A resolution recognizing the increasingly mutually beneficial relationship between the United States of America and the Republic of Indonesia.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama for his steadfast effort to inform the Senate and other people about the flaws of the immigration bill. It is a bill that was put together by a coalition. It didn't go through committee. I have never seen a bill that passed this body that didn't go through a committee. That is because people put together the bill by bringing together their own pet projects and one saying to the other: I don't like your part, but if you will put my part in there, I will vote for your part and we will stick together to the bitter end. And that is usually what happens to a bill like that, it is a bitter end.

I don't think people are paying attention to their phone calls, their e-mails, and other things they are getting if they stick steadfast with that bill. But that is not what I am here to talk about today.

I am here to voice my strong opposition to the grossly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. It should be called the Union Intimidation Act.

For generations, this body has faithfully protected and continually expanded the rights of working men and women. Today, however, the proponents of this legislation would do exactly the opposite and would strip away from working men and women their most fundamental democratic right--the right to a secret ballot. That is right. This bill would strip away the right to a secret ballot.

If the Democratic Party stands behind that principle, they should have to change their name. You can't strip away the right to a secret ballot from people of the United States or, hopefully, anywhere in the world. For generations now we have guaranteed to all workers in our country the right to choose whether they do or do not wish to be represented by a union. That is very often a critical decision for most employees, one that entails significant legal and practical consequence. It is a fundamental matter of individual choice and an essential right in the workplace.

Given its importance, we have secured that right through the use of the most basic and essential tool of the free and democratic people-- the private ballot. The private ballot is the way those of us who live in a free society select all of those we would ask to represent us. Everyone in this Congress was selected by a private ballot, and American citizens wouldn't have it any other way. That is why it is so astonishing to me the majority is trying to take us to this bill, this Union Intimidation Act.

Under this bill, the rights and safeguards for a private ballot would no longer apply when employees decide whether they want the union to be their exclusive representative in the workplace. It is a very disturbing development when this body, which has no greater purpose than the preservation of our democratic rights, would choose to tell the working men and women of this country that democracy will stop at the factory gate.

To make it even more astonishing, some of the very people now pushing

this antidemocratic agenda are on record previously recognizing both the importance of the private ballot and the fallibility of just signing cards with the intimidator over your shoulder. In 2001, the lead sponsor of this misguided legislation in the House, along with 15 of his then-colleagues, wrote a letter to the Mexican Government regarding its labor laws in which they noted:

The secret ballot election is absolutely necessary in order

to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a

union they might not otherwise choose.

Now, what would prompt legislators in both Houses of Congress to lecture foreign governments on the necessity of private ballot union elections in their respective countries while simultaneously voting to deprive workers in this country of the same right?

In 1998, two of the AFL-CIO's most prominent unions argued to the National Labor Relations Board that:

The National Labor Relations Board supervised election

process is a solemn occasion conducted under safeguards to

voluntary choice. Other means of decision-making are not

comparable to the privacy and independence of the voting

booth. The secret ballot election system provides the surest

means of avoiding decisions which are the result of group

pressures and not individual decisions.

What could possibly convince us to become partners in hypocrisy by joining these same unions and their surrogates when they now claim that we would strip workers of the right to decide the question of unionization in their own workplace by private ballot?

The view that the private ballot is the best way to determine employee choice and that alternatives such as card check are fatally flawed is not only shared by our colleagues across the aisle and labor unions, it is consistent with the views of the Federal Judiciary. The U.S. Supreme Court, along with the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has uniformly, and over the course of decades, held that the private ballot is the best, most reliable, most democratic means of determining employees' free choice in the matter of unionization, and that all other methods, most particularly--most particularly--card signing are inherently flawed and unreliable.

With regard to signed cards, the Supreme Court noted that:

Cards are not only unreliable because of the possibility of

threats surrounding their signing, but because they are

inherently untrustworthy since they are signed in the absence

of secrecy and the natural inclination of most people to

avoid stands which appear to be nonconformist and

antagonistic to friends and fellow employees.

I wonder how many people here and how many people who might be listening have had somebody, a friend or somebody they are a little afraid of, bring them a petition to sign. How many people turned down that opportunity to sign that petition? I will bet not many.

With respect to the importance of the private ballot, one Federal Court of Appeals put it best when it observed that its preservation mattered simply because ``the integrity and confidentiality of secret voting is at the heart of democratic society, and this includes industrial democracy as well.''

That is what the judges say. So then what would make us reject the consistent--consistent--reasoning of the Federal Judiciary compiled in a host of rulings authored by scores of judges and accumulated over decades of time?

Finally, we should remember the cynicism of those who seek this legislation when they imperiously claim, ``We don't do elections,'' as if the democratic process was somehow beneath them. The source on that is Michael Fishman, the president of the Service Employees International Union, the largest property services local. Or when they arbitrarily dismiss fundamental employee rights by claiming, ``There's no need to subject the workers to an election.'' The source on that is Bruce Raynor, the general president of UNITE HERE. When labor leaders act like despots and tyrants, why would we conceivably make common cause with them?

There is no end to the fundamentally disturbing questions this legislation raises. Since this legislation was introduced, a host of claims have been made in an ultimately futile attempt to answer these questions. We need to stop and ask ourselves: What could possibly be the justification for this radical departure from our democratic tradition?

First, we have been told the current law is broken and that the system of private ballot elections is somehow rigged against labor unions. As proof positive of this claim, we have cited the fact that labor unions currently represent only 7\1/2\ percent of the private sector workforce, where at one time they represented 30 percent of the workforce.

At least in this instance the proponents of this legislation have gotten their facts and their statistics right, a notable departure from the avalanche of misinformation and completely inaccurate data that has characterized their side of this debate. However, what they have gotten entirely wrong is the notion that the decline in union representation levels has anything whatsoever to do with some infirmity in the law. Those who make this claim conveniently forget to mention that the law which they complain about today is identical to the law in effect when unions enjoyed their greatest organizing success and their highest levels of private sector membership.

The National Labor Relations Act, the statute which governs private sector unionization and which this legislation would radically change, has been substantially amended only twice in over 70 years--in 1947 and in 1959. The process of deciding the question of unionization by the use of a government-supervised private ballot election among all eligible employees has been unchanged for over six decades. This was the law and this was the process when union membership levels were at 25 or even 35 percent of the workforce. No one complained then that the law or the private ballot process was broken. No one ever claimed that either was so unfair or one-sided that we should change them by stripping away the employees' democratic rights.

As this chart shows, over the course of the last six decades, private sector union membership has declined steadily, but the law has remained the same. There is no doubt that the decline has been real, but organized labor and the supporters of this legislation need to look elsewhere for the cause of that decline since there is no connection between the law that has remained the same for 60 years and the steady decrease in union membership levels that have happened over that same time.

Second, we are told even if there is no infirmity in the law, employers now violate it with impunity and, therefore, unions cannot possibly win elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board like they used to.

That claim is entirely erroneous. The reality is, when unions choose to participate in a fair, private ballot process, they are more than able to secure the support of eligible employees.

In fact, the success rate for unions in secret ballot organizing elections is at historically high levels. The union win rate in initial organizing elections has been over 50 percent for 10 straight years. That is an unprecedented run. Even more unprecedented is the fact that the union win has increased each and every year for the past 10 years in a row. That is what this chart shows. Unions have never before enjoyed such a run of increasing electoral success as they have over the last 10 years. In the last 2 years unions have won a record of nearly 62 percent of initial organizing elections. This, too, is historically unprecedented.

Before anyone buys the phony claim about how the election process has suddenly become unfair, they need to not only realize that union electoral success is at record highs, they also need to compare the past. For example, the unions won organizing elections over 62 percent of the time in the last 2 years, and averaged winning nearly 56 percent of the time over the last ten years. During the decade of the 1980s, the average union win rate was less than 50 percent. So it is going up. For example, in 1982, unions won less than 45 percent of the time. The same is true for the decade of the 1970s, when unions again averaged losing more often than they won.

Yet, despite union election win rates that were dramatically lower than the record highs of the past 10 years, and despite the fact that for many of those years the Democratic Party held the majority vote in one or both Houses of Congress, no one had the audacity to even propose that we should strip away from American workers the most fundamental guarantee of a free society--the right to a secret ballot. When

Democrats were in charge before, they didn't even suggest that.

Now, the truth is, where unions choose to participate in a democratic process and make their case to the workers in an atmosphere of open debate, the system is fair and they are more than capable of success. Their unprecedented level of recent success plainly makes this point. Moreover, it does not remotely justify changing a process that has worked for more than 60 years. It certainly does not justify any change that strips workers of their democratic rights. In light of organized labor's unprecedented electoral success over the last 10 years, this bill is like a baseball hitter who is on a decade-long hot streak and batting .620, insisting that the game is unfair and that the pitcher's mound has to be moved back.

The claim that the employers are violating the law with increased frequency and making fair elections impossible is equally incorrect. In fact, the incidents of even alleged but unproven employer misconduct have actually dropped steadily and dramatically over the last 10 years.

That is what this chart shows. The current rate of alleged employer unfair labor practices represents a drop of nearly 24 percent compared to 1990; a staggering 42 percent when compared to 1980.

I see there is another Senator left to speak here. I have a lot left to say. This is a very important issue. A lot more needs to be said when we are faced with a proposal to take away away the right to a secret ballot in a bill deceptively called the Free Choice Act. It should correctly be called the Union Intimidation Act.

I will reserve the remainder of my remarks and speak again a little later. When I speak later, I will ask the Record not show an interruption.

Mr. President, as a Member of the Senate who has traveled every year to Southeast Asia and met frequently with government leaders from that region when they visited the United States, I believe America has great interests in that region, and that we need to pay more attention here in Washington, DC and across the Nation, to our allies and partners in Southeast Asia.

This region, economically, politically, strategically important, it is our 5th largest in total volume trading partner. Serving as a cornerstone to SE Asia and the lynchpin to its stability, prosperity and security lie in Indonesia.

When I have asked leaders from all over Southeast Asia how they are doing, they always include a reference to Indonesia. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country and as a democracy, that makes it the largest Muslim democracy as well.

On the darker side, it is also a key country in what many in the intelligence community, and I agree, is the second front in the war on terror that we confront. It is home to the Islamist terrorist group, Jemah Islamiya, which next to al-Qaeda, is one of the greatest threats to American security and peace in the world.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been executing an ambitious agenda for anti-corruption, political and economic reform. He represents Indonesia's best hope for continuing down a path towards stability, prosperity, pluralism, democracy and security. Such a path is not only in our own economic interests, but is also essential to control the terrorist threat and the reach of al-Qaeada and Jemah Islamiah in Southeast Asia.

Since the fall of President Suharto, the Indonesian people have elected three new presidents, impeached one, and experienced several peaceful transfers of power. They have held direct elections of a president. They have amended their constitution in order to

be more democratic and transparent. They have given the judicial branch independent administrative and financial authority. They continue to reform their military in accordance with democratic, civilian- controlled principles.

They have recently provided a battalion to support the UNIFIL forces in Lebanon; and Indonesia was recently cited by Freedom House as Southeast Asia's only truly ``free'' nation.

But despite all the progress being made, we in Congress seem to continue to look for every transgression to put our relationship on hold and move it backwards.

The truth is that as a country, Indonesia has made truly remarkable progress in a very short period of time. As such, they deserve continued support and engagement, not restrictions and retractions.

We should recognize the accomplishments of the Indonesian people and encourage them in their pursuit of a successful transformation to a democratic nation.

This is why I, along with my distinguished colleague Senator Inouye, am proud to introduce a resolution recognizing Indonesia's accomplishments and the increasingly mutually beneficial relationship between Indonesia and the U.S.

As an archipelago of over 200 million people, if Indonesia were superimposed over the top of the United States, it would span from Florida to Alaska. The size of Indonesia and the fact that they have 17,000 islands at low water, 13,000 at high tide, presents a tremendous challenge in defending its borders and dealing with potential terrorist activities on its distant islands or remote jungles.

The Indonesian armed forces are a necessary partner in this battle. When Jemah Islamiah bombed the Bali nightclub in 2002, killing 202 people, Indonesia's military, policing and intelligence capabilities were in poor condition. Of late however, Indonesia's security forces have ``gained the upper hand,'' according to the Economist, June 16th, 2007 with the capture and arrest of some of Jemah Islamiah's top commanders.

Leadimg the fight against terror is Indonesia's new police unit 88, which was set up with the help of American and Australian Security forces. Among the terrorists captured was Abu Dujana, one of Indonesia's most wanted terrorists. Dujana apparently took over as military leader of JI when their former leader and bomb maker, Azahari Husin, was in 2005 killed and had earned the dubious honor of being named the most wanted terrorist in the country. And over the last 12 months, the Indonesians have captured or killed 47 terrorists, including several key leaders.

The article also went on to say. . . .

No large-scale attacks have taken place since 2005. With

the help of their Australian and American counterparts,

Indonesia's national police have greatly improved their

tracking of militants and have rounded up some of JI's top

leaders.

In the recent past, there have been various forms of restrictions on our relations with the Indonesian military in light of terrible abuses that were committed by the TNI in East Timor. However, our reinstatement of military relations and the restoration of International Military Education & Training or IMET, has resulted in continued positive trends.

It is interesting to note that the current President, when he was a military leader, was in the last class of IMET leaders from Indonesia to come to the United States. He, in his own person, demonstrates the appreciation of civilian control. Some in this body and the other body want to impose new restriction to hinder, not help, the productive influence our military can and has had on the TNI.

We must expand and continue to improve our relations with the TNI, not restrict and retract. IMET provides for adherence to the Code of Military Justice, civilian of the military, respect for human rights, and proper treatment of population principles that should be instilled in military forces.

Further, IMET establishes important relationships and alliances among our military leaders and commanders of friendly foreign forces. It assures they understand how to conduct military or relief operations together. and, it keeps the U.S. engaged in a region where China is increasingly, extending its influence. When I visited the North Western province of Ache, right after the Tsunami, the fact that their military had not trained with us caused us great military operational difficulties.

Some in Congress apparently want to reimpose sanctions on IMET participation because of the past and perceived military abuses, but as Walter Lohman, Director of Asian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, has said:

accountability for past human rights abuses and the proper

role of the militia are legitimate. But the United States

needs to get to a point where it addresses these concerns

with the same respect it affords other democratic partners,

like the Europeans or the Japanese

Many leaders in that region have told me, privately, they believe U.S. active engagement and association with their countries is essential to stop China from extending hegemony over the region. Whether China is viewed as a threat or an opportunity, they are actively courting their neighbors in SE Asia; They are sending official trade missions, signing trade agreements and investing their large reserves in securing sources of energy and natural resources. Make no mistake about it, they are aggressively building up a military force navy capable of extending beyond the straits of Taiwan.

The opportunities and the challenges related to China seeking to extend its influence over Southeast Asia should concern us both economically and militarily. States of Southeast Asia, notably Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, control the important Malacca Straits; Straits through which one quarter of all the shipping in the world passes and one half of the petroleum products carried by ocean- going vessels pass.

Beyond those interests, it remains my thesis that we should pay attention to Southeast Asia--particularly Indonesia--as the second front in the war on terrorism.

Indondsia represents the best hope for fostering a moderate Islam that recognizes the true peaceful nature of that religion in opposition to the radical terrorist-inspiring versions of Islam.

With Southeast Asia and its large Muslim population, we have an opportunity through constructive forms of engagement; to ensure they become a solid foundation for peace, security and economic prosperity in this critical part of the world. Whether it is more peace corps volunteers, education initiatives, leadership exchanges, IMET or sending Navy ships such as the USS Mercy and USS Peleliu on humanitarian missions to the region.

We can do it without the need for massive military actions such as those we have undertaken in Afghanistan and Iraq to root out the terrorists and in those cases, the governments that harbored them. In other words, more sandals on the ground now, will prevent having to put boots on the ground in future.

I urge my colleagues to support countries like Indonesia in their path towards peace, democracy and pluralism, as opposed to restricting and pushing them towards more radical, terrorist-inspiring versions of Islam.

I ask or behalf of Senator Inouye and myself that the resolution be sent to the desk and ask that it be referred appropriately.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the articles from the June 16th Economist and from Walter Lohman of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation.

Mr. President, I rise today to join Senator Bond in submitting a resolution, which recognizes the mutually beneficial relationship between the United States and the Republic of Indonesia.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, the third largest democracy, and the most populous Muslim nation. It possesses extensive natural resources, and a considerable amount of trade passes through the straits of Malacca. Without question, Indonesia is a valuable partner to the United States in the global war on terror.

Indonesia has made great strides in continuing to democratize and develop its civil society as well as rule of law, particularly under the leadership of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. This resolution acknowledges many of the Government's positive reforms and encourages the Republic of Indonesia to continue its commitment to human rights, democratic principles, and good governance.

Mr. President, it is my hope that my colleagues will join me in recognizing this very important nation in Southeast Asia.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be permitted to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.