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Labor Ambushed
Aug. 1, 2002
By Jack Smith

Posted via Jack Smith's Mid-Hudson Activist Newsletter, Aug. 1, 2002, Issue #68 part 2, item 12 (subscribe to jacdon@earthlink.net)

A recent Senate hearing on the rights of unions and workers in the U.S. made clear that enormous impediments have been erected by the business community and political structure to discourage labor organizing and the functioning of unions. And the Bush administration is doing its best to make a bad situation worse -- this time insisting on weakening or even destroying union protection for federal workers under the guise of protecting "homeland defense" while conducting a war on terrorism.

The hearing at the end of June by Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-Mass.) Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions heard stirring testimony from labor organizers about the legal maneuvers and violence deployed by business to prevent workers from joining unions. The predicament of American workers and unions was such that Human Rights Watch considers the situation a violation of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights. In a report to the committee, the group charged that "the right to freedom of association is seriously under threat in the United States."

Representatives of the AFL-CIO told the committee that laws unfavorable to labor organizing were a principal reason that union membership has declined from over 30% of the labor force 50 years ago to 13% today. Without counting federal, state and municipal workers -- the big growth sector in recent years -- that figure goes down to 9%. At the same time, according to the latest statistics from the National Labor Relations Board, the number of annual disciplinary actions ordered taken against employers has increased 1,600% compared to the 1950s -- and this only represents the number of employers actually found guilty of violations by the understaffed agency.

The committee hearings were virtually blacked out by the anti-union corporate media.

In recent years, the AFL-CIO played a major role in electing Bill Clinton to two terms in office -- and got hardly anything in return for its efforts except NAFTA and so-called "free trade" arrangements that the union movement opposed. But the present occupant of the White House is something else again. To suggest that the trade unions and the working class have been ambushed, bushwhacked, or sent to the bush leagues is more than a play on words: it's a fairly accurate characterization of the Bush administration's attitude toward labor in its first year-and-a-half in office.

In his latest anti-union foray, President Bush has been demanding that the 170,000 government workers being shifted to the huge, new Homeland Security Department be deprived of many of the employment rights they enjoyed in their present federal jobs. Indeed, on July 25 the White House threatened to veto the Homeland Security legislation being debated in the Senate if the bill that eventually emerges does not include the Republican-controlled House's gutting of traditional civil service and union protections. The president is obviously once again using the Sept. 11 tragedy to advance an entirely different right-wing agenda -- this time to vastly weaken government-sector unions, based on increasing "efficiency" in the new cabinet department.

Bush claims that so-called homeland defense will be jeopardized if his top bureaucrats in the new department are inhibited from hiring and firing at will and relocating workers at whim, among other erosions of union protections. In late July he demanded that the Senate agree to "exempt parts of government from federal labor-management relations statutes when it serves our national interest."

Virtually all the unions involved with the federal workforce, from the Teamsters to the National Treasury Employees Union, are balking at the White House plan. A leader of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents nearly 18% of the workers employed within the new department, was quoted recently as saying that "I think they are trying to restructure the federal work force in such a way that they never have to deal with a union."

Here are some of President Bush's other anti-worker credits, thanks to information from an article in the June issue of The Progressive magazine by labor lawyer Nathan Newman:

As soon as he took office, Bush issued four executive orders to undermine labor organizing: He (1) terminated Project Labor Agreements after six decades (they encouraged union contracts in federally-funded construction projects); (2) revoked a rule requiring federal contractors to rehire displaced workers when the government switched contractors; (3) abolished worker participation in federal jobs that gave them a voice on the job that led to cost-savings; and (4) required government contractors to post notices announcing that workers could object to union dues, without any pro-labor notices. (The courts subsequently struck down 1 and 4.)

In following months, Bush (1) repealed regulations to prevent injuries from repetitive motion jobs and provide compensation for job-related injuries; (2) repealed "responsible contractor" rules to punish chronic corporate violators of environmental, labor and safety laws; (3) persuaded the court to suspend recent black lung regulations to streamline claims on industry by dying miners.

President Bush's ability to rid himself of existing labor protections was cut short when the Senate unexpectedly fell into Democratic hands after several months. He is expected to resume the onslaught if the Senate reverts to the Republicans in November. Needless to say, the White House has not offered any pro-labor legislation.

In addition, the Bush administration has filled the federal bureaucracy with anti-union conservatives, from Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao to OSHA head John Henshaw. Bypassing the Senate, Bush used recess appointments to name anti-worker lawyer Eugene Scalia (the son of the Supreme Court's most reactionary justice) as the Labor Department's top attorney, and two right-wingers -- Michael Bartlett and William Cowen -- to the five-member NLRB. The Bush administration has also used war on terrorism "national security" excuses to eliminate collective bargaining agreements in several Justice Department agencies.

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