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      Bernie Sanders launches investigation into working conditions at Amazon

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      Bernie Sanders has launched an investigation into Amazon that will focus on working conditions inside the warehouses of the online marketplace, which is also the nation’s second-largest employer.In a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the 81-year-old US senator from Vermont and chair of the influential Senate committee on health, education, labor and pension (Help) demanded information about “systematically underreported” injury rates, turnover, productivity targets, and adherence to federal and state safety guidelines at the e-commerce giant.Sanders’s letter, which was obtained by the Washington Post, described conditions at Amazon’s warehouses as “uniquely dangerous” and pointed to a report that found the company’s serious injury rate in 2021 was double the warehouse industry average in 2021.“Amazon is one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth $1.3tn and its founder, Jeff Bezos, is one of the richest men in the world worth nearly $150bn,” Sanders wrote in the letter. “Amazon should be one of the safest places in America to work, not one of the most dangerous.”Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly acknowledged that the company had “received chairman Sanders’s letter this evening and are in the early stages of reviewing it”, adding that the senator had an open invitation to tour one of the company’s warehouses.Sanders has previously hit out at working conditions and pay at Amazon. In 2018, the company said it would raise its base hourly pay rate to $15, or roughly double the national minimum wage. Then CEO Jeff Bezos said the company had “listened to our critics”.The initiation of an investigation into workplace health and safety practices at Amazon comes amid a vigorous opposition against unionization efforts by company employees and data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that Amazon warehouse jobs can be more dangerous than at comparable companies.Over the past year, Amazon has opposed union organizing campaigns, resisted charges of unfair labor practices filed by workers and spent over $14.2m on anti-union consultants in 2022.“It’s one of the companies that really talks about a big game about how good they treat their workers, and yet, when you actually talk to workers, it’s the total opposite,” Aliss Lugo, an organizer in Georgia with United for Respect at Amazon, told the Guardian in April.Sanders has previously written a letter to Starbucks founder and former CEO Howard Schultz in which he accused the coffee company of refusing to bargain a contract with workers who voted to unionize.“Over the past 18 months, Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country,” Sanders stormed at a Help committee hearing in March.In an interview with the Post, Sanders said it was “an absolute possibility” that Jassy or founder Jeff Bezos could be called to testify at a similar hearing, as Schultz had done.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Amazon sets an example for the rest of the country,” Sanders said. “What Amazon does, their attitude, their lack of respect for workers permeates the American corporate world.”Sanders told the Post he was “appreciative” of Amazon’s decision to raise its starting wage but maintained he was “extremely upset by their vehement anti-union behavior” and workplace safety record.Steve Kelly, the Amazon spokesperson, said the company has recorded a 23% reduction in injuries since 2019 and had invested more than $1bn into safety initiatives, projects and programs in the last four years.“We’ll continue investing and inventing in this area because nothing is more important than our employees’ safety,” Kelly added, and he said that critics of the company had spliced the data “to suit their narrative”. More

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      Bernie Sanders unveils plan for $17-an-hour US minimum wage

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      Bernie Sanders on Thursday announced a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour, saying the potent inflation Americans have faced over the past two years makes it necessary for the government to institute higher wages for workers.Sanders intends to next month formally introduce legislation raising the minimum wage over a five-year period to a level $2 higher than the $15 an hour Joe Biden and many Democrats have pushed for in recent years. But there is no sign of Republicans wavering in their opposition to the proposal.“As a result of inflation, $15 an hour back in 2021 would be over $17 an hour today,” said Sanders, an independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats. “In the year 2023, in the richest country in the history of the world, nobody should be forced to work for starvation wages. That’s not a radical idea. If you work 40-50 hours a week, you should not be living in poverty. It is time to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.”Congress has not approved a minimum wage increase since raising the level to $7.25 an hour in 2009, where it remains for workers in 20 states. Voters in several states and cities across the country have approved raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour, but progress on a national increase has remained elusive.In 2021, Democrats attempted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of a large spending bill intended to help the US economy recover from the Covid pandemic, but the effort failed, in part due to the defections of eight Democratic lawmakers.Biden later that year signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors, which affected as many as 390,000 workers, but the president has not said if he supports the increase to $17 an hour. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.In the two years since, Americans have faced the highest inflation since the 1980s, with consumer price increases hitting an annualized peak of more than 9% in June 2022, though they have moderated in recent months. While workers’ wages also increased over that period in part because of a tight labor market, the pace has not kept up with inflation.“As a home healthcare worker, I make just $12 an hour. I worked in fast food for over 30 years and I never, never made $15 an hour. And now $15 isn’t even enough for what we’re going through today,” said Cookie Bradley, a founding member of the Union of Southern Service Workers, who joined Sanders in the announcement.Although Sanders was supported by the heads of major labor groups the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), he said little about how he planned to overcome objections both from Republicans and reluctant Democrats.He said: “This is a popular issue. I don’t think there’s a state in the country where people do not believe we should raise the minimum wage. I would hope that every member of Congress understands that and there will be political consequences if they don’t.”Republicans, who took control of the House of Representatives this year, have shown at best lukewarm enthusiasm for a minimum wage rise, and have instead focused on trying to convince Americans that Biden is to blame for the rapid inflation. In 2021, Republican senators introduce two proposals, one that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, and another that would give a tax credit for workers who make less than $16.50 an hour. Neither went far in the Senate, which Democrats currently control.The SEIU president, Mary Kay Henry, said her millions of members would be keeping an eye on which lawmakers support Sanders’s proposal.“We are going to be watching any congressperson, senator or in the House, that dares to say that they are not going to vote yes for Senator Sanders’ bill, because they need to be held accountable at the ballot box,” Henry said. More

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      US workers deserve a break. It’s time for a 32-hour working week | Bernie Sanders

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      In 1938, as a result of a massive grassroots effort by the trade union movement, the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted by Congress to reduce the work week to 40 hours. Back then, the American people were sick and tired of working 80, 90, 100 hours a week with very little time for rest, relaxation or quality time with their families. They demanded change and they won a huge victory. That’s the good news.The bad news is that despite an explosion in technology, major increases in worker productivity, and transformational changes in the workplace and American society, the Fair Labor Standards Act has not been reformed in 80 years. The result: millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, with the average worker making nearly $50 a week less than he or she did 50 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. Further, family life is suffering, as parents don’t have adequate time for their kids, life expectancy for working people is in decline, and increased stress is a major factor in the mental health crisis we are now experiencing.Compared with other countries, our workplace record is not good. In 2021, American employees worked 184 more hours than Japanese workers, 294 more hours than British workers, and 442 more hours than German workers. Unbelievably, in 2023 there are millions of Americans who work at jobs with no vacation time.It’s time to reduce the work week to 32 hours with no loss in pay. It’s time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life. It’s time to make sure that working people benefit from rapidly increasing technology, not just large corporations that are already doing phenomenally well.Think about all of the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the workplace over the past several decades. When I was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981, there were no computers in city hall. There were no chatboxes, no printers, no emails, no calculators, no cellphones, no conference calling or Zoom.In factories and warehouses, robots and sophisticated machinery did not exist or were only used in primitive forms.In grocery stores and shops of all kinds, there were no checkout counters that utilized bar codes.As a result of the extraordinary technological transformation that we have seen in recent years, American workers are now 480% more productive than they were in the 1940s.In addition, there are far more workers today. In the 1940s, less than 65% of Americans between 25 and 54 were in the workforce. Today, with most families requiring two breadwinners to pay the bills, that number is over 83%.Yet despite all of these incredible gains in productivity, over 40% of US employees now work more than 45 hours per week; 12% work more than 60 hours a week; and the average worker now works 43 hours per week. Many are on their computers or answering emails seven days a week.Moving to a 32-hour work week with no loss of pay is not a radical idea. In fact, movement in that direction is already taking place in other developed countries. France, the seventh-largest economy in the world, has a 35-hour work week and is considering reducing it to 32. The work week in Norway and Denmark is about 37 hours.Recently, the United Kingdom conducted a four-day pilot program of 3,000 workers at over 60 companies. Not surprisingly, it showed that happy workers were more productive. The pilot was so successful that 92% of the companies that participated decided to maintain a four-day week, because of the benefits to both employers and employees.Another pilot of nearly 1,000 workers at 33 companies in seven countries found that revenue increased by more than 37% in the companies that participated and 97% of workers were happy with the four-day workweek.Studies have shown that despite working fewer hours, workers are either more, or just as, productive during a four-day work week. One study found that worker productivity increased 55% after companies implemented a four-day week. A trial of four-day work weeks for public-sector workers in Iceland found that productivity remained the same or improved across the majority of workplaces. In 2019, Microsoft tested a four-day work week in Japan and reported a 40% increase in productivity.In addition, 57% of workers in companies that have moved to a four-day work week have indicated that they are less likely to quit their jobs.Moreover, at a time when so many of our people are struggling with their mental health, 71% of workers in companies that have moved to a four-day work week report feeling less burnout, 39% reported feeling less stress and 46% reported feeling less fatigued.As much as technology and worker productivity has exploded in recent years, there is no debate that new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics will only accelerate the transformation of our economy. That transformation should benefit all, not just the few. It should create more time for friends and family, more time for rest and relaxation, more time for all of us to develop our human potential.Eighty-three years after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a 40-hour work week into law, it’s time for us to move to a 32-hour work week at no loss of pay. More

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      ‘They can survive just fine’: Bernie Sanders says income over $1bn should be taxed at 100%

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      The US government should confiscate 100% of any money that Americans make above $999m, the leftwing independent senator Bernie Sanders said late last week.Sanders expressed that belief in an exchange on Friday evening with the host of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? on HBO Max.Wallace had asked Sanders about the general assertion in his book It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism that billionaires should not exist.“Are you basically saying that once you get to $999m that the government should confiscate all the rest?” Matthews asked the US senator from Vermont, who is an independent but caucuses with Democrats and has helped them attain their current slim majority in the upper congressional chamber.“Yeah,” Sanders replied. “You may disagree with me but, fine, I think people can make it on $999m. I think that they can survive just fine.”Wallace had earlier mentioned how the late Sam Walton could make the giant retail chain Walmart the largest single private employer in the US thanks to his family’s net worth of about $225bn. Sanders countered that Walmart in many cases pays starvation wages to its 1.2 million employees despite how rich the Waltons are.“Many of their workers are on Medicaid or food stamps,” Sanders said, referring to forms of government assistance for which low-income Americans can qualify. “In other words, taxpayers are subsidizing the wealthiest family in the country. Do I think that’s right? No, I don’t.”Nonetheless, Sanders said his comments on the matter weren’t a personal attack against the Waltons or other billionaires.“It is an attack upon a system,” Sanders said. “You can have a vibrant economy without [a few] people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society” combined.He added that if he were in charge: “If you make a whole lot of money, you’re going to pay a whole lot of money.”Sanders’s remarks are unlikely to ingratiate him with proponents of the US political right who already dismiss him as a communist. But they have never been a part of his base of supporters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe 81-year-old has held one of Vermont’s US Senate seats since 2007. He had spent the previous 16 years representing the state in the US House of Representatives, helping him become the longest-serving independent in American congressional history.Sanders, who has previously run unsuccessfully to become a Democratic presidential candidate, published It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism in February. In it, he notes that one-tenth of 1% of the US population owns 90% of the nation’s wealth, among other things.He also argues that “unfettered capitalism … destroys anything that gets in its way in the pursuit of profits”, including the environment, democracy and human rights.On Friday, Sanders told Wallace that he believes “people who work hard and create businesses should be rich”, but the concept of some being billionaires offended him deeply when a half-million Americans are homeless and 85 million of them cannot afford to buy health insurance. More

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      We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage | Bernie Sanders

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      Congress can no longer ignore the needs of the working class of this country. At a time of massive and growing income and wealth inequality and record-breaking corporate profits, we must stand up for working families – many of whom are struggling every day to provide a minimal standard of living for their families.One important way to do that is to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage. In the year 2023, nobody in the US should be forced to work for starvation wages. It should be a basic truism that in the US, the richest country on earth, if you work 40 hours a week you do not live in poverty. Raising the minimum wage is not only the right thing to do morally. It is also good economics. Putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on basic needs is a strong economic stimulant.When over 60% of American workers are now living paycheck to paycheck, when the life expectancy of low-income Americans is in decline, when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country, we can no longer tolerate a federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a wage that has not been raised since 2009. Incredibly, the federal minimum wage has lost over 27% of its purchasing power since it was last raised 14 years ago. That is unacceptable. Millions of Americans cannot be allowed to fall further and further behind economically, unable to afford the housing, food, healthcare, childcare and education they desperately need in order to live in health and dignity.Whether they are greeting us at Walmart, serving us hamburgers at McDonald’s, providing childcare for our kids or waiting on our table at a diner in rural America, there are too many Americans trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour. It cannot be done. This injustice must end. Low-income workers need a pay raise and the American people want them to get that raise.Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for raising the minimum wage to a living wage. But it’s not just polls. In 2021, the Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives voted to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The bad news is that we lacked the votes to pass this legislation through the equally divided Senate. Not only did a $15-an-hour minimum wage bill fail to win the vote of a single Republican in the Senate, eight Democrats voted against it as well.That was then. Now is now. And things are changing. As a result of years of congressional inaction, cities and states all across the country are taking the low-wage crisis into their own hands and raising their minimum wage. Some are doing it through legislative action. Others are doing it through ballot initiatives.Since 2013, the people of 12 states – New Jersey, South Dakota, Arkansas (twice), Alaska, Washington, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Florida, Nevada and Nebraska (twice) – have voted on ballot initiatives to raise their state’s minimum wage. Every single one of these initiatives passed, none with less than 55% of the vote. And these are not just strong “blue states” voting for economic justice. In the recent November 2022 midterm election, two states that voted in Republican governors, Nebraska and Nevada, voted to raise the minimum wage. In 2020, the citizens of Florida, with a Republican governor and two Republican senators, also voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.The MIT living wage calculator estimates a living wage as a salary that is adequate enough to support a family without luxuries. For two working adults and one child, a living hourly wage for each adult would be $18.69 in West Virginia, $17.55 in South Carolina, $21.57 in Maryland, $20.01 in Utah and $19.33 in Wisconsin. Even in my own state of Vermont, the living wage is $19.58, more than $6 above the current state minimum wage.But there are many families that do not have two working adults and rely on single moms who are raising their children on their own. In that case, the required living wage is much higher. As an example, a single mother in West Virginia would need to make $33.39 an hour to support herself and one child.So it is not radical to suggest that raising the minimum wage to $17 an hour over a period of several years is the right thing to do. In fact, had my 2015 bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour that was indexed to median wages became law, the federal minimum wage this January would be at least $17.40 an hour. And while we deal with the minimum wage, we must also address the scandal of the tipped wage, which has been stuck at an abysmally low $2.13 an hour for more than 30 years thanks, in large part, to the powerful restaurant lobby which has spent millions in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses since 1991 to keep workers in poverty.Together, these two proposals would provide an increase in pay for tens of millions of desperate Americans – disproportionately women and people of color. It would also be a huge boost to single moms. Let us not forget that these are the essential workers who kept the economy going during the worst of the Covid pandemic. At that time we called them heroes and heroines. Well, rhetorical praise is nice. A livable paycheck is better. Let’s do it.
      Bernie Sanders is a US senator from Vermont and the chair of the Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions More

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      Bernie Sanders accuses ex-Starbucks chief of unprecedented union-busting

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      Starbucks’ former chief executive Howard Schultz was accused at a Senate hearing on Wednesday of running “the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country”.The hearing, “No Company Is Above the Law: The Need to End Illegal Union Busting at Starbucks”, was chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders, a longtime critic of Starbucks’ anti-union activities.Starbucks had initially resisted calls for Schultz to appear. He agreed after the committee threatened to subpoena him.Nearly 300 Starbucks stores around the US have won union elections since the first Starbucks stores unionized in December 2021, though the rate of election filings slowed after an initial surge. Since that time, Starbucks has fought hard to stop the unionization drive and faces more unfair labor practice allegations than any other private employer in the US.Sanders said: “Over the last 18 months Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country.”Schultz responded by saying to Sanders: “These are allegations, and Starbucks has not broken the law.”He defended the company’s record and said the company gave workers better wages and benefits than its competitors.The Starbucks boss was defended by Republicans on the committee. Senator Rand Paul called the hearing a “witch-hunt” and Senator Bill Cassidy said it was a “smear campaign”.Cassidy said no one is above the law, “but let’s not kid ourselves: this is not a fair and impartial hearing.”Before the hearing, Sanders released a report by the committee’s majority staff outlining Starbucks’ record of unfair labor practice charges.The report found Starbucks broke the law 130 times in six states and is facing an additional 70 cases. Misconduct ranged from firing workers in retaliation for union organizing to shutting down stores, withholding pay and benefits, and comments made by Schultz himself.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There is mounting evidence that the $113bn company’s anti-union efforts include a pattern of flagrant violations of federal labor law,” the report claims. “Starbucks has engaged in the most significant union-busting campaign in modern history. It has been led by Howard Schultz.”Naomi Martinez, a shift supervisor at a unionized Starbucks in Phoenix, Arizona, said she wanted to hear Schultz publicly explain Starbucks’ response to the union campaign and the numerous labor law violations that the National Labor Relations Board and judges have affirmed in complaints and rulings.“I always see the company state that they are continuing to respect the law, respect legal processes, respect the rights to organize, and we see a different story on the worker side of things,” said Martinez.“I just want to hear from Howard’s mouth himself whether or not he thinks that Starbucks has continuously, really respected rights to organize, fully adhering to the law at every turn. Every time that they have their spokespeople say something like that it really is just, to me at least, a slap in the face, because they are abusing these legal processes at every turn.”Starbucks has denied all allegations of labor law violations and appealed all National Labor Relations Board and court rulings against the company. More

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      It’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism review: Bernie Sanders, by the book

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      ReviewIt’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism review: Bernie Sanders, by the bookThe Vermont senator and former presidential candidate offers a clarion call against the American oligarchsThe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has a predictably unsparing view of the effects of “unfettered capitalism”: it “destroys anything that gets in its way in the pursuit of profits. It destroys the environment. It destroys our democracy. It discards human beings without a second thought. It will never provide workers with the fulfillment that Americans have a right to expect from their careers. [And it is] propelled by uncontrollable greed and contempt for human decency.”Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left?Read moreThe two-time presidential candidate makes his case with the usual horrifying numbers about the acceleration of inequality in America: 90% of our wealth is owned by one-tenth of 1% of the population; the wealth of 725 US billionaires increased 70% during the pandemic to more than $5tn; BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street now control assets of $20tn and are major shareholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies.Sanders recites these statistics with religious fervor, and poses fundamental questions for our time: “Do we believe in the Golden Rule? [or] do we accept … that gold rules – and that lying, cheating, and stealing are OK if you’re powerful enough to get away with it?”Bernie believes (and I strongly agree) that it’s long past the time when we should be paying at least as much attention to American oligarchs as we do to those surrounding Vladimir Putin. Our homegrown plutocrats “own” our democracy.“They spend tens of billions … on campaign contributions … to buy politicians who will do their bidding. They spend billions more on lobbying firms to influence governmental decisions” at every level. And “to a significant degree”, the oligarchs “own” the media. That is why our prominent pundits “rarely raise issues that will undermine the privileged positions of their employers” and “there is little public discussion about the power of corporate America and how oligarchs wield that power to benefit their interests at the expense of working families”.We were reminded this week of how this system works. Joe Biden released a budget with perfectly modest proposals for tax increases, like a 25% minimum tax on the wealthiest Americans and a seven-percentage-point raise in the corporate tax rate to 28%, which would still leave it seven points lower than it was before Donald Trump gutted it with his gigantic tax giveaways.Instantly, experts owned and operated by the billionaires started spewing their familiar bilge, like these moving words from the Cato Institute: “Higher tax rates on the wages of a narrow segment of the United States’ most productive executives and business leaders will have strong disincentives against their continued work and other negative behavioral effects that translate into a less dynamic, slower growing economy.“Higher taxes on investment income target the financial rewards to successful entrepreneurs who undertake risks and persevere through failure to build high return businesses that provide welfare enhancing goods and services to people around the world.”Sanders quotes one of the most prescient Americans of the mid-20th century, from 1944: “As our industrial economy expanded [our] political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”The name of that dangerous revolutionary: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.Several decades before that, Theodore Roosevelt similarly bemoaned the “absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting” which “has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power”.There is something extremely refreshing about an author who assumes it should be obvious that billionaires should not be allowed to exist – and has perfectly reasonable proposals about how they should be eliminated. At the height of the pandemic, Sanders proposed the Make Billionaires Pay Act, which would have imposed a 60% tax on all the wealth gained by 467 billionaires between 18 March 2020 and January 2021.“But why stop at one year?” he now asks. After all, the 1950s were economic boom times in America – and under a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, “the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans was around 92%. America thrived. Unions were strong. Working-class Americans could afford to support themselves and buy homes on a single income.” And the richest 20% controlled a measly (by current standards) 42.8% of the wealth.Bernie Sanders: ‘Oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? They run the US as well’Read moreSanders’ 99.5 Percent Act would only touch the top 0.5% of Americans. “But the families of billionaires in America, who have a combined net worth of over $5tn, would owe up to $3tn in estate taxes.” He would accomplish this with a 45% tax rate on estates worth $3.5m and a 65% rate on those worth more than $1bn.There is much more here, including a convincing case for Medicare for All and an excoriation of a for-profit healthcare system which spends twice as much per citizen as France or Germany and still manages to leaves tens of millions of Americans un- or underinsured, all while nourishing an obscene pharmaceuticals business in which profits jumped by 90% in 2021.I first toured the castles of the Loire Valley as a teenager in the company of the family of my uncle, Jerry Kaiser, a 60s radical and a very early opponent of the war in Vietnam. As we absorbed the opulence of one chateau after another, Jerry had only one question: “What took them so long to have a revolution?”The noble purpose of Bernie Sander’s powerful new book is to get millions of Americans to ask that question of themselves – right now.
      It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism is published in the US by Crown
      TopicsBooksBernie SandersUS politicsDemocratsUS SenateUS CongressUS economyreviewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Shut your mouth’: Republican senator and Teamsters leader in fiery clash

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      01:22‘Shut your mouth’: Republican senator and Teamsters leader in fiery clashMarkwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter, argues with union’s Sean O’Brien as Bernie Sanders seeks order in Senate hearingA Republican senator who once had to reassure voters he didn’t think he was “Rambo” and was a mixed martial arts fighter before entering politics got into a vocal brawl with a union boss during a public congressional hearing, saying: “You need to shut your mouth.”Mitch McConnell in hospital after fall in Washington DCRead moreMarkwayne Mullin of Oklahoma exchanged verbal fire with Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, during a hearing staged on Wednesday by the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee.The chair, the Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, was seeking support for his Protecting the Right to Organise Act. But Mullin made headlines of his own.The 45-year-old, who owns a plumbing business, said he was “not against unions …some of my very good friends work for unions. They work hard, and they do a good job.”But he said he did not like “intimidation” by union leaders trying to unionise businesses including his own.“I’m not afraid of a physical confrontation,” Mullin continued. “In fact, sometimes I look forward to it. That’s not my problem.”In late 2021, Mullin memorably said “I’m not Rambo”, in reference to a character played by Sylvester Stallone in a violent film series, amid controversy over an attempt to enter Afghanistan with a private security team. He also said he had not tried to be “a cowboy or anything like that”.Mullin is a state wrestling hall of fame member whose website says he is “a former Mixed Martial Arts fighter with a professional record of 5-0”.Addressing O’Brien, he said: “But when you’re [confronting] my employees? For what? Because we were paying higher wages? Because we had better benefits and we wasn’t requiring them to pay your guys’ exorbitant salaries?”The website of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters describes O’Brien, 51, as a fourth-generation teamster who started out in “the rigging industry as a heavy-equipment driver in the Greater Boston area”.Mullin asked O’Brien about his salary and accused him of forcing members to pay union dues.“You’re out of line,” O’Brien said.“Don’t tell me I’m out of line,” Mullin said. “You need to shut your mouth.”O’Brien mocked Mullin’s “tough guy” act.Sanders tried to gavel the two men to order, saying: “Senator, hold it, hold it.”O’Brien told Mullin: “I bet you I work more hours than you do. Twice as many hours.”Mullin said: “Sir, you don’t know what hard work is.”O’Brien said unions “create opportunity because we hold … greedy CEOs like yourself accountable”.Mullin said: “You calling me a greedy CEO?”O’Brien said: “Oh yeah, you are. You want to attack my salary, I’ll attack yours … What did you make when you owned your company?”Mullin said he made “about $50,000 a year because I invested every penny”.“OK, all right,” O’Brien said. “You mean you hid money?”Pointing at O’Brien, Mullin said: “Hold on a second.”“All right, we’re even,” said O’Brien, smiling. “We’re even.”Mullin said: “We’re not even. We’re not even close to being even. You think you’re smart? You think you’re funny?”“You think you’re funny,” O’Brien said. “You framed your opening statement saying you’re a tough guy.”Sanders said: “Senator, please continue your statement.”Mullin said: “I think it’s great you’re doing this because this shows their behavior and how they try to come in and organise a shop.”Sanders said: “They see your behavior here. Stay on the issue.”After the hearing, the spat continued on social media.TopicsUS unionsUS politicsUS SenateUS CongressBernie SandersRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More