superintendent, any school board because it's all within existing laws and with academic integrity. the problem is i find that a lot of christian teachers lead with their christian heart, not the christian head. they had a real passion for their students, but they often times that passion gets in the way of good academic. so, we help them understand how to do this academically, legally within stay academic guidelines. now, the way that we deliver this message are three primary ways, one through professional developers seminars that we do around the country for educators, most often in the church community inviting us to come in because as we saw before 84% of their children are attending the public schools. and a lot of pastors in the church community want to make sure the public schools understand how to appropriately be responsive to that large segment of their public school

population, so churches will often have as command and workshops for both parents and teachers. then, we have a university program in which we help educate up-and-coming teachers, student teachers on all of the things they can do once they enter the profession because often times a rookie teacher will commend and be told by a veteran teacher you can do this we can do that and they just assume they must be right and so that's what they do and they begin to live as if they have to be an atheist in a public school. i can be a christian on the evenings and weekends, but when i walk into that class are my pretend i'm an atheist act like an atheist, not talk about god and god is not welcome here, so we show them how they can do that in their profession. third, we create educational materials to equipped both the teacher and parent with what can happen in a public school and how to do that appropriately. a founding principle of our organization can be found from our founding fathers from the

northwest origins of 1787. now, i put my history teacher had on for a moment and the northwest ordinance was a document developed to govern territory northwest of the ohio river. had not yet become a stay, but the united states had acquired it and so they put together this document and in it they addressed school and why schools are so important. here's what they said: religion, morality and knowledge be necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind. schools in the means of education shall forever be encouraged. interesting. they said there is a three legged stool. we just created this great government and in order to sustain and perpetuate it you need to have three things, religion, morality and knowledge. that's why schools are so

important. but, what we've been today is as a society we've said religion not too sure we can do that with separation of church and state, so let's take that out of the equation. and morality, we are not even sure about who's morality, how to talk about that, so let's eat that out of date equation and what we're left with is only knowledge is necessary for good government and the happiness of mankind. i had to ask how is that working out press? not too well. instead of his three legged stool that they said every generation needs to stand on for good government and a happy society, we has said no, just balance on this pogo stick of knowledge and then we are shocked, shocked when they fall off. why should we be surprised? have you noticed in the education world everything is centered around just the right knowledge? if we can't just the right test or just the right measurement or if we cannot all the right standards, then we will have a

great to society and then we will have good government. we have lost and forgotten the other two aspects of the equation. the founders said that were so important. that gets reflected in everyday experiences like isaiah martinez decided that religion can't be in a public school. isaiah was a first grader in california, and during the christmas season he wanted to bring some candy canes to his classmates and so he got a budget came to put a note on to talk about the story the kincaid and his belief in jesus and jesus the reason for the season and so forth and he brought them to class excited to give them to his classmates and the teacher took a look at it said wait a second. she checked with the school principal in the principal said you can't distribute that. she came back and said to isaiah, no, jesus is not allowed in our school.

then, literally ripped off the notes, threw them in the trash and gave them back to isaiah and said now you can pass out the candy to your classmates. now, eventually because an attorney intervened the school did allow him to distribute those with the notes attached, but he had to do it after school on public property outside the school campus on the last day as students were exiting going home for winter break. now, what do you think-- in education we talk a lot about mort is cost then talked. would you think isaiah and his classmates caught their? that jesus or religion, specifically christianity is somehow offensive and not allowed, not appropriate to be expressed. he learned a poor civics lesson there. somehow his faith can only be dealt with at home sunday school at church, but he can't express

it to his friends. the thing is, isaiah is not alone. according to columbia university in their surveys they found 57% of teens attend religious services and 44% do so weekly. that's amazing. think about the millions of young people and children attending church at least two times a month and often times every week. our classrooms are filled with students who come from a religious background or religious orientation. the us department of health and human services in 2013 found that 73% of students ages 12 to 17 indicate that religious beliefs are very important part of their life. now, as public school educators do we at all even acknowledge that?

we talk about teaching the whole child, but i call the whole in whole child, there is a hole there. we have to talk about it's not just their intellect, but also their emotions and social aspects, but we don't talk about their spiritual aspects because we're not sure how to approach that, but the fact of the matter is most students coming into a public school environments have some religious orientation and teachers can create a welcoming environment that at least allows them to be who they are, to behold people and so what we will talk about today is how to create a welcoming environments in a public school for religious expression in the classroom and we will look at for keith thinks. these are four things that are very practical. i want you to come away from today's presentation and actually do these things in your local schools. those of you joining us by webcast, don't just come away

and say that was interesting. wow, i did not know they could do that. i want you to actually implement this in your local community because it will be life-changing for the educators there and for the students there. the first thing is, you will need to step up and help clarify students religious freedom. the second thing is, celebrate religious freedom day and we will get into what that is about. 's third thing you can do is encourage prayer in school. what? i thought prayer was thrown out of public school? well, teacher led prayer was thrown out, but we will look at how you can encourage prayer and i don't just mean prayer before a test and forth, help educators move from fear to freedom because most of them operate in fear when it comes to this issue of religion in the classroom and therefore they don't wake up in the morning, how can i repress the faith of a child, but they are so afraid of doing something that they will get criticized for that the end up repressing

the faith of the children in their school. lets start by clarified students religious freedom muster with the us to permit of education. here's the good news, for 21 years the us department of education has issued guidelines explaining students religious liberties. back in 1995, under president clinton richard riley issued guidelines on students religious liberties and they are beautiful guidelines. the way the federal government looks at it is that it's a matter of free speech and free association. you can speak to whomever you want to include in your maker about whatever you want to include in your face. it's a matter of free speech. so, 1995 they developed this wonderful guidelines they sent them out to every superintendent in the country. with a letter saying please give this wide distribution and your community to the parents, teachers and all of your students.

then, they updated it in 1998, and they sent it out again. with another letter that said please give this wide distribution to all of the educators, parents and students in your community. then, under the bush administration they updated it and sent it out again in 2003, to every superintendent of country. again, with that letter saying please give this widest of you should to every parent, student and staff member. now, i'm all over the country giving workshops for teachers and i always ask them how many of you have received this information from your superintendent, not a hand goes up. they had never even heard about it. it's been there literally for 21 years. it would answer all of these questions that people have about what students can cannot do in the public school. but for lack of information, many educators and up suppressing students religious freedom.

if you go to the department of education's website and we have a link to it and if you go to a landing page we set up for this lecture, gogateways.org/frc, you will see the link to the us department of education's guidelines and is called guidance on constitutionally protected prayer in public and secondary schools. it's important for the document because it deals with more than prayer. it's all forms of expression, speech in-- speaking, acting and so forth. you can download that. let's take a quick look at the seven key things that are in those guidelines. first of all, students can pray. they can read their bibles or other religious materials and talk about their faith in school. so, if a teacher says, we have 20 minutes of free reading time, paletta book, whatever book you choose and i want you to read silently for 20 minutes, if a child wants to open up his bible

and read his bible or a teen wants to open up their devotional and read that devotional, that's their prerogative. they can bring and read their bible. if a teacher says i want you to open up your english textbook the student can't say i know my religious liberties and i'm going to open up my bible. no, that's not as simon. the assignment is to open up your english textbook, but if it's available you can read whatever you want for the next 20 minutes or if they want to read it during lunch or during recess or whatever they want to do, they are free to do that. they can talk about their faith with her classmates. if they want to share with them about their faith during recess or lunchtime or just free time in the classroom, again, the teachers not the one to get in the way that conversation. they are not to pull out to religious conversation and somehow separate and different from other types of conversation. the second thing is students can organize prayer groups and

religious clubs and announcer means they need to beat treated equal with the equal access accurate they need to be equal as any other non- cricketer club. , if you have cool on his club, a fashion club, if you have chess club and things that are not related to the curriculum, then you also have to allow for other clubs that could be political, could be religious and they have equal to school newspapers, bulletin board, intercom announcements. they need to be treated equally. third, students can express their faith in their class work and in their homework. again, if it's appropriate to the assignment. we had a case come to us from los angeles-- you know out in los angeles they have a lot of brush fires and so this is a high school english class and one year when they were having some significant brushfires

close to where the school was the assignment was, write a personal essay about how you felt when you watched these fires on tv and so one passionate student wrote about how it reminded her of that verse about god being a consuming fire and she wrote about her burning passion for christ. the teacher refused to even grade the paper or accept the paper. because she dared to mention god -- this student by the way did not say therefore this you need to turn her burn. it was not offensive, just here's my personal reaction to what i saw on tv. on fulfilling what you asked me to do. it to get intervention between the parent, the teacher and administrator and the student before the teacher tearfully said okay i will allowed at grade at this time, but now i have to change all of my assignments so this never happens again. what? 's was student and visit-- the financially take you up on what

you said, how you felt when he saw something on tv? this teacher was from this mindset that somehow we need to keep our schools sealed from anything religious. even to the point of violating the students civil liberties. teachers also have the freedom, the department education says, to meet with other teachers for prayer and bible study. if you can talk about what you did over the weekend, if you can talk about your favorite sports tv concert and talk about your faith took again, teachers cannot be praying with the students, but adult to adult in their own time, lunchtime, afterschool or before school, they have the freedom to do that. the fifth thing is that students may be will to go off campus and have religious studies during school hours took this is called religious relief time and the reason why it says may be able to go off campus is because about 40 states have laws that allow for schools if they so choose to have religious relief time set up. so, 40 states have the laws and

the school still has to decide whether they will do it or not, but if you are state is one of those, then you can have religious relief time with actually leave campus during school hours and haven't hours worth of religious training, go back on campus and not be counted absent. six, students can express their faith at a school event. if you have a talent show and a student wants to see a christian song or do a skit that's related to their faith, again, it's not the school's expression, is this student's expression. this school can even put a disclaimer in the program saying these are student expressions, not attributable to the school. but, a lot of educators don't understand the students have the freedom. they are not familiar with what the department of education has a set about that. i think particularly of a case in delaware, where students wanted to do a skit for a talent

show that portrayed how jesus was protecting a young lady from temptations of the world, promiscuity, call in drugs and greed and so forth and they were going to end with a bible verse on the projector and the administrator looked at that said no, cannot allow that. that's religious, can't do that. well, the science teacher, bill mills who had been to our teachers workshop about your before said wait a second, i learned that students have the right to express themselves at an event like this and he contacted delaware family policy council and their attorney, they reach out to the ministration and help them understand what the lot release said, not in a threatening way, just letting them know here's what the lot really says the administrator to his credit turned around and said okay, they can do it works not only did they do this skit and end with the script--

scripture, they not only were able to do this skit: they got a standing ovation and they won the talent show. now, we had that on the website. if you go to that link and you can watch that video. it's really inspiring and it's all because a teacher understood what students religious liberties are, was able to intervene for the students and they were able to express themselves in that talent show. the seventh thing is that students can express their faith at a graduation ceremony. it's the same idea. student expression, not school expression. that means if a school chooses a students to express, to speak because they are the valedictorian, class president, captain of the football team, some neutral objective reason,

if a student decides to say something about their faith or i'm so glad that jesus christ is part of a life or something like that, that is totally attributable to the student and again the department education says if a school wants to be careful about this all they need to do is put a disclaimer at the bottom of the program that says student speech is attributable to student, not attributable to the school. but, again the federal government looks at it as free speech. the student has the right to speak their mind. just clarifying these seven religious liberties in your schools can be a wonderful thing. now, a school district in north carolina put together a wonderful video where students and teachers explain students religious liberties and we are encouraging and you can go into that link on our website and you can download that video yourself and show it in your school announcements. every morning or often time

there are announcements done by video now and we encourage schools to show this video as part of your school announcements because it clarifies what the department of education says and it does it in a very engaging way. let's look at the video right now. ♪ ♪ >> when he comes to public schools everyone knows about the 3r's, reading, writing and arithmetic. today, we are talking about the other 3r's, rights, responsibility and respect as relates to religious freedom in school's. we should respect the rights of every individual on our school system's gimmick to write to. >> rights as teachers and other staff to. >> to have your own belief and assemble those beliefs. >> to prey on our own time. >> to be valued equally if we do not pray. >> is important understand that

students have the right to say grace at mealtime, to pray at the flagpole and have their own religious books within that pool. >> show some respect. >> that's right. all of us have the responsibility to make sure students and teachers alike feel included, not excluded. >> value, not devalued cement don't try to tell us we have to be like you. >> remember, we have our own faith. >> school is a great place to learn about each other. >> to celebrate the many cultures in our community. >> to make friends both here and across the world. >> teachers and coaches can practice but 3r's to. >> model respect for our students. >> win the responsibility to include all students in school and at six or activity and athletics see that we can be knowledgeable enough faith of our students. >> and understand their rights. >> teachers have the rights to teach about religion of the world, but not promote or disparage one religion versus

another. >> teachers can include religious art and music in the curriculum as forms of creative expression the. >> we can wear the star of david, cross or other religious symbols. >> you can pray alone or with other staff. >> just not lead students in prayer when acting in an official capacity. >> , with our right comes responsibilities. when acting in an official capacity on behalf of the school or school system, understand school employees and sometimes volunteers-- >> are agents of the state when working in a school related capacity. >> we have to abide by the law. >> we cannot promote or inhibit students expression of faith. we cannot encourage her sway students was a particular religion. >> we can all, teachers, coaches, parents, volunteers and the students encourage. >> respect. >> inclusiveness. >> courtesy and understanding. >> it is not hard. >> i have the right to follow my faith.

>> believe as i want to leave. >> i can pray or not pray on my own time. >> while showing respect so others can do the same thing. >> keeping school for instruction. >> and not destruction. >> remember the 3r's, your rights, responsibilities and respect for others. we can find common ground. >> i would love to see that video shown in every public school in america as part of their morning announcements. i think that would be tremendous and that would be the first time that a lot of teachers were aware of what should go on in their classrooms and what can go on in their classrooms. so, clarifies students religious freedom is never one. it's been done for 21 years at the department of education, but it is not getting down to the local level. so, what we have done is put together a pocket-size pamphlet that looks like this and it simply quotes the department of education.

we decided, look, if it's not going to happen from the superintendents that they are sending this to then let's give it to the individual students and parents and teachers, so they have in their pockets so they can pull it out and take a look at what the department of education really says. the beauty of this is that it's not our opinion, its quotations from the department of education now, we have collaborated with alliance defending freedom and when you get eight pack in these comes in pack of 50, when you get a pack of these, alliance defending freedom has donated their time to our campaign. ..

we then send out onto the alliance defending freedom and they volunteered their time to write a personal letter to each of the school officials explaining from the supreme court angle here's what the supreme court says about students and teachers religious liberties. they don't send a threatening letter and it doesn't say so and so in your community asked us to send you this letter. it just comes out of the blue. mr. smith, at this time the year at johnson elementary school you may have questions about students and teachers religious liberties.

here's what they are based on the supreme court rulings. it gives six pages of q. and a. hand signed from alliance defending freedom. you have the pamphlets going out to the students and they have the letter going to the administration. a wonderful way to give back public schools. in a church orders didn't ask to have 500 for the church and her students, then they can give us the names of 10 schools and the church can have a huge impact on all the schools in that community. if by the way there's more, with a church group that is in the churches involved and you want to do this, we look to see if there's overlap of schools and then we will make sure every school gets one but we will find one that has been included in the list so your reach is even farther to reach all of the different schools get at least one. encourage you to get involved with that. go to our website. the next thing i want you to do

is celebrate religious freedom day. what is religious freedom day? since 1993 the president has declared january 16 religious freedom day. doesn't matter, democrat or republican, at the president has called upon the nation to recognize and celebrate religious liberties we have in america. this is based on the reason what its gender 16th, based on the legislation that thomas jefferson and james madison put together in virginia called the virginia statute for religious freedom. it was influential in the development of the first amendment three years later. congress decided and the president agreed we want to claim to recognize this day. it's been done since 1993. what we are calling schools to do is simply join the president and recognizing that day. asking also if you have any kind of connection with your governors, appeal to your governors office to proclaim the

day religious freedom day for your state. we would love to see greater awareness for religious freedom day. on that day we did a focus group with a number of school principals and it was interesting as we began talking, you could see their getting nervous. wait, what are you getting nervous about? okay, we'll have to do a school assembly and have to have all the different faith leaders and leave somebody out and then there will be offensive and there's going to be headache and we don't need another assembly. wait, wait, wait. you don't need to include anybody's faith. don't talk to anybody's faith. to talk about the principle of religious freedom. just have the teacher said today is religious freedom day, or a tapping on the weekend, coming up will be religious freedom day. the president asked us to honor and so the the religious liberties we have in america. let's go over to religious liberty you have that school.

great opportunity to revisit the issue of religious expression. helping the students understand the freedoms that they have. what can you do for religious freedom day? i think i recommend. tell your students about religious freedom day. number two explain their liberties. again at the wonderful opportunity. issued at the beginning of the year, here are the rules are classroom, here are the school rules and my classroom is a safe place for you to express your religious values. you will be offered, honored and respected. tell their parents about the religious liberties and about religious freedom day. pass a school board resolution. would it be great if school boards joined recognizing religious freedom day. then called for the distribution of the u.s. department of education's guideline on students religious freedom. and you can tie in with martin luther king day because martin luther king day is the third --

>> welcome to the heritage foundation. of course welcome those who join us on our heritage.org website on all of these occasions. those will be joining us on the c-span network as well for those announcement ask you kindly check out our mobile devices have been silenced as we prepare to begin. and for a internet and online viewers you're welcome to send questions or comments anytime simply e-mailing speaker@heritage.org. hosting a program is james sherk, research fellow in the center for data analysis. his research focuses on the ways to promote competition and mobility in workforce instead of erecting barriers preventing worker growth and investment. his analysis has appeared in the "washington post," the "new york post," this is week in roll call. it's been a guest expert on networks such as cnn, cnbc and fox news and the frequently

testifies on labor issues before congress. please join me in welcoming james sherk your. [applause] >> i would just like to introduce to you the fantastic panel today, the thursday before labor day weekend. to discuss things very important issue, an issue about represented our union square they are legally workers, how represented are the? we have with me brian hayes is a former member of the national labor relations board, now in private practice but he served for i believe three years on the board and we also have terry bowman is a ford employee from dearborn, michigan, has represented by the united auto workers. we are here to discuss new research that we've done at heritage foundation. the impetus for this research is the fact that unions have an incredible amount of control over the working conditions of the workers they represent a unions negotiating your way

just, your benefits, the layoff procedures can decide who's going to get laid off and to keep their job, and promotion procedures, your work hours, vacation hours. all these things are negotiated by the union. it's not optional. if you don't like the job, you're not allowed to go off inside this vacation plan really doesn't fit with my family's needs, go to have a more flexible schedule and more time off? may be a slight leslie -- health care plan to get into the everything goes through the union. you are not legally allowed worker to negotiate with the union. even or something we would think just ought to be intuitive obvious you could do. i would be accepting a pay increase to unionized workers do not accept a pay increase without their unions permission. you might think why is this an issue? the union will say yes, you can have higher pay. actually unions oftentimes did not like pay increases for

individual workers. if it's a group, they are all for it. pretty much always. they don't like individuals getting performance pay or performance bonuses because they can upset the seniority system. they don't like situations where individual voice get paid more. you can see it's a news article on a case a few years ago where the united grocers who works with the court to force the pennsylvania grocery store to rescind pay increases for 25 of the workers in pennsylvania because the grocery store though the contract allows them to do this. they wanted to reward new hires. they did want him to go on to another store and the union flipped out. they are not allowed to get paid more or went to court and the court said you are right, this is direct dealing. you are not allowed to do this. rescinded the pay increases. this is a lot of power of unions have. even the power to deny pay increase. the basis for the stock of the authority they have arise from the fact workers our elected

representatives the national labor relations act which congress passed in 1935 and the screen or held up in 1937 allows, provides for workers to be represented in the workplace negotiation through key phrases representatives of their own choosing. in the taft-hartley a member of 47 subsequently outlined a procedure for secret ballot elections. in theory it functions like political representation. and politics as all americans will have the opportunity to do in a few months we vote for our members of congress, senators, governors, state legislators, the president. we give them that authority. the winners were fixed at a time to exercise that authority on our behalf. they stand for reelection and predictable the accountable. the idea behind it is the same sort of democratic accountability is supposed up in the workplace with workers elect representatives and they have a tremendous amount of power,

suppose the accountable for the workers and acting in the best interest. i thought it would be interesting to see what fraction of union members -- you have some cases the union still be 100% of the vote in all cases. you will see some workplaces where the union gets only 70% or 60% the that every worker represented by a union voted for that union. what fraction? taking a look at data from national labor relations board, and also while taking a look at data from statistics unemployed to know what we were able to connect to the into the this research is up on the heritage website. we have a nice appendix that explains this all in detail. the answer is 6%. 6% of union members in the private sector right now in the is devoted for the union that represents them. of the 8 million unionized

workers under the national labor relations act, 400,000 voted for the union. the other 7.5 million plus of represented by jim that they did not choose. the vast majority of unions, of unionized workers are represented by unions that they had no say in selecting. this is a problem. if the problem in terms of the authority. they derive their authority from this democratic accountability. it turns out they don't look quite so the democratic. it's a greater problem for the workers. think about it. if after a number of cost-cutting like they never had to stand for reelection, what kind of representation would we get as american citizens? how much would members of post attention to our concerns? how high would congressional salaries because he wouldn't get good representation. that's what happened to union

members. polls show a high level of dissatisfaction among union members with the state of their union representation but this is from a survey a few years ago where they found overwhelming majority, 80% of private-sector union members and 70% of union members overall including the government feel the union ought to be held more accountable, that the want more accountability. he found about two-thirds of union members think the union executives are primarily looking out for themselves and not for the little guy. that's a pretty high degree of dissatisfaction but it makes sense we understand they are getting represented, not all, almost all, by a union they did not choose. of course, they are not happy. they can get worse. in some cases unscrupulous and unions take advantage of the system to pursue the institutional interest of union at the expense of the members you represent. a horrible example is going on right now in california where

unite here local 11 is pushing come is held to union. issued is pushing ballot initiatives all across california raising the minimum wage for hotel workers. in long beach, california, and a number of communities in los angeles their pushing these ballot initiatives. the fine print says $15, $15.37 and our whatever, is not a place to unionized hotels. collective bargaining you could agree on something different. they put before the ballot, before the voters. been spends a lot of money getting the center and what do they do? vacant of hotels and say your labor costs are going to go up a lot because of this. that's unfortunate. would you like to have a union likes if you had a union we could agree to a contract that agreed to last for the workers. why don't we cut a deal? that's exactly what happens. if the union organizers boast to others within the union that these initiatives will cause all

the hotels to go union. if a number of major hotels that they tried for a decade to unionize and they just couldn't get, couldn't persuade the workers. as soon as this initiative passes, it passes committed with intent much. the managers are inviting to union members in. here's how union will help our company work better. it's good for you and good for the company. wonderful, happy talk. the unions agree to these contracts that pay the workers less than the new minimum wage. the "l.a. times" had an article profont some of these workers. they feel betrayed. california is not a right to work state. what am i being forced to pay union dues for union that is greater contract i get paid less than the minimum wage? they are getting forced worker from thousands of workers. the difficulty of removing, we will get to that but it's hard to get rid of them once they're in. from beijing's perspective they get millions worth of goods.

most union leaders are not that unethical. i would not want to say local 11 is represented all you need to get the union had to stand for reelection at the workers had a chance to have a say, this wouldn't happen. if it was accountability to the workers it would not happen. i will briefly discuss the four factors that cause this enormous disparity, this fact that only 6% vote for the union. i know brian will discuss this in greater detail. the first and biggest factor is the unions never stand for reelection. once the union gets in, it's in there in perpetuity unless the workers a from or take steps to take a. just look at natural turnover of from. most of the workers at the firm can't even if it will go to for the union, the last time around, most of the workers are going to be new workers in that from. this chart shows the number of workers who voted for unions and

national labor relations board elections from 1973 to the present year and another of those workers who voted for the union who were still in the company. within 10, 15 years event 50% turnover. for any company that's been unionized longer than that, very, very few of the current workers voted for that union. ford was unionize in 1941. kerry never get asked if he wanted to be part o part of the. second issue is the union does need a majority of the overall workplace to getting to the only need a majority of voters. you might think that the distinction but it turns out one in three elections to the union. to have a funny majority that is less than 50% of the overall workforce. that structure causes you need to get in some cases only 35% or 40% of the workers voted for the. then you turnover going on after that. a third factor, brian will discuss in greater did go, it's it's hard to ask for a vote to get rid of the union. on paper the workers have the

ability to say about the union in and they can vote it up in practice it's really, really hard to do that. unless the workers are livid at the union, it's not going to happen. if the workers are generally dissatisfied and upset, that's not enough. you've got to be like throw the bums out sort of anger or the union will continue. the final issue is unions are moving away from secret ballot elections altogether the the national labor relations act asks for secret election. but also says that if the company does as for vote it doesn't have to happen to the unions can simply collect cards on the workers in public and presented to the company and the company can accept that the supreme court has ruled. unions preferred not go into the secret ballot election. what they will do is collect cards in some cases under false pretenses. lots of cases workers sign cards and say you didn't tell me this was a binding commitment. they only said this was to request more information.

the majority of cases i think it's fair to say they know what the card means that you got the organizing committee held at night, the fifth time, okay, i'll sign the card and he goes away. they go to the company and wage basically a negative pr campaign against the company, tried to drive away customers, try to hurt the business. we will call off the dogs if you'll agree to recognize those with these cards do not have the election. independent sources estimates that's about a third of the new members coming into union right now are through this note election process. what's the problem? the workers inside the cards. as long as it's not under false pretenses. the problem is the workers may look very differently when express their true intentions and when the union organized is harassing them for the fifth, six, 12 time to sign the corporate this just news clip from "the wall street journal,"

famous example recently were the united auto workers claim majority of card signed by workers at the facility, volkswagen plant in chattanooga. management was under pressure from the german high command to actual encouraging the workers to unionize. everyone thought this could be an overwhelming victory for the union. i for from someone who talked to the workers on the ground the union didn't even have a concession speech by the assumed of going to win. this was going to walk. in the privacy of the voting booth does not walk. most of the do want to wind up the way for did and voted no. very interesting note here in the issues with the workers afterwards. look, we took a look at what happened in detroit, why would we want to buy a ticket on us as titanic? paraphrasing but a direct quote from one of the workers. the workers do their own research and decided they didn't want to be part of the uaw.

if you have a card check process they would've been stuck with the union they didn't want because of the public nature of the cards on the process. we have one in three get organized, it's a problem. i think the bottom line is the national labor relations board are now insufficient to represent the preferences and desires of american workers. we are not creating a system where the unions are representative, are truly representatives of workers own choosing the could you talk more about why that is the case? >> i think if you were going to go about searching for a solution to what appears to be a problem, you kind of need to understand the root causes of the problem in a little bit more detail. i think if you take a look exactly the processes and let me begin by pointing out one thing. in any kind of representational context i'm be it from the political arena or the commercial sphere, or in the

employment context, there is an inherent tension between two kind of competing considerations. on the one hand, all of us recognize the fact that needs to be some degree of stability in that relationship in order for the representative to function properly. on the other hand, there has to be a coequal right on the part of the representative individual to control that representational authority that the representative has. so you have to balance those out. we do that very well in almost every context i can think of it in the political context we do that by requiring that there be a vote every two years or four years or six years for your representative. in the commercial context we do it all the time by putting termination clauses into commercial contracts and say at

the end of a given period of time this particular relationship ends on its own. these are what i like to call refer to as kind of automatic or external inflection points in that representation relationship. we also have in the context in both the political context and the commercial context what i would refer to as kind of extraordinary or party initiated ways of terminating that representational status. for example, a recall election in the political context is an unusual way of doing it and went initiated by the voters, the representative individuals. or in the commercial context, a represented party may say my representative is not the filling his or her obligations under this contract and, therefore, i'm going to prematurely terminate the contract because i think the representative has breached it. if you take a look at the

employment context, however, the first thing that jumps out at you is unlike the other examples that is no automatic external inflection points. there is no requirement as james pointed out that a representative union stand for reelection ever. they can exist in perpetuity and there is no external force which says okay, we have to reject the representative status of this union. that just doesn't happen. it doesn't exist under the rubric of the national labour relations act. so one would think if you take away that automatic one, that the party initiated ones would be easier, more liberal to invoke. but the reality is that they are not. they are very, very difficult. and ironically under the current

majority at the analog data fit gotten progressively more difficult to invoke. so let's just look at generally at what the current procedure is and what the current hurdles are your well, a union really loses its represented status by virtue of two procedures. the first is the certification by the employees. that is for and what the most common methodology that happens by. the second is but a unilateral withdrawal of recognition by the employer. let's focus first on the decertification. that's a process theoretically by which employees can petition a national labor relations board to conduct a new secret ballot vote to determine whether or not a majority of employers wish to be represented by, contains be represented by the particular

union that is the incumbent. is just a couple of problems with that process. first of all most employees are unaware, most people are unaware that you can't just call for an election anytime you want it. the first problem that confronts any employees who want to do that is what's known as a contract bar rule. it means there's a collective bargaining agreement in place. the board will not process the petition for an election to determine whether or not there is a continuing represented status. that barr has an outer limit of three years. so that any collective bargaining agreement that is for three years bars the processing of thepetition, except under one circumstance, and that is where the employees filed a petition for the election within what's known as the window period. the window period being a 30 day period which occurs between the

'60s and 90 day prior to the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement except of course if you happen to be in health care when the window period is the same 30 day period that occurs between the 120 and '90s did i fall asleep whenever i start to explain this. [laughter] not only the most employers not understand that or shouldn't result of be called upon to understand it. i've talked law school for years and most third and fourth year law students don't understand that with respect to the national labor relations act. second problem is that employers have to do this, had to strictly to what alone. any assistance that is more than ministry will that the received from the employer is very likely to be viewed by the nlrb is having taken the petition areva clip it and causing it to be dismissed, and are then is never election because the petition gets bounced.

you are really talking about an unequal playing field because it's not a contest at the point among equals in the sense that a union that is an income will do everything they possibly can to avoid being ousted by the employees that represent them. it's not exactly the kind of thing a union organizer wants to report to headquarters that the been bounced out. so they would utilize every bit of experience and their leverage to avoid that result. on the other side you have employees who are acting on their own who are obviously unschooled and the nuances of how to navigate at the nlrb, and who do not have the same level of experience or sophistication as the income of union. it's not even an equal contest. let me add one more public in fact it to that, and that is

that the board has what's known as a blocking charge policy. an issue which, a couple of years ago the board changed its representation case ruled procedures. principally focusing on how unions get elected in the first place, not how unions get decertified. to have the opportunity -- they had opportunity to revisit or look again at the blocking charge policy in some detail and, frankly, declined to do so in any kind of detail. but it is principally this. if there's a petition pending for decertification and the union files and other practice charge alleging he would has done something that may have prompted employees to seek decertification in the first place, that charge and the resolution of that charge which may take considerable amount of time blocks the processing of the petition. so you don't get to an election. the net result is that the

election may be delayed by months or even years because of the existence of blocking charges. so to start with, it's an uphill battle for employees. and it actually has under the current board gotten more difficult to iowa to you 22 examples of this. in 2011, the cardboard majority decided two cases, the impact on this very issue. efforts and was a case called -- and the other case was -- the name escapes me. they involve the situation there a company is unionized, is purchased by a new purchaser. and the question of whether or not that purchase when the owners change, occasion and opportunity for the employees to been but whether they want to continue to be represented by

the union with a new employer. the rule up to that point was that there was only a rebuttable presumption that the union's majority status carried over to a new employment relationship under the circumstances. the cardboard overruled that rebuttable presumption very and said instead that in that particular instance is now in the rebuttable presumption that the union continues to represent the majority of people of the employees in the unit, thus barring any petition from anywhere from six months to a year after the sale takes place. when you think about it, essay or transfer of ownership like that is typically a situation in which employees may for a very good reason want to reassess the propriety of their continuing authorization to union to represent them with a completely different and new employer. and yet they are now barred from

being able to do that by virtue of in a rebuttable presumption of continuing majority status the last anywhere from six months to a year. the other instance involves voluntary recognition. that is where an employer as james alluded to for a variety of reasons may have extended voluntary recognition to a union without ever having been a vote in the first place your there was under the bush nlrb, there was a case entitled dana corporation, and the rule was this, that where an employer extended voluntary recognition, then it was incumbent upon the employer to give notice to the employees in the bargaining unit that that voluntary recognition have been extended, and to allow employees a 45 day window period within which to go ahead and

file a decertification petition if they wanted to comport to file for a different, file for representation by a different union. again, a seemingly benign rule which did nothing more than extend to the boys the right under those, that change in circumstances to ratify, to ratify the voluntary recognition that was extended by their employer. again that rule was changed by the board in 2011 on the very same day that the other one was. to now say that there is once again now and try for presumption in the instance of voluntary recognition that there is a majority for a treated from six months to a year. so those are just two examples of how ironically enough despite the fact that there is no automatic way to do this, there is no external force that prompt another vote, even those the internal and difficult to begin

with have been made even more difficult by decision of the board over the past couple of years. one vital thing i want to mention is that the parties initiated employee way to get out the representation runs in tandem with the other way that this happens, and that is by the unilateral withdrawal of recognition by an employer. the rule on a case called levitz furniture has always been, up until recently, that if an employer at an appropriate time to check if considerations that a union had, in fact, lost its majority status, it was privileged to withdraw recognition from the union under those circumstances. here's a typical example. contract expires, there is no contract in place. the parties are still bargaining, and all of a sudden the group of employees come to

their employer and say, here's a petition that was signed by all, the majority of employers in the bargaininbargainin g union strength until it wish to be represented by the union and want to seek recognition withdrawn. assuming the employer had a good faith belief that that was accurate and that they had, in fact, was majority status, the employer could unilaterally withdraw recognition at that point. if they were wrong it was the employer's problem, but nonetheless the employer had the ability to do that and thus again a party in this representational relationship was controlling whether the relationship continued. just this may the current general counsel of the board has now said that the rule has directed the regional offices in

those instances now issued complaints and all of those cases, finding that employer violates the act when the unilaterally withdraw, despite whatever evidence they map of a loss of majority status, and that the only acceptable means for withdrawing his after an election. the problem is all the ones i previously catalogued about a difficult that election is to get. so if the unilateral route has been cut off by employers and the election route remains that difficult, you can see that this problem is likely to get worse, not better. and the numbers prove it out and i would just close with this. if you take a look at the decertification numbers that the board publishes themselves, you will find this. that over the last 10 years, year after year after year the number of decertification petitions that are filed with the board have dropped every single year for the last 10

years, to the point that fy '15 which was the last one where the full numbers are available, the number of decertification petitions is about half what it was in 2006. so that it's obvious that something's got to give its employees are to have what is really the ask promise and that is to have the right to choose to be represented '02 decline to choose to be represented, and to do so in a democratic way. >> could you talk to us about your experience as a worker represented by the united auto workers? >> thank you for inviting me today. thank you, heritage foundation, for all the great work you do each and every data at a special thank you to all of you for coming in today and listening to the subject i think is very important to union workers around the united states. this month in september i have reached my 20th year as the

ford worker, uaw worker. 19 years of those as a dues paying member. i say 19 out of 20 because as many of you may know, michigan has the right-to-work law in december of 2012 and became the 24th right to work state. i exercise those rights back in september of last year. even though i am still a uaw represented employees, i have no ability to represent myself. i withdrew my membership out of the uaw. but like i said i am still bound by the collective bargaining agreement and i'm still bound with having the uaw as my representation agent. before the opposite bank officer for about a decade. but my father, uncles and aunts, cousins, two brothers all of whom worked at ford and ford motor company was in our family heritage and i was proud to actually have the opportunity to gwork for ford.

in september of 1996 i did that. i set out on a new path, and that was really unknown to me at the time. at the time i was in a professional non-unionized environment, working hard every day. i have never been in a union. but little did i know that that path with unfortunate have a lot of thorny bushes in a calm a lot of sharp left turn spirit would have some rolling boulders that you had to dodge as you were walking on the path. there were snakes ready to bite you and some old ready-to-eat you if you dared, dared to stray from that path. and guides on the path who were really blind to reality except for their opinions and preferences about which way to go on the path. i want to give you some history about the uaw that i'm familiar with it as james that it was formed at ford motor company in 1941.

75 years ago now, 75 years ago the uaw and ford started the relationship. as some of you may know the uaw does not just in the auto industry. it's also in the public sector as well or the government sector of what i like to call a taxpayer-funded sector. in fact, the uaw's largest local is local 6000, and that is a state of michigan employees which has approximate 22000 members, the largest local and that is in the government sector. and i think what's interesting is when you look at the 1941 figure, none of my fans, none of uncles, my father, none of my relatives ever had opportunity to vote whether or not they wanted to be represented not only by the uaw but by the union, period. it was generations ago that it actually happened to an indictment of the current

uaw-ford, uaw gm for uaw chrysler, the big three ever had the opportunity to vote to see if they wanted to be represented by a union. let me make it a little more personal. this week on monday i bumped into a fellow worker that actually worked with a few years ago. his name is henry. henry came up and told me that he was retiring on wednesday, yesterday, was his last day. i congratulate him, shook his hand and asked him how many years he had in and he said he was celebrating his 50th year with ford motor company. and as he walked away, knowing that i was doing this panel, i thought to myself, he's been here 50 years and even henry never had the opportunity to vote to see if he wanted to be in th a union or not. in fact, it happened a whole generation before he started, 25 years before he started. so you ask the question why

isn't really a big deal. does that really affect workers? does that really make a difference for union workers on the job each and every day? and my answer is a resounding yes. regular recertification elections would benefit, stronger benefit a 16.4 million union represented employees in the united states, and that figure comes from the bureau of labor statistics union membership survey. it would help them out and actually many different ways. i believe, my own opinion, that entrenched unions actually represent light on working landscape. not unions but entrenched unions that have been there generationally. and as you here can employers bowed out of union? well, yes, but as you heard brian so eloquently described, it is very difficult for workers to do that and something that nobody else has mentioned but i will type from working on the shop floor, fear and

intimidation from workers actually make a big part of why that's not done. it's a very scary idea to go against the union and actually start a decertification vote. so fear and intimidation is a big factor that stops a lot of this happening. i want you to imagine if you will if you live in a community that only had one church, agenda to worship there and you had no opportunity to look for a different denomination. all you had to choose from is that one church your there was no other place that you can go. and that church was there before you were born, maybe before your father was born and when your grandfather was a child. or imagine if you were in a community and you need some legal service type and there's only one to turn available to you. no matter how good or bad that attorney maybe, there is no

competition, no other attorney to use in that case. that's a close analogy because sometimes union reps act like attorneys on the job. imagine a regional basis for a restaurant where you're forced to spend your money and use but yet there's no other competition for that. my question to you is what would happen to the service that you receive at that business, retail business for the restaurant? what would happen to the quality of the service for the courting of the product? what would happen to the costs of that product, that service that you received? they would all suffer because that business has no competition. because of that, they have a hold of your paycheck and a monopoly over your future. and over the last 20 years i've seen a lot of consequences on the job of having a monopoly

union and the union that's been entrenched for so long. as the president and founder of unique conservatives i've talked to hundreds if not thousands of union members around the united states who have also expressed anger at the fact that they just don't receive the service that they believe they should get from their union. i do like to give you some examples. we won't go on too long but number one, something a from a lot of union workers around the united states, if their implant or in shop, plant representation are not there when they're supposed to be. if it's nice weather to they might be out on the golf course or many times they might even be frequenting a bar. is what i hear quite often. number two, unfortunately, the union officials in these locals and these places around the

united states, they take frequent trips to preferred destinations like orlando, your washington, d.c., las vegas, all on the workers a dime. why do they do that? because they can do it like the old saying why climb the mountain? because it's there. why do you need to do that? well, because they can. they don't have any fear of being voted out. another example is in 2014 the uaw raised union dues by 25% in 1000. that is pretty much unheard of, but again why di do they do tha? because they can. number four, in a lot of instances and this is something i definitely have seen, cronyism within the union is so bad it's almost frightening at how it's actually a motive within the plant. you have to be a part of the in group if you want a good job

assignments. the favoritism within the actual grievance handling process is another one. job assignments emplacements and job appointments. if you're in the in crowd, if you go to the parade and shout loud, if you go to union meetings, if you do all of these things you get the job assignments. that's favoritism. it's not based on merit. it's not based on abilities. and lastly nonetheless what i will say is there is an overbearing and insulting bush to vote for who the union demands. the political and social intimidation and this commission that goes on in the union workforce is there and the union has nothing to fear because they have been there so long and they don't have to worry about union recertification elections. so if we did do this, if we did have regular union

recertification elections, there would be immediate on the job improvements. as most of you know the unions have a monopoly on collective bargaining in the areas that they represent. monopolies really don't foster a productive work environment. not only for the employer but for the employer as well. in fact, union monopolies really have produced a lot of corporate bankruptcies. a lot of backroom deals and corruption in the public sector as well. the government sector o sector , i used to called the taxpayer funded sector. why? because when the union doesn't have to worry about being reelected, and they are entrenched so deeply as like a permanent dye job, or when they have a hold on the employees as complete as the kinko's over the peasants in a village, they don't worry about their service. they don't worry about the quality of the cost. the only way they have is to

gain more power, an increase in more power. until it becomes absolute. we all know what was said about absolute power. any of the financial problems and bankruptcy in the auto industry, look at the uaw as a matter fact, had many factors but one of which is largely due to the uaw's monopoly power. long held monopoly power over employers in the collective bargaining status your i think unions will drop a lot other false pretenses that they care about the workers and they will be forced like every other business or every other nonprofit organization in the country, remember unions are nonprofit, to compete and make the case that they're worthy of the privilege of representing those workers. in other words, they will stop pretending to focus on workers and actually do what they were created to do, and that's to

represent their workers in the realms of the workplace. all of a sudden the relationship changes. it changes from the union being the king and the worker being the passive to the union being the servant of those workers and the worker having the ability in a secret ballot election to decide for themselves if they want this service or not. if they want the ability to be union represented or not. in other words, the focus has turned back to where it belongs, and that is the worker him or herself. that's what i strong support was not as the employer rights act, and the employer rights act, what action does is it grants to america's 16.4 million union represented workers additional rights, freedoms and protections. it all comes with the passage of the employer rights act. so there may be people out here today are people listening or viewing on c-span now they think

this is actually an antiunion stance. i would like to say, why don't you stand within shoulder to shoulder on this issue? i think you should demand recertification for your unions that you like. why? because the teacher union back to the original intent. it focuses them on the workers and the importance of what workers represent to them. and it keeps them away from a lot of the outset interest that unions are involved with today where they spend millions in union dues. just like athletes, competition will make unions better and stronger in the long run. that's something we can agree on. so recertification elections is pro-union in the long run. but what it is is anti-monopoly. in this monopoly game you can not pass go and you cannot collect $200. you are stuck circling the port until you retire, always forced to buy the burden of that unique

token on your back. and recertification elections will change that. on to help that's what we're looking at going forward. >> thank you so much. i think we've got some time for some q&a from the audience if anyone has some questions. there will be a microphone going around. please stand up and stic state r name and your affiliation before asking a question and speak into the microphone so that the cameras came to you. >> my question is about what donald trump is suing about this but he's asking for open question, that i back but on the other hand, having been personal experience in the activities, collective -- i'm not they

literally destroy country and economy. millions of workers become of oe they become unionized they don't want to work. they just want to depend on country. i can give you example. pakistan steel, largest factories go bankrupt because of union activity. pakistan building, pakistan outlines, literally bankrupt. american worker is affected by that. about to become bankrupt, and then we have largest share in imf. it become general people like myself, that we are the ones who can't see the economy because these labor unions destroy industry complex and all economies. so is there any disposition what i experienced that unions do -- are what donald trump is think about minimum -- and he wants to increase at?

thanks. >> i'll take this. on the issue of the minimum wage, donald trump has had many different positions on that, so he's kind of come up for raising it, has come out saying we should have one at all. i'm not entirely clear what his actual position on the issues. i think if you have a mandatory $15 mandatory starting wages, we came up with a paper a few weeks ago submitted that we distribute with seven and 9 million jobs in the united states. i think of the anomaly constructive, particularly for less advantaged workers. we all want people to higher wages bof higherwages by the wao by becoming more constructive. simply trying to say you have to pay more even if the workers are not productive which is be tremendously disruptive. on your issue with the innovations that come with

unions, i think that's why we're seeing the union membership has fallen so much in the private sector. if we were having this panel 35 years ago you would have a one in four unions, sorry, what do for workers in the united states, a quarter and a fifth of the workers private sector were unionized. today that figure is down below 7%. the reason for that is so many unionized companies have gone out of business. you saw what happened to general motors and chrysler. they would have entirely gone away but for the bailout. you take a look at bethlehem steel, a lot of u.s. steel industry was heavily unionized and what under. company after company after company sort of recent example is hosted, the maker of those incredibly delicious i don't think about the calories snack cakes. they were essentially liquidated in large part due to the union strike was launched while they were in bankruptcy. in unionized is a huge competitive this advantage to many, not all, but many companies. they're competing against nonunion companies, and they got

this higher cost structure and then basically it's a competitive economy and a more competitive firm wins out. the unions have not been able to organize in of new workers to replace those they are losing, the union is companies that go out of business. there was a study done i think two years ago by an mit trained economist and he was examining data from national labor relations board elections which is interesting spearmon because you can set all right, this unique a 51%, 52% can they get voting. this unique at 48%, they didn't get in. it's pretty close to a random experiment if the union gets it turns out that's not exactly close to iran extended. he had some techniques control for the. what he found was at this comes with unique outvoted in, seven years later they were 10 percentage points more likely to be and how to bankrupt and out of this is that this companies are the workers have not voted

the union and. again i'm a firm believer that management gets the union they deserve. if the workers feel they are mistreated and abused by the management, and every right to vote in the union i think the law of properly provide for the. it's a risk but if you feel that's a risk worth taking, if the company has treated them that badly, they ought to have that choice. at the same time if the company creates the workers while i think in most cases they are not going to see the need to take the rest of the union, bankrupting the company and paying $500 to 1000 a year for protection from the boss if they think their boss is treating them fairly. i think the reason union membership has shrunk so much in the united states is because unionized companies for the most part are less competitive than their non-union counterparts because of his contract and in a competitive economy, general motors, great example, general motors had about 100,000 unionized hourly workers in 2005.

my families in the detroit suburbs. it's something we very much saw that since then at the low point and after the recession they were down to 40,000 unionized hourly workers. into their own apt about 55,000. for al all the promises he is making to the members of job security they went from 100,000 unionized auto workers to 40,000. it's about five, six years. 60% lost their jobs. had the union been willing to agree to more reasonable contracts over the years, a lot of those job losses would not have occurred. i think, the members themselves were never given the choice, would you like the uaw to represent you. would you like a different union that might have different policies? you had to accept the union that had been, and chen's case to brought him in 1937. any more questions o?

spirit how, do you think it is for a worker trying to fulfill a contract when the contract is being violated and their representatives don't seem to care? >> well, i don't really understand what you're asking. if you give a specific example of made which are talking about. .. we had a contract where we had

written in the contract that there was going to be a line on credit cards to receive tips. without consulting the workers the union representatives, management decided, no, they can't afford it, won't to do it and then when it was-- when it tried to be in enforced, that didn't happen. in my case i lost my job and falsely accused about other things. >> it's a tough question to answer without knowing all of the specifics of the case, but in-- generally speaking in the case where a union worker finds himself that the union contract is not being upheld, they do have options. first, they can go through the normal channels through their local union, their national union. if they are not happy with that, then they have to go and file a

complaint through the nlrb and that can happen. again, is a lengthy process and its really worked in the situation where it's hard for the worker themselves to get justice in the end of. but, there are steps that can be taken. is a lengthy process. your situation, we would have to know a lot more about that to answer the question specifically >> to quick follow-ups. of the first is that, what you are suggesting is the tough side of exclusive representation when you have a party exclusively representing you as a legal matter and that party has the authority absent specific circumstances to make a deal on your behalf whether or not you like it or not, so that if employees aren't always pleased with the final outcome of collective bargaining, but that doesn't mean that their representative has not been

afforded the authority to make up together deal. that's the first thing. the second thing and i think what kerry is alluding to is that there is a requirement to, duty of fair represent-- representation by their members, but the process of working that truth often times complicated and secondly and perhaps more importantly, i think the bar of what constitutes improper conduct by union and its representation is fairly high. so, there are two built-in impediments, but terry is correct without knowing the exact specifics of that case it's hard to comments generally on that. >> anymore questions? i have one for brian. my question, you talked a lot about the issues with the current procedures, what the board has made it-- has done to make a hard poor workers to exercise democratic

accountability. if you had a different board majority more focused on accountability, what sort of changes could they do to actually make unions more representative? obviously, getting something like that through congress policy wise would be fantastic, but hard to do, but if you had a different board majority what steps you think they could take within the current law? >> first of all, they could certainly-- the con tract-- contract bar rule in all these bar rules are fundamentally board created, so the board can change them, liberalize them or modify them in a number of ways that might make it easier for employees to process petitions. i want to be careful about this because i do believe that there is some merit to the argument-- not some, there is clearly married to the argument that you have some kind of stability in any kind of representation-- or present patient relationship,

but that can't be where the film is on the scale so how they on that side of the equation. so, there could be instances where the presumption, for example, of continuing majority status the court could say we presume that the-- there is majority status through the contract, but that in successor years we are not going to continue that presumption. you could erect as indicated external inflection points where there is a recertification and naturally the legislative options or you can liberalize the procedure to the board and make them not quite so technical and user unfriendly as they currently are, so that employees really do have a better ability to fulfill the promises of the actin that is that they do have a free choice in the representative.

>> does anyone have anymore questions before we close up? >> can i ask you a question? >> certainly. >> can you explain the difference of getting regular research certification lectures and the difference between the private sector in public sector? >> it's fairly similar in that neither have regularly certification elections. of the issue is that most government unions are regulated at the state and local governmental level, so the state legislature can say our government employees will-- our unions will stand for reelection. that was one of the reforms scott walker did in west constant among other things he said the union's will on an annual basis have to stand for reelection and at the same time tennessee governor signed legislation requiring the teachers union in that state to stand for reelection every three years and if you want to do anything in the private sector that has to go through congress and its been difficult to get substantive amendments.

the last week in 1959. if a state legislator or once to say for government employees and i think it's actually even more important if the government-- at the government level because government unions are even less representative because in the private sector you have new organizing because you have to replace the companies like a bankrupt. in the government, for the most part the government even if it goes through bankruptcy the unity of government-- like the city of government is still the city of detroit. in the government, most of those laws passed in the 60s and 70s and you had this huge wave of organizing at that time and almost nothing since. they were dressed as school districts, cities and police upon us and what have you and those departments stay organized in perpetuity. we had a paper similar to this that cannot 2012 where we looked at the 10 largest school districts in michigan and florida among a few other states

come i think kansas was another state and in michigan and florida we found that 1% of the teachers in the school districts not voted for the union, but were higher before the election took place, so 1% had the opportunity to vote for the them. who knows effects of participated, but the other 99% had no say whatsoever, so i think in the government where you have a lot of states where states tend to be more innovative and laboratories of democracy they are to take a look at governor walker's example and introduce some democratic accountability for the government unions. they are primarily state local government unions, mostly federal employee unions and this is something that i think there is a reform that even if the employee rights act doesn't passing congress and even if we don't get a actual relations board that i think would promote better policy, at the state

level you can take action that would cover seven, 8 million of the roughly 16 million unionized workers in the us. thank you everyone and i hope you all have a wonderful and blessed labor day weekend. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you can watch this program again when it becomes available later today on our website c-span.org. check the c-span video library. the "washington post" reported this week that the national labor relations board decided in two separate cases last week that as far as federal labor laws are concerned charter schools are not public schools, but private corporations. the decision applies to unionization efforts and involved publicly funded,

privately run institutions that enroll about 3 million students nationwide. charter school advocates have long argued charters are public schools because they are tuition free, open enrollment institution funded primarily with tax dollars, but union leaders described charters as private entities pets are planned public schools which are run by elected officials with nonprofit and for-profit corporations that are run by unelected boards that are unaccountable to voters. you can see the rest of the story in today's "washington post". >> with the house and senate returning from their summer break next week, join us tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern and we will preview for key issues facing congress this fall. federal funding to combat the zika virus. >> women in america today went to make sure that they have the ability to not get pregnant. why? because mosquitoes ravage pregnant women. >> today, they turned it down the theory money that they

argued for last may and decided to gamble with the lives of children like this. >> at the annual defense policy and program spill. >> all of these votes are very vital to the future the station and a time of turmoil and a time of the greatest number of refugees since the end of world war ii. >> gun violence legislation and criminal justice reform. >> every member of this body, every republican and every democrat wants to see less gun violence. >> we must continue to work the work of nonviolence and demand an end to senseless killing everywhere. >> and the resolution for congress to impeach irs commissioner john cost can in. >> house resolution 828, in preaching-- and peachy commissioner of the internal revenue service for high crimes and misdemeanors. >> we will review the expected

congressional debate with susan for each year, senior congressional correspondent for the washington examiner appeared join us tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span for congress this fall. >> book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask numbers of congress what they are reading this summer. >> i'm reading fearless, the undaunted courage and ultimate sacrifice of seal team six special operator adam brown. this is a book that chronicles a flawed american who became an american hero, who channeled some of his characteristics which led to risky behavior into what made him a great warrior in defense of freedom for our country. >> who recommended this book to you? >> actually, a colleague of mine

, a congressman from the central valley of california. he's a good personal friend of mine and we were eating dinner one night and he was very emotional talking about a book that he was reading and i was intrigued because i don't know my friend david as a super emotional guy, but he clearly was impacted personally by this story and so i asked him more about the book and he described it to me and i had to get a copy and it just like david, i devoured the book. i mean, it was absolutely a page turner from the very first paragraph, which begins, the story begins by saying on march 17, 2010 navy seal team six operator adam brown woke up not knowing he was going to be killed later that evening in the hindu kush mountains of eastern afghanistan and a 7000 miles

away his little boy woke up from virginia beach virginia, where that his daddy and from that compelling introduction until the very last words of the book you can't put it in because this is a story about overcoming personal challenges. it's about american-- an american hero and about the courageous service and the sacrifice of so many american heroes who are fighting in the global war on terror. >> i am reading a book by president jimmy carter, his autobiography called "a full life". i had the privilege to attend his sunday school recently where he talked and i was in the congregation in the sunday school class and it was amazing and after that i went to the school he attended and of course it's been turned into a wonderful museum and i purchased his book. of this man is on incredible

human being. he is brilliant. he continues to be a true moral leader and he's really ahead of his time. in his book it conveys that. is a well-written. it's very current, actually, and gives a lot of history and tells you who he is. as a man, as a person who is a believer in god, a christian, but it's how he applies his christian values in his public life in terms of feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless and all of the great values that are taught through the bible. >> at the present time i'm reading a book called president kennedy, profile in power. or profile of power. i heard him speak about the book at a conference and thought i want to read that broke.

it's pretty sick. pre-heavy reading, but it has information about the president and insight to the family and the challenges he faced that i never had seen or heard of before, highly regret-- recommended book. >> is your go to biographies nonfiction? >> i like biographies, but appear there is so much we have to read a factual stuff anyway and a lot of other stuff that i like to read. i like peter sweitzer's book "throw them all out", i mean, he's read good books about what's wrong with this government and wish every american could read those as well. one second after, was the "new york times" bestseller about the threat that most people don't even want to think much about in this country. about 20 good nonfiction books i have read this year so far and i recommend them all. >> book tv wants to know what you are reading this summer. tweak as your answer at book tv or you can post it on our

facebook page, facebook.com. /book tv. >> up next, analyzing the impact of the 1996 welfare a lot 20 years after it was signed by president bill clinton took the panel focus on congress, law and the white house's role in passing the law. former governor john engler and tommy thompson of wisconsin open the forum hosted by the american enterprise institute. >> we are just about ready to get started on what i think is a historic events. on going to tell a short anecdote. this room actually this room according to a story by ron haskins was filled with republicans posted gingrich and they were about to vote on the ways and means talent emerged-- merged welfare reform bill, but representative mike castle had

come in with a centrist bill at the last minute, which was actually quite upsetting, so the rules committee decided that castle could prevent-- present his version and first would be voted on and if it lost he would support the ways and means bill. so, representative was very very agitated over this. he's in the back corner over there at that time in the closet pacing back and forth with his door open and he sees castle conferring with two or three other people and he says that's out of protocol. you can't be dealing like that. you got to be on the up and up and make a presentation, so ron haskins goes over there to check it out. he comes back to representative