Senator Patty Murray's office issued the following yesterday:
In letter to Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Grassley, Senator Murray raises concerns
about Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s long record of undermining workers and
their right to collectively bargain
Judge Kavanaugh has a long
history of hostility to workers and their rights, repeatedly sided with
corporations and management as a Judge
Senator Murray is requesting
documents from Judge Kavanaugh’s tenure in Bush White House, when
Administration took a number of steps to hurt workers
(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, sent a letter
today to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, requesting that he make President Trump’s Supreme
Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s record public so that Senators
and working families can fully understand his anti-worker, anti-union
views.
“I am writing to request that you release
all records relating to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s employment in the
Executive Branch, especially considering the importance of shedding more
light on Judge Kavanaugh’s concerning perspective on workers’ rights,” wrote Senator Murray. “Throughout
his career on the bench, Judge Kavanaugh has displayed an alarming
hostility toward workers—often writing separately from his colleagues to
attack workers’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively with their
employers.”
Because Judge Kavanaugh’s rulings make it clear
that he is willing to put corporations and management ahead of workers
and their rights, Senator Murray is requesting that all records related
to Judge Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush White House be made public. During
his tenure at the White House, the Bush Administration took many steps
to undermine workers’ rights, including cutting worker safety rules,
fighting against collective bargaining rights for federal workers, and
suspending fair wage protections for workers after Hurricane Katrina.
Full text of the letter below and PDF available HERE.
August 27, 2018
The Honorable Chuck Grassley
Chairman
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Chairman Grassley,
I am writing to request that you release all
records relating to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s employment in the Executive
Branch, especially considering the importance of shedding more light on
Judge Kavanaugh’s concerning perspective on workers’ rights. Throughout
his career on the bench, Judge Kavanaugh has displayed an alarming
hostility toward workers—often writing separately from his colleagues to
attack workers’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively with their
employers. [1],[2] Judge Kavanaugh also appears willing to substitute his own ideological views for clearly expressed laws enacted by Congress.[3]
The publicly available documents from Judge Kavanaugh’s record
demonstrate a troubling hostility to workers’ statutory rights, and it
is critical that his still-concealed records on these matters be exposed
to public scrutiny. In order to fully explore these issues and
faithfully discharge our constitutional obligation to provide advice and
consent on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, I request
that you provide public access to all available records relating to
Judge Kavanaugh’s career in government service.
I’m deeply concerned by your plans to hold
hearings on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination starting on September 4.
Continuing to hide available documents related to his nomination will
impede the Senate from competently discharging its obligation to fully
consider this nominee. Working people deserve a clear understanding of
Judge Kavanaugh’s views as their representatives consider giving him
lifetime authority to make decisions that will significantly impact
their dignity on the job and the economic security of their families.
The documents currently available to the
public are wholly inadequate. Not only were they vetted by a private,
partisan attorney before being released, but also they represent just
two percent of Judge Kavanaugh’s available White House records. There
are large and important gaps in the record that we need to fill. For
example, Judge Kavanaugh described his role as White House Staff
Secretary as the most formative preparation he had for becoming a judge,
yet none of the records from that time are expected to be released to
the public. Furthermore, the full extent of records from his time with
the White House Counsel’s Office will not be released prior to the start
of his confirmation hearings. At every step, this process fails to
provide Senators and the public sufficient information or time to
analyze whether Judge Kavanaugh’s views and judicial philosophy are
those we want represented on the Supreme Court for generations to
come.
The documents in question are particularly
important, because during Judge Kavanuagh’s tenure at the White House,
the Bush Administration took many steps to undermine workers’ rights.
The Bush Department of Labor issued a rule that undermined workers’
right to overtime pay and notoriously under-enforced protections against
wage theft.[4]
After President Bush installed a coal company executive as head of the
mine safety agency, it withdrew vital mine safety rules and cut staff
significantly, and several tragic mining accidents occurred during this
time frame.[5]
At the National Labor Relations Board, Bush appointees eliminated
nonunion workers’ right to representation in workplace disciplinary
interviews and weakened voluntary recognition, a procedure by which
companies voluntarily agree to accept their workers’ chosen union
representative without forcing a contentious election process.[6]
During Judge Kavanuagh’s tenure at the White House, the Bush
Administration also fought against collective bargaining rights for
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents and suspended
prevailing wage protections for workers on construction projects after
Hurricane Katrina.[7]
Working people and their families across the
country care deeply about their rights at work and understand the
federal judiciary’s important role in safeguarding these hard won
protections. We owe it to them to do a thorough job examining any
Supreme Court nominee’s record on these issues and many others—Judge
Kavanaugh is no exception. In order for the Senate to understand the
experiences that shaped his judicial philosophy, it is vital that you
make all documents relevant to Judge Kavanaugh’s record publicly
available. I urge you to release the records necessary for the Senate to
fulfill its constitutional duty to consider Judge Kavanaugh’s
nomination and to do so well in advance of any hearings that the
Judiciary Committee holds on this nomination.
[1] See, e.g., Verizon New England v. NLRB, 826 F.3d 480 (D.C. Cir. 2016); Southern New England Telephone v. NLRB, 793 F.3d 93 (D.C. Cir. 2015); Venetian Casino Resort v. NLRB, 793 F.3d 85 (D.C. Cir. 2015); D.C. v. Dep't of Labor, 819 F.3d 444 (D.C. Cir. 2016); Nat'l Fedn. of Fed. Employees-IAM v. Vilsack, 681 F.3d 483 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting).
[2] See, e.g., NLRB v. CNN America, 865 F.3d 740 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting); Island Architectural Woodwork v. NLRB, 892 F.3d 362 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting); Midwest Div.-MMC, LLC v. NLRB, 867 F.3d 1288 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting); Agri Processor v. NLRB, 514 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting); SEC v. FLRA, 568 F.3d 990, 993 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).
[3] See SeaWorld of Fla. v. Perez,
748 F.3d 1202, 1217 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (“When
should we as a society paternalistically decide that the participants
in these sports and entertainment activities must be protected from
themselves—that the risk of significant physical injury is simply too
great even for eager and willing participants?”); but see SeaWorld, 748 F.3d at 1212-13 (“This is a question to be answered by Congress, not this court.
And Congress has done so . . . Many traditional industries can be
extremely dangerous to their employees . . . Yet these industries have
been regulated pursuant to the [OSH Act], notwithstanding that employers
could claim their employees were also ‘willing participants,’ ‘even in
the face of known physical risk,’ or that the employees were taking part
in ‘the ‘normal activities' intrinsic to the industry.’”) (emphasis
added).
[4] See
Ross Eisenbrey, “Longer Hours, Less Pay: Labor Department’s new rules
could strip overtime protection from millions of workers,” Economic
Policy Institute (July 2004) available at https://www.epi.org/files/page/-/old/briefingpapers/152/bp152.pdf;
Government Accountability Office, GAO-09-458T, “Wage and Hour
Division’s Complaint Intake and Investigative Processes Leave
Low-Wage-Workers Vulnerable to Wage Theft” (2009) available at https://www.gao.gov/assets/130/122107.pdf.
[5] Rep. George Miller, “The Department of Labor: A Damage Assessment,” Huffington Post (Oct. 2, 2008) available at https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-george-miller/the-department-of-labor-a_b_122543.html.
[6] See Dana Corp., 341 NLRB No. 150 (June 7, 2004); IBM Corp., 341 NLRB No. 148 (June 9, 2004).
[7] See
Mark D. Roth & Jamison F. Grella, “First Line Defenders As Second
Class Citizens: Collective Bargaining Rights for TSA Employees and
National Security Make Good Bedfellows,” National Security Law Brief
(2011) available at http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=nslb; William G. Whittaker, “Davis-Bacon Suspension and its Legislative Aftermath,” Congressional Research Service (Nov. 14, 2005) available at http://research.policyarchive.org/2624.pdf.
