February 13, 2003

Ninth Congressional District

Labor leaders from across Southeast Texas traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to meet with members of Congress and the Bush administration, in a trip organized by U.S. Representative Nick Lampson.

"At no time in the past fifty years have the working men and women of the United States seen such an assault on their health care benefits, workplace safety and job security," Lampson said.  "Because of this, I conducted a series of meetings with representatives of organized labor across the district." 

Lampson recently published Nick Lampson's Southeast Texas Labor Report, to detail the concerns of the labor leaders.

"The meetings were a great success," Lampson said.  "We were able to arrange discussions with many high level government officials, including Senator Joe Lieberman, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, and Andrew Siff, U.S. Department of Labor Counsel to Secretary Elaine Chao." 

Lampson said  he plans on continuing the dialogue through a series of meetings in Texas and in Washington.

Today Lampson will participate in a news conference in Washington to promote new child exploitation legislation banning "child modeling" web sites.

Lampson, who joined Congressman Mark Foley last year to introduce the legislation in the House of Representatives, said he believes that the web sites that exploit children as young as four, five and six years old "cause immense damage to the children and put them on a platter for pedophiles."  

This is the first time the legislation is being introduced in the Senate.   

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