One day before President George W. Bush told the League of United Latin American Citizens “America is the nation of the open door, and it must remain that way,” the Bush administration and Senate Republican leaders on July 16, 2004, squelched an amendment that would have paved the way for 500,000 undocumented farm workers to move toward citizenship by working in the fields. The amendment, offered by Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), contains the same language as the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security (AgJobs) Act of 2003, which has 62 co-sponsors, including 26 Republicans. President Bush has stated his opposition to every congressional effort to place undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship. The Bush administration also has failed to support the bipartisan Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act of 2003, which would eliminate the federal provision that discourages states from providing in-state tuition regardless of immigration status and permit some immigrant students who have been raised in the United States to apply for legal status. The administration also has not supported the Safe, Orderly Legal Visas and Enforcement (SOLVE) Act of 2004, which would establish clear steps to reunite immigrant families.

Los Angeles Times

New legislation moves toward SOLVE-ing immigration crisis

The Republican majority on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on July 13 ruled graduate assistants are students, not employees, and therefore not entitled to the protections of federal labor law. The Bush NLRB—the federal agency that oversees union elections and determines how labor laws are applied—sided with administrators at Brown University in Providence, R.I., who fought efforts by graduate employees to form a union with the UAW. The ruling overturns a 2000 decision giving graduate employees at New York University the right to a union voice on the job. The NLRB has asked the agency’s regional directors to examine six pending cases involving graduate employees in light of the decision. 

The Associated Press

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

Statements from UAW and AFT

NLRB’s decision denying graduate employees at private universities their rights as workers

A new investigation confirmed a former top Bush administration official threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he revealed to Congress that the administration’s cost estimates for the Medicare prescription drug law were more than $100 billion higher than the figure provided to lawmakers. In a report released July 6, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) said Thomas Scully, President George W. Bush’s former top Medicare administrator who now lobbies for drug companies, threatened to fire actuary Richard Foster. The report confirms news accounts from March detailing the Bush administration’s successful efforts to hide the true costs of Bush’s Medicare prescription drug bill from members of Congress as they prepared to vote on it. More than a dozen Republican lawmakers said they would not vote for the bill if it cost more than $400 billion over 10 years. The Bush administration touted a cost estimate of $395 billion from the Congressional Budget Office—though Foster pegged the cost at more than $500 billion. Scully refused to disclose that figure to members of Congress though repeatedly pressed by congressional staff, according to the new report. Congress narrowly passed the Medicare bill in November 2003. It was not until January 2004 that the Bush administration acknowledged the bill would cost at least $534 billion.

Though the new report did not accuse Scully of breaking any laws, the OIG said Scully might be subject to disciplinary action if he still worked for the government. He does not. After the Medicare drug law passed, Scully got a new job as a lobbyist for several pharmaceutical companies and other health care interests.

Statement from Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.

The Bush administration supports legislation that could force college graduates to pay nearly $5,500 more in interest on their student loans. Currently, the federal government helps students pay for college by allowing them to consolidate their loans with a low fixed interest rate, enabling them to save thousands of dollars over the life of the loan. A bill by Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) would eliminate graduates’ ability to consolidate their loans with a low fixed interest rate and instead allow the interest rate to be variable. The move would benefit banks and lenders. The Congressional Research Service found the change could cost $5,484 in interest over the life of a 15-year, $17,000 loan. “Instead of yet another raid on the pocketbooks of students and their families, Congress should be investing federal resources to make college affordable,” says Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

More information from Rep. George Miller

The Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on June 7, 2004, announced it will review the legality of rules regarding majority verification and neutrality procedures to form unions. Often called “card-check recognition,” the process enables workers to more fairly and rapidly indicate whether they want a union and is an alternative to the lengthy NLRB election process, which allows employers to block workers’ free choice. The three-member board majority, Republicans appointed by President George W. Bush, agreed to hear arguments by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a national anti-union group, saying it was time to take a new look at recognition agreements. The board’s two dissenting members, both Democrats, wrote that reviewing card-check procedures serves no purpose except to undermine well-settled policy in favor of voluntary recognition agreements.

Detroit Free Press news article
Reuters article

The Associated Press article

News article from American Rights at Work

The Bush administration has proposed eliminating the National Farmworker Jobs Program (NFJP), which Congress passed last year with strong bipartisan support. The NFJP, which the U.S. Department of Labor recognized earlier this year as one of its top training program, assists farm workers who are American citizens or are immigrants in this country on an agricultural work visa. NFJP provides job training and other assistance to improve the working and living conditions of the predominately Latino farm laborers, nearly all of whom live well below the federal poverty line. Cutting the program would result in lost job opportunities and an uncertain future for nearly 25,000 families and create a less healthy and less reliable workforce for farmers and agribusinesses, according to the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs (AFOP), an advocacy group for agricultural workers.

AFOP fact sheet: From Hero to "Zeroed"—The Case Against Dismantling the National Farmworker Jobs Program

President George W. Bush’s budget office has put federal agencies on notice that $2.3 billion is likely to be cut from Bush’s domestic budget if he is re-elected, according to a May 27 report in The Washington Post. The Office of Management and Budget directive would entail spending cuts for virtually all agencies in charge of domestic programs, including many Bush has promoted while campaigning, such as education; homeland security; a nutrition program for women, infants and children; Head Start; veterans programs; job-training; medical research; and science programs. “The Bush administration, unfortunately, is more committed to unwise, unaffordable tax cuts than providing adequate funding for education, healthcare, job training and other critically important programs that make our nation and its citizens stronger,” AFT Secretary-Treasurer Edward J. McElroy said.

The Washington Post

President George W. Bush refused to meet with top union leaders of the world’s major industrial nations, known as the G-8, when they meet in Washington, D.C., June 2–3. Bush is the first U.S. president and first head of state of any nation to refuse such a meeting since the summits began in 1977. The labor leaders are meeting to finalize the trade union statement for G-8 leaders meeting in Sea Island, Ga., June 8–10. Previous U.S. presidents who hosted the summit—Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and Bill Clinton—met with the labor leaders. The G-8 includes the elected leaders of Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States and representatives from the European Union.

Official Sea Island Summit

Although Congress in 2002 enacted a major port security law in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has failed to adequately fund the program. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates the nation needs $1.1 billion a year to safeguard U.S. ports, but President George W. Bush’s fiscal year 2005 budget proposes only $46 million. In 2002, Bush vetoed $39 million for ship container security. Some 30 percent of port security grants have gone to big oil and chemical companies while ports and their workers are left without the security protections they need, according to Rep. Martin Sabo (D-Minn.). An April 28 explosion inside a shipping container at the Port of Los Angeles should serve as a “wake-up call” for the administration and the port industry to address port security threats, said Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department. The explosion occurred inside a container that was brought into the port without any support documents and was never inspected, Wytkind said.

TTD statement

During the 2000 presidential campaign, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush touted his support for his state’s Patients’ Bill of Rights law—which includes patients’ rights under some circumstances to sue managed-care companies for wrongfully refusing to cover needed medical treatment. “If I’m the president…people will be able to take their HMO insurance company to court,” Bush said during a presidential debate. “That’s what I’ve done in Texas and that’s the kind of leadership style I’ll bring to Washington.” (In fact, according to The Washington Post, Bush initially vetoed the Texas law then allowed it to become law without his signature.) As president, Bush is fighting the Texas law and similar laws in nine other states. On March 23, Bush’s Justice Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block patients’ legal challenges under the Texas law. In two related cases, the insurance industry argued that states have no power to adopt laws giving patients who are denied needed care the right to sue insurance companies and HMOs. On June 21, 2004, industry attorneys and Bush’s solicitor general succeeded in their arguments that the Supreme Court strike down the state laws. 

The Washington Post (registration required)

The Social Security and Medicare trustees—dominated by Bush administration officials—released their annual reports March 23. By calculating Social Security and Medicare costs into infinity, the trustees’ reports provided results that are “highly misleading,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The reports predict that over an “infinite horizon,” Social Security and Medicare face a multitrillion dollar shortfall. Yet, experts say predictions into infinity are especially uncertain. With such projections, the trustees are able to show large shortfalls that likely will mislead the public into believing the vital retirement programs are on the brink of disaster and need to be radically restructured. In fact, the Social Security trustees’ report shows the program is fully funded through 2042 and will have enough money to cover 73 percent of benefits after that time, even without changes to strengthen the system. 

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

According to The Washington Post and several other news reports, the Bush administration threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he revealed to Congress that the administration’s own cost estimates for the Medicare prescription drug legislation were more than $100 billion higher than the figure provided Congress. Congress narrowly passed the Medicare drug bill in November based on the lower cost estimate, which swayed several wavering lawmakers concerned about the bill’s cost. According to news reports, several Bush administration estimates pegged the cost of the bill at more than $500 billion, but lawmakers were told the cost was $395 billion, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. In June 2003, five months before Congress approved the bill, then-Medicare Director Thomas A. Scully told Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that Foster would be fired if he revealed the administration’s estimates to Congress. (Before his appointment to head Medicare, Scully was a health-industry lobbyist, and after the Medicare drug bill passed Congress, he joined a law firm that represents health insurers and hospitals.) Before the bill passed the House by just five votes in November, more than a dozen Republican members threatened to vote against it if the cost were greater than $400 billion. In January 2004, the Bush administration admitted the drug bill would cost at least $534 billion.

The final bill creates a huge gap in coverage for beneficiaries, will cost many seniors more in premiums and other fees, forbids the government from negotiating lower prices from the pharmaceutical industry, threatens employer-provided coverage for millions of retirees and moves Medicare toward privatization.

The Washington Post

Richard Foster’s e-mail

Every year, businesses in the United States produce about 3.8 billion contaminated shop towels filled with toxic or hazardous chemicals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Manufacturers and printers use these towels to clean machinery and pick up chemical spills. The towels often are soaked in toxic solvents and most are washed in industrial laundries where the hazardous chemicals and wastewater are discharged to public sewers. Now the Bush administration’s EPA has proposed exempting these industrial laundries from federal hazardous and solid waste requirements for “industrial wipes.” If approved, the exemption would allow such companies as Cintas, the largest industrial launderer in North America, to profit from policies that endanger workers and the environment. Production workers and drivers have reported illnesses from exposure to towels soaked in solvents linked to cancer and reproductive disorders, according to UNITE, which, along with the Teamsters, testified against the proposed regulations at a March 9 congressional hearing.

BehindTheLabel.org 

Teamsters

Faced with the relentless decline in good manufacturing jobs, the Bush administration’s Economic Report of the President opens the door to classifying fast food workers as manufacturing workers instead of service workers. In a special section titled “What is manufacturing?” the report asks, “When a fast food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a ‘service’ or is it combining inputs to ‘manufacture’ a product?” The report, presented Feb. 9 and signed by President George W. Bush, notes the current system of defining manufacturing jobs “is not straightforward.” According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Occupational Handbook,” some 2.2 million food preparation and serving workers, plus another 421,000 counter attendants were at work in 2000—just a few million short of the 2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost since the Bush administration took office.

The New York Times

CBSNews.com

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.)

President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Education Rod Paige on Feb. 23 called the National Education Association (NEA) a “terrorist organization.” Paige made his comment during a private meeting with the nation’s governors at the White House. “At a time when our nation faces the very real threat of terrorism, it is both unconscionable and irresponsible for any public figure, let alone a U.S. cabinet member, to undertake this kind of name-calling,” says AFT Secretary-Treasurer Edward McElroy. Members of the NEA—along with other educators and state legislators from the Republican and Democratic parties—have disagreed with the Bush administration’s failure to adequately fund the No Child Left Behind education reform act. The NEA and others laud the new law’s goals of raising standards for all students, testing to see if those standards are being met and providing extra help for students falling behind. But they note Bush is not giving school districts the resources they need to implement the law. In Utah, the majority of the state House recently considered dropping out of the No Child Left Behind effort and forfeiting federal education funding that comes with it. The lawmakers in the Republican-majority chamber voted to stick with the portions of the program that are federally funded, but bar school districts from using state and local funding to implement the act. Lawmakers in several other states are considering similar measures.

The Associated Press

National Education Association

AFL-CIO statement

AFT statement

Statement from People For the American Way

For the second time in recent months, President George W. Bush has bypassed the Senate to appoint an extremist judge to a federal court. On Feb. 20, the president made a recess appointment to avoid a Senate confirmation vote and placed ultraconservative William H. Pryor Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Pryor was unable twice to win Senate confirmation because of his extremist views on civil rights and the rights of workers, women and people with disabilities. As Alabama attorney general, he urged Congress to roll back provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which protects the right to vote for African Americans and other minorities. Pryor also challenged a key provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act and urged the U.S. Supreme Court to limit Congress’ right to establish uniform protections covering states in areas such as employment discrimination and environmental protections. Presidents are allowed to make recess appointments when Congress is not session, but legal observers say it is unusual for a president to use a recess appointment to seat an appellate court judge.

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

Americans with Disabilities Act Watch

The Bush administration’s Department of Health and Human Services altered a report to downplay findings about the differences in health care services the nation’s minorities receive. The original report said disparities in the U.S. health care system are pervasive and contribute to poorer health and higher rates of disease and disabilities among people of color, according to The New York Times. African Americans and Native Americans die younger than those in other racial or ethnic groups and, along with Hispanic Americans, are twice as likely to suffer from diabetes and serious complications. Instead, the final report begins, “The overall health of Americans has improved dramatically over the last century.” The altered report dropped several statements noting health care disparities, including “black children have much higher hospitalization rates for asthma than white children.” After congressional leaders and health care professionals criticized the report, and after the changes became public, the Bush administration said it would release the full, undoctored report. The revelation of the report’s change came just days after 60 prominent scientists, including 20 Nobel Prize winners, charged the Bush administration with misusing science to bolster its policies on the environment, health care and arms control.

President Bush and administration officials acknowledged previous job growth claims are unrealistic as they backed off claims in the annual Economic Report of the President—signed by the president and delivered to Congress—that the U.S. economy will create 2.6 million new jobs in 2004. After the Feb. 9 report was criticized heavily, Bush, Treasury Secretary John Snow, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and other White House officials backpedaled from the prediction that would mean some 217,000 new jobs will be created each month. In 2003, Bush said his economic policies would create some 1.8 million jobs. That prediction fell 1.6 million short. Since Bush took office, 2.9 million private-sector jobs have disappeared, including 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. Bush administration officials claimed the report was prepared by a group of White House economists and said Bush is not “a statistician” capable of checking the figures for accuracy. Bush has long noted he is the first president to hold an M.B.A. from Harvard University and has experience running businesses. Bush’s abandonment of his promise of 2.6 million new jobs came just days after White House economist N. Gregory Mankiw said, “Outsourcing American jobs overseas is good for the U.S. economy in the long run.” The Economic Report of the President makes the same argument.

The Boston Globe

The Bush administration is backing moves to outsource more U.S. jobs, according to its Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) annual report to Congress. “Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade,” said N. Gregory Mankiw, Bush’s CEA chairman. “More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that’s a good thing.” The report also predicts the economy will generate 3.9 million new jobs this year­­—a claim that would mean an average 325,000 new jobs each month. In spring 2003, the council said the president’s “Jobs and Growth” millionaire tax cut plan would create 306,000 jobs monthly starting in July. Yet by February 2004, the Bush administration was 1.8 million jobs short of that prediction. So far, the economy has lost 2.9 million private-sector jobs and 2.8 million manufacturing jobs since Bush took office. Meanwhile, the number of long-term jobless workers has been roughly 2 million for months, and for much of that time, long-term unemployment has been at its highest rate since 1983.

Council of Economic Advisers

The Bush administration, in November 2003, failed to alert postal employees they may have handled a package of the deadly poison ricin. News reports revealed in February a letter was mailed to the White House from a Chattanooga, Tenn., post office. The letter was intercepted at an offsite White House mail sorting facility in the Washington, D.C., area and contained a powdery substance that tests indicated was ricin. The November incident came to light in February after it was discovered ricin had been sent to the office of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Several Senate office buildings were then closed as a precaution while tests were conducted. According to The Washington Post, the Secret Service did not notify the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service or other federal agencies about the November ricin discovery until six days after the letter was intercepted. In 2001, after a series of anthrax mailings led to the deaths of five people, including two Postal Workers members, unions and other groups said the Bush administration was not forthcoming or timely with information about the attacks, the health risks and the cleanup of postal facilities.

The White House’s fiscal year (FY) 2005 budget proposal shortchanges America’s workers while showcasing the Bush administration’s top priority—cutting taxes for the nation’s super rich. Ignoring the plight of the nation’s millions of jobless workers, the Bush budget would create 5.6 million fewer jobs than the leading congressional proposal. The Bush budget proposes to cut worker safety training programs by $7 million compared with actual levels approved by Congress for FY 2004. It rejects the best vehicle for quick and significant job creation—investment in infrastructure—and requests only two-thirds of the transportation funding needed to upgrade roads, bridges and mass transit. The budget continues to underfund the No Child Left Behind Act so significantly that hundreds of thousands of children remain left behind—in classes that are too large, with teachers who can’t acquire training needed to upgrade their skills and with too few opportunities to participate in pre-kindergarten programs.

See an overview of the AFL-CIO budget analysis and get details of the budget’s impact on:

• Employee Benefits Security Administration;
• Individual savings account proposals;
• Programs to audit, investigate and prosecute unions;
• Social Security Administration;
• Worker health and safety;
• Wage and hour and equal employment opportunity enforcement funding;
• Individual health care tax credits; 
• International Labor Affairs Bureau;
• Health Savings Accounts; and
• Job training and jobless workers.  

The Bush administration’s $12.6 million nationwide television, radio, print and Internet advertising campaign—paid for with taxpayer dollars—promotes the new Medicare prescription drug law by making misleading claims, according to the nonprofit Center for American Progress. In addition, a media firm that creates political ads for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign was awarded part of the taxpayer-funded contract. The ads do not mention the law prohibits Medicare from negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry for lower drug prices, does nothing to control prescription drug price inflation, gives insurers the authority to ration access to drugs funded by Medicare and drops coverage for seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses between $2,250 and $5,100.

ABC News

Alliance for Retired Americans

Center for American Progress

The Bush administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has refused to strengthen the rules to prevent chemical explosions. Specifically, OSHA has failed to expand the Process Safety Management Standard to cover reactive chemicals. On Feb. 2, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB)—with three of its four members Bush administration appointees—voted to declare OSHA’s response “Unacceptable” and urged OSHA to reconsider. During the past 20 years, reactive chemicals have caused explosions and other serious workplace accidents, claiming 167 lives and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage, according to the CSB. The CSB, an independent federal agency that investigates chemical accidents, says reactive hazards exist when a single chemical or a mixture of chemicals has the potential to undergo a violent, uncontrolled reaction when improperly processed or combined. Such chemical reactions can release large quantities of heat, energy and gases, causing fires, explosions or toxic emissions. In 2002, CSB found reactive chemicals posed a “significant safety problem” and recommended OSHA broaden the rules governing chemical safety. Several unions joined in the call for a tougher standard. Instead, OSHA halted work on a new safety standard and announced in 2003 it would rely on voluntary cooperation from the chemical industry to address the problem.

U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board

AFL-CIO statement

Bush's fiscal year (FY) budgets won massive tax cuts for the very wealthy and corporations but rejected the best vehicle for quick and significant job creation—investment in infrastructure—and requests only two-thirds of the transportation funding needed to upgrade roads, bridges and mass transit. Bush also has failed to provide meaningful assistance to states, which are struggling with the worst fiscal crises since World War II. The states' fiscal crises are compounded by enormous unfunded federal mandates, which in FY 2004 cost the states $29 billion. As a result of the states' crises, 21 states were forced to lay off public employees between FY 2003 and FY 2004 to close or cut their state budget gaps.

President Bush in January 2004 proposed a new temporary worker program that would match immigrant workers with a U.S. employer if no U.S. worker was available or willing to take a job. The program also would grant temporary worker status to currently working undocumented aliens but would require temporary workers to return to their home country after their work was finished. Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, described Bush’s plan as a "21st Century bracero program," a modern day equivalent of the 1940s bracero program that tore families apart and took away the earnings of laborers. "The president’s program would create a generation of second-class citizens who are baited to work for America with the false promise of ever being able to enjoy the benefits of citizenship."

Explosive health care costs are pummeling working families. Millions are forced to forego necessary care because they cannot afford the cost. Between 2000 and 2003, the average cost of workers' premium contributions for family coverage rose nearly 50 percent. And American companies that are trying to do the right thing by their workers carry an enormous competitive burden. Since Bush took office, at least 4.9 million more people, including 126,000 more children, have become uninsured. The increase between 2001 and 2002 was the largest in 10 years. Nearly 75 million non-elderly Americans were uninsured for all or part of the two year period 2001-2002. Yet President Bush has put forward no plan and taken no effective steps to remedy this crisis. His prescription drug plan helped pharmaceutical companies more than patients and the Bush budget included a $46 billion taxpayer giveaway to the HMOs. Yet according to Families USA, his budget would reduce net funding for Medicaid by nearly $1 billion in fiscal year 2005 and by almost $16 billion between 2005 and 2014.

The Bush administration recently proposed shielding private contractors that operate federal nuclear weapons plants and nuclear research facilities from government safety standards by allowing those private contractors to write their own safety rules. There are some two dozen U.S. Department of Energy contractor facilities exempt from workplace health and safety standards established and enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and instead subject to Energy Department oversight. During the Clinton administration, the Energy Department issued guidelines calling for contractors to establish health and safety programs that followed OSHA standards. In 2002, Congress passed bipartisan legislation requiring the Energy Department to develop enforceable nuclear facilities health and safety regulations offering the same safety standards as under OSHA. But the Bush administration’s Energy Department proposed rule calls for the contractors to develop their own safety and health standards and allows those contractors to decide on a case-by-case basis which rules should be followed. “The decision making will largely be in the hands of contractors to decide what protections are appropriate. It’s the fox guarding the hen house,” says Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio). Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), who helped write the 2002 legislation, says the Bush administration plan “will likely decrease worker protection.” 

MSNBC

The Bush administration’s Department of Labor launched a new publication, The Labor Advocate, intended to portray the department as an advocate and defender of workers and unions. Rather than act as labor advocate, the Bush administration in the past three years has gutted the collective bargaining rights of tens of thousands of federal workers, overturned and weakened workplace safety rules, sought to eliminate Fair Labor Standards Act overtime pay protections for up to 8 million workers, attacked prevailing wage laws by banning project labor agreements, opposed raising the federal minimum wage and supported efforts to silence workers’ political voice. The current issue of The Labor Advocate helps fill its five pages with six photographs of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

The Labor Department’s The Labor Advocate

The Bush administration’s 2003 report on mining fatalities reports that deaths in the nation’s mines fell by 18 percent, but the report downplays the fact coal mining deaths actually increased by 7 percent. The drop in mine fatalities occurred in metal and nonmetal mines, not in coal mines where the death rate increased, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Coal miners were more likely to die on the job in 2003 than in 2002, MSHA’s figures reveal. In 2003, 29 coal miners were killed on the job, 27 died in 2002.

In January 2004, President Bush maneuvered Congress to pass a voucher program for the District of Columbia schools. The legislation provides $14 million in public funds for 1,700 students to attend private schools—and $13 million for the 65,000 students in the city’s public schools. AFT leaders say the plan is intended to be a first step toward a national voucher program, which would siphon off funds for the public schools children of working families attend.

President Bush used a Jan. 16 recess appointment to place Charles Pickering on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The use of a recess appointment allowed Bush to evade a Senate confirmation vote on the controversial Pickering, who previously had failed to win Senate confirmation. He was opposed by a broad coalition that included unions and civil rights and women’s organizations because of his controversial and negative record on civil rights and other issues. Pickering has been severely criticized when, as a Mississippi judge, he intervened with the prosecution to get a reduced sentence for a convicted cross-burner. Pickering has criticized the “one-person, one-vote” principle and important provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Pickering has ruled against the vast majority of people bringing job bias suits in his court. The recess appointment allows him to serve until the current Congress adjourns later this year. Pickering’s nomination to the court was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002. He also was unable to overcome a Senate filibuster after Bush renominated him in 2003.

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

National Women’s Law Center

AFL-CIO statement

The Bush administration’s Department of Education is helping to fund private groups that push for private school vouchers—all with federal taxpayer dollars. In its recent report Funding a Movement, People For the American Way (PFAW) found the Education Department gave grants totaling $75 million over the past three years to groups promoting such policies as voucher programs that weaken public schools—even though education leaders say Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” school reform law is chronically underfunded. “The mission of the Department of Education is to advance and promote public education,” says Ralph Neas President of PFAW, a civil liberties advocacy group. “Why is the department handing out $75 million to groups whose work undermines public education?” 
 

People For the American Way news release on Funding a Movement

Funding a Movement, full text

The Bush administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) decided not to go forward with protections against workplace exposure to tuberculosis Dec. 31. The move to establish a TB rule began in 1993, and OSHA proposed a TB rule in 1997 under the Clinton administration. The proposed exposure standard would have protected workers from tuberculosis by requiring airborne disease control measures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization recommend many of the same precautions to protect against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that were included in the proposed tuberculosis rule.

SEIU

The Medicare prescription drug bill President George W. Bush signed Dec. 8, now revealed to cost $139 billion more than estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in December, is a serious setback for many of the nation’s seniors. The new legislation could cost nearly 3 million retirees their employer-sponsored prescription drug benefits, according to estimates by the CBO. It prohibits Medicare from negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry for lower drug prices, as do other governmental agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, and does nothing to control prescription drug price inflation. The bill gives insurers the authority to ration access to drugs funded by Medicare and drops coverage for seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses between $2,250 and $5,100. Ultimately, the Medicare prescription drug bill Bush signed forces 32.5 million current Medicare beneficiaries to pay higher Medicare premiums and other Medicare costs.

Alliance for Retired Americans

Center for American Progress

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Senate approves the “first step toward dismantling Medicare.”

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

After promising to impose tariffs for three years to protect the nation's steel industry from cheap, subsidized imports, President Bush on Dec. 4 rescinded the tariffs after only 20 months. The Bush White House claimed the tariffs had achieved their purpose, even though five major steel companies have declared bankruptcy since the tariffs began. The European Union and Japan had threatened to retaliate if the tariffs were not lifted. The Steelworkers condemned the decision as "clear evidence of capitulating to European blackmail and a sorry betrayal of American Steelworkers and steel communities." All together, 42 steel companies have gone bankrupt since 1998, putting more than 50,000 steelworkers out of jobs. In the same period, 17 of the companies have liquidated, wiping out the health care benefits of more than 208,000 retirees.

Steelworkers' statement

Letter from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

After eliminating 6,000 airport security screener jobs earlier this year, the Bush administration’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) canceled all holiday leave for the remaining 48,000 screeners and will force many employees to work overtime during the Thanksgiving holidays. AFGE President John Gage says TSA’s mismanagement and “contractor waste and abuse” caused cost overruns and job cuts. As a result, says Gage, passengers must deal with “staffing shortages on a daily basis at many airports across the country, not just at peek holiday travel days.” Earlier this year, the Bush administration took away the collective bargaining rights of airport screeners.

AFL-CIO web news story

The Bush administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has refused to order blood tests for hundreds of its active and retired inspectors who may have been exposed to the toxic metal beryllium, one of the agency’s own regional administrators says in a complaint filed Oct. 9 with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Metal beryllium is believed to cause a fatal lung disease. The administrator, Dr. Adam Finkel, said as many as 500 OSHA workers may have been exposed to the metal during inspections of plants where it is used. Metal beryllium is used in many industrial and consumer products, including nuclear weapons and electronics. The nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed the complaint on behalf of Finkel.  

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility

Adam Finkel’s statement

Among the three members the Bush administration is nominating to serve on the Amtrak board of directors are an advocate of railroad privatization and a longtime fund-raiser for the Republican party, The Washington Post reported Sept. 12. Current Bush-backed efforts to privatize the nation’s railway system threaten the jobs of some 20,000 Amtrak workers. Louis S. Thompson, who retired this year from the World Bank, led the World Bank’s effort to privatize railroads in several countries. Floyd Hall is a longtime Republican party fund-raiser and former chairman of Kmart. The other nominee is former American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall.

AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department

Economic Policy Institute  

In the days immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center, the Bush White House pressured the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tone down reports about potential health hazards resulting from the buildings’ collapse, according to a report by the EPA’s inspector general. Thousands of emergency workers and construction workers toiled months at the site and residents and workers returned to their homes and jobs believing it was safe to do so. The report, issued Aug. 18, notes all EPA statements about the disaster and clean-up were required to be approved by the National Security Council via the White Houser Council on Environmental Quality. The report says EPA was pressured by the White House to omit cautions about hazards from air pollutants such as lead, cadmium, asbestos and smoke from fires, some of which burned for four months. A Sept. 18, 2001, EPA announcement reported the air around the World Trade Center was safe to breath, but the inspector general’s report says EPA “did not have sufficient data and analysis to make such a blanket statement.”

OMB Watch

WNYC Radio

New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health

President George W. Bush on Aug. 27 announced his intention to limit next year's pay raises for federal workers to 2 percent, citing executive authority that allows the president to limit increases in times of “national emergency or serious economic conditions.” Since Bush took office, 3.2 million private-sector jobs have disappeared, unemployment hit its highest level in 10 years in June and the Bush administration has run up the highest federal deficit in history. Bush cut an automatic 2.7 percent raise for federal workers to a maximum of 2 percent—or as little as 1.5 percent—depending on locality. Two years ago, Bush restored cash bonus payments for 2,100 political appointees, eight years after the bonuses were eliminated because of abuse.

AFGE

The Bush administration has charged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) more than $252,000 for HHS events attended by President George W. Bush that coincided with Bush’s attendance at same-day rallies and campaign fund-raisers and for Republican candidates across the country, according to a report from the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). Some $235,000 was charged to the Office of Administration for Children and Families, which runs the federal welfare program, Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). The other HHS offices charged were the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of Public Health and Science. The GAO report shows Bush attended 15 HHS events, with each covered by a memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the White House and HHS regarding the amount Bush could charge to the department. As of May 2003, the Bush administration had collected $252,372 from HHS for eight of the events. According to the report, there is often a lag time between an event and the White House billing and the remaining seven events could cost HHS another $217,000. The events occurred between February 2002 and January 2003. In comparison, the GAO report found that former President Bill Clinton attended 37 HHS events between April 21, 1997, and Sept. 29, 2000, and HHS was charged just $101,000. 

General Accounting Office

The Bush administration’s Department of Education approved changes in the formula families use to determine if their college-bound students are eligible for financial assistance under the Federal Pell Grant Program. The changes, announced May 30, will rob 84,000 of aid and reduce financial help to hundreds of thousands of other students beginning in the 2004–2005 academic year, according to a memo from the Congressional Research Service. Education experts predict the impact of the changes will ripple into many state and university administered aid programs that base their eligibility formulas on the federal model, denying educational opportunity to even more students. 

AFT

The New York Times

Administration political appointees received $1.44 million in bonuses last year—even as the Bush administration sought to limit pay raises for federal workers, pushed for privatization of federal jobs and took away the bargaining rights of tens of thousands of federal employees. An Office of Personnel Management report lists 470 political appointees who got the bonuses—reviving a practice the Clinton administration halted eight years ago. At the same time, Bush originally proposed a 2.6 percent raise for federal employees for 2003—which Congress rejected and increased to 4.1 percent.

The Washington Post article on bonuses for political appointees.

Read Rep. Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) statement on bonuses for political appointees.

President George W. Bush on July 9 threatened to veto the fiscal year 2004 Labor and Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill (H.R. 2660) if it includes an amendment that would halt Bush’s plan to change federal overtime rules. The Bush administration is pushing for changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act that could eliminate overtime pay for as many as 8 million workers, according to an Economic Policy Institute study. The proposed House amendment would prohibit the U.S. Department of Labor from using funds to implement regulations cutting overtime pay. It also would enable the Labor Department to implement a regulation allowing additional workers to qualify for overtime. The amendment to the appropriations bill, offered by Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and David Obey (D-Wis.), is similar to a stand-alone bill introduced July 9 by Miller and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.).  

GovExec.Com

Rep. George Miller’s “Dear Colleague” letter

The Bush administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) June 30 revoked a 2001 requirement that employers track workplace ergonomic injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome. The record-keeping rule, issued in 2001, required employers to check a box on standard workplace injury and illness logs if an injury was a musculoskeletal injury. The rule was designed to help employers, workers and OSHA identify and keep track of ergonomic injuries. Studies show nearly 2 million workers a year suffer from crippling musculoskeletal injuries. In 2001, Bush signed the repeal of the first nationwide ergonomics standard that would have required employers to control ergonomic hazards and given OSHA the power to enforce the standard. Bush claimed voluntary guidelines would better reduce ergonomic injuries.

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

The Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is helping Big Business fight a California law that mandates accountability for the way state dollars are spent and requires state neutrality in worker organizing campaigns by banning the expenditure of state monies—pro-union or anti-union—in such campaigns. In 2000, the California legislature passed and Gov. Gray Davis (D) signed AB 1889, which prohibits employers from using taxpayer dollars to pay for employer-run campaigns to influence workers in their efforts to form or join a union. The law ensures the billions of dollars that flow to private employers each year through California grants and subsidies are used only for the purposes intended: public services and programs. In a 3-2 vote, the five-member NLRB voted May 29 to intervene in a federal court case brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, taking a position that protects employers who want to use taxpayer money to subsidize their anti-union campaigns and which denies states the right to control their own spending authority. The NLRB’s purported justification for its action is that federal labor law pre-empts the California statute. This position by the NLRB is directly contrary to that taken by the U.S. Department of Justice in two recent cases, which argued that federal labor law does not pre-empt Bush administration restrictions on the use of federal funds. The AFL-CIO and the California Labor Federation filed briefs in support of the California statute last April.

AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney’s statement

The Bush administration, when it sent its proposed budget to Congress in February, omitted a U.S. Treasury Department report that predicted huge deficits far beyond the administration’s projections. The study also said tax increases were needed to close the astonishing $44 trillion deficit the study predicted. Yet, Bush’s budget instead called for a $726 billion tax cut and projected a deficit of just above $200 billion. A May 29 report in the Financial Times revealed the study was commissioned by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who resigned under pressure in December.

BBC News

The Bush administration on May 29 unveiled the details of its plan to ultimately eliminate federal jobs and contract out the work to private companies. The changes are in the rules that govern contracting out—OMB Circular A-76—and give private companies the advantage over federal workers in the private-public competition process, federal workers’ unions say. In November, the Bush administration announced its goal of putting 850,000 federal jobs up for bid, including at least 15 percent, or 127,500 jobs, by October 2003. Administration officials reaffirmed that goal in their latest announcement. Last year, Bush demanded and won legislation allowing it eventually to unilaterally cancel the collective bargaining rights of 170,000 workers as part of the bill creating the Homeland Security Department. In January, the Bush administration took away the right of 60,000 airport screeners in the Transportation Security Administration to join a union.

AFGE statement

The Bush administration halted efforts to establish workplace health rules protecting workers and patients from exposure to tuberculosis. On May 27, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) withdrew a proposed TB rule from its regulatory agenda. In 1997, OSHA published a proposed tuberculosis rule and in 1998 and 1999, held hearings and took comments. After the Bush administration came into office, OSHA reopened the comment period on the rule in 2002, but its newest move halts further action on the rule. The proposed rule would have established procedures to prevent and limit the spread of the infectious airborne disease. Health experts say the TB rule also would help guard against airborne diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). In 1997, OSHA estimated the new rule would help protect an estimated 5.3 million workers in more than 100,000 hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, correctional facilities, homeless shelters and other work settings with a significant risk of TB infections. It did not offer an estimate of how many millions of patients, residents, prisoners and others in those settings also would be protected.

The Washington Post

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

The Bush administration proposed legislation April 29 to end a federal, low-income housing assistance program that helps some 2 million families afford modest housing. The Section 8 housing voucher program provides low-income working families, the disabled, retirees and families on assistance with vouchers. Those vouchers, given to private landlords, effectively limit a family’s housing cost to 30 percent of its income. The Bush administration proposal would rename the voucher program Housing Assistance for Needy Families and convert it into a block grant for states to administer with few federal guidelines and no guarantee the annual funding would cover the costs to provide needed housing. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, 53 percent of voucher holders are families with children, 40 percent are seniors or people with disabilities and only one in five receives welfare benefits.   

Scripps Howard News Service

National Low Income Housing Coalition

The Bush administration has developed legislation that would enable the Defense Department to gut the current personnel system that governs the department workers’ pay, salary increases, hiring, firing, job classifications, performance evaluations, due process and appeal rights, reduction in force rules and many other federal workplace rules. In all, the proposal would allow the department to waive a dozen chapters of Title 5 of the U.S. Code, which covers government organization and federal employment. It would allow the department to create an entirely new personnel system that could eliminate congressional oversight of many personnel policies, strip workers and their unions of current workplace rights and place much more personnel decision making power in the unchecked hands of supervisors.

AFGE analysis  

The Bush administration wants to require working poor families to submit extensive new documentation to prove their eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Supported by President Reagan, the EITC provides a crucial safety net for low-income working families. To be eligible for EITC, a family cannot have an income above $34,692 and the actual amount of the credit varies depending on family size and income. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims the new rules are designed to prevent between $6.5 billion and $10 billion in improper EITC payments, but tax experts say that the documentation requirements are likely to discourage many eligible families from applying for EITC. In addition, studies show improper payments to non-EITC individual filers amount to $132 billion plus another $70 billion to offshore corporate accounts and $46 billion for corporations. But while Bush requested some $100 million and 650 new IRS employees to track EITC filers, other tax investigations have fallen by 37 percent and prosecutions by 50 percent.  
 

The New York Times news article 

The New York Times editorial

The Bush administration proposed new rules March 27 that would deny overtime pay protections for millions of workers. The changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations would affect a wide range of the more than 80 million workers protected by the FLSA. The proposed rules would enable employers to reclassify many workers currently eligible for overtime as managers, administrative or professional employees who are exempt from time-and-a-half overtime. They eliminate overtime protection for large numbers of aerospace, health care, defense, high tech and other workers and also for workers above a certain income level. While the rules raise the income ceiling for some low-income workers to automatically qualify for overtime, many low-income workers would remain uncovered by that automatic protection, and the new rules propose confusing standards on whether low-income supervisors qualify for overtime protection.

Houston Chronicle

The Bush administration backs an anti-family bankruptcy proposal that the U.S. House of Representatives passed 315–113 March 19. The measure includes a loophole that allows wealthy debtors in five states to shelter income in luxury homes and strips working families of the few financial protections they currently have under bankruptcy law and makes it harder for them to make a financial fresh start. It also forces those owed child support from someone who has declared bankruptcy to compete with other creditors for whatever money is available. Ninety percent of individuals who resort to bankruptcy have come to the financial crisis because of job loss, medical emergency, divorce or other catastrophic event, according to the nonpartisan American Bankruptcy Institute.

The New York Times
ABI World

The Bush administration issued new rules Jan. 24 that allow the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Aviation Administration to revoke an aviation worker’s certification without basic due process protections. The new rule was issued and took effect without any public comment period. It allows the government to revoke or deny needed federal certification for pilots, mechanics, flight instructors and other aviation workers if the government—under secretive and arbitrary procedures—concludes a worker is a “security threat.” The rule denies an employee the right to an impartial review of the facts and does not require workers be shown the evidence or be told the specific reasons behind a security-risk finding.

AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department statement

Air Line Pilots news release

The Bush administration delayed new rules governing repair and maintenance work performed on U.S. airlines’ aircraft at overseas repair stations certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The March 14 action, just days before the start of a war with Iraq and amid growing concern about terrorism and security, came at the request of the airline industry and is opposed by aviation unions and aviation safety groups. In 1988, many U.S. airlines began contracting out their routine maintenance and repair work on aircraft that fly domestic and international routes when the Reagan administration watered down repair station safety regulations. Previously, most work was performed by U.S. mechanics at U.S. repair stations. The new rules, which were to be implemented April 6, would have strengthened the repair and maintenance regulations and requirements for overseas repairs stations to receive and maintain their FAA certification.

AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department statement
Teamsters statement

Bush administration officials are drafting legislation to make it harder for Medicare recipients to appeal the denial of benefits such as home health care and nursing home care. Under current law, beneficiaries who say they were unfairly denied coverage for theses services can take their cases to administrative law judges. In the past five years, about 53 percent of those appealing won their cases, according to The New York Times. But Bush administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services want other means to resolve the appeals—avenues that may unfairly tilt the scales against the people with disabilities and the elderly who qualify for Medicare. “The president’s proposals would compromise the independence of administrative law judges, who have protected beneficiaries in case after case, year after year,” Judith Stein, director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, told The New York Times March 16.

The New York Times

Armed with Fast Track trade promotion authority, the Bush administration is moving rapidly to rack up as many so-called free trade agreements as possible. The administration negotiated the first two agreements under Fast Track—deals with Chile and Singapore—in secret and said in February it is not releasing the details to the public until later this year. The deals will go to Congress later this year, and under Fast Track the lawmakers cannot amend the deals and can only approve or reject them as a whole. 

The Labor Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and Trade Policy report
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s statement

In his fiscal year 2004 budget request, President Bush is asking for $75 million for school voucher programs in several cities, including the District of Columbia. District Mayor Anthony Williams met in early February with top Bush administration education officials to express his opposition to vouchers, which siphon public funds away from public schools and toward private schools that are not accountable to parents, students or taxpayers. The proposed vouchers program would further drain funding from public education at the same time that Bush wants to virtually freeze federal funding to school programs suffering because of state and local governments’ budget crises. Bush’s proposed education “funding levels are unacceptably low,” says the Committee for Education Funding (CEF), a coalition of groups supporting public schools.

The Washington Post news story
AFT President Sandra Feldman’s statement on the Bush education budget and vouchers
CEF letter to Bush on the fiscal year 2004 budget

At the same time he is relying on American troops to fight a war in Iraq, President Bush is proposing to cut education funding for children in military families, according to news reports in late February. In his fiscal year 2004 budget request, Bush cuts federal impact aid funding—a federal program established in 1950 to compensate school districts for the property tax income they lose when tax-exempt property (such as military bases) are within their boundaries. Ending the $125 million program would affect 900,000 children, and officials of several school districts have said they would have to cut staff and defer needed building repairs. “I just can’t understand how, at a time when our military men and women are being deployed for a possible war with Iraq, this administration can turn its back on the children of our military personnel,” said John Forkenbrock, executive director of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools.

The Bush administration began considering changes to the federal school lunch program in January that likely would result in fewer children having access to the meals. Officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture say there are children getting free or reduced-price meals whose families don’t really qualify for the program because they make too much money. But advocates for low-income families say the Bush administration is inflating the figures in order to justify cutting the number of children who can get the meals. The Bush administration is considering ways to verify some families’ income levels before allowing them to participate in the program—a tactic that likely would scare parents away from applying and lead to bureaucratic snafus, says the nonpartisan advocacy group Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).

Analysis by FRAC
The Agriculture Department’s webpage on child nutrition programs

President Bush, on Jan. 31, proposed three new types of “savings” and “retirement” accounts that would benefit high-income families but could lead employers to eliminate workers’ current 401(k) plans. The new individual Lifetime Savings Accounts (LSAs) would allow families to set up accounts for each family member and contribute $7,500 a year per person. The contributions would not be tax deductible but funds could be withdrawn tax-free any time. Bush’s new Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) would allow contributions of $15,000 a year, plus an additional $15,000 for a spouse. A family of four taking advantage of both the new accounts would be able to shelter $60,000 a year and never pay taxes on earnings or withdrawals. The third new account, Employer Retirement Savings Accounts (ERSAs), are designed to look like current 401(k)s but reduce the “anti-discrimination” rules on retirement accounts, which are meant to prevent owners or higher-paid employees from taking full advantage of company retirement plans unless lower-paid workers participate in sufficient numbers. Employers and their highly paid colleagues could use Bush’s new accounts to shelter their resources and remove incentives to offer and participate in current 401(k) plans that must be available to all employees.

BusinessWeek

President Bush proposed a prescription drug plan March 4 that requires seniors to leave the doctors they know and trust and join private HMOs to get the full drug benefit. The Bush plan offers more generous drug benefits to people in private plans, giving much less assistance to those who decide to stay in the traditional Medicare program—only a drug discount card and undefined protection against “high out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses”—according to Bush’s speech announcing the plan. But after public outcry and heavy criticism, Bush backed away from mandatory enrollment in HMOs. The current proposal’s limited benefits for those who stay in Medicare was designed, critics say, to give the impression that seniors would have a “choice” to stay in Medicare if they wanted prescription drug coverage. The president’s proposed tax cuts for the wealthy also use up funds needed for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Republican members of the House Budget Committee considered a budget resolution on March 12 that leaves only $28 billion for such a benefit over 10 years or requires deep cuts in Medicare and other health care programs—while setting aside $726 billion for tax cuts for the wealthy.

The New York Times (subscription required)

Statement from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
House Budget Committee/Democratic Caucus

President Bush’s fiscal year 2004 budget released Feb. 3 cuts funding for some poverty programs, relaxes federal rules that states must abide by for some and restricts eligibility for others. The Washington Post reported that some of the affected programs include housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, health insurance, Head Start and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). For example, the Bush budget proposes forcing parents receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families to work more hours (40) than already required (30), yet reduces or freezes funding for programs that would help them successfully join the workforce, including child care, transportation assistance and job training. In February, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its welfare reform bill; like Bush’s plan, it did not include enough child care funding for families entering the workforce. While proposing to eliminate taxes on corporate dividends, the Bush budget seeks to make it harder for families to qualify for the EITC, which provides a tax credit to working poor families, and to make it harder for children of low-income families to qualify for reduced-price or free school meals. It also would relax federal rules on Medicaid and allow states to drop many persons now covered or reduce the amount of aid provided and increase patients’ costs.

The Washington Post

President Bush proposed a fiscal year 2004 budget Feb. 3 loaded with tax breaks for the wealthy, but lacking real relief for working families, the unemployed and states, which are facing their worst economic crisis in a half century. Bush’s budget cuts spending on workplace safety, low-income housing and aid to rural schools. It does nothing to create new jobs, rebuild and modernize schools, improve the nation’s transportation and transit infrastructure, build and refurbish the nation’s drinking and wastewater systems or patch the holes in the nation’s homeland security framework. Bush’s budget offers no meaningful solutions to the nation’s health care crisis, nor does it provide any real help for seniors struggling to pay the soaring cost of prescription drugs. It does, however, create record deficits and provide huge tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers, especially through its elimination of taxes on corporate dividends and proposed creation of several tax-free savings accounts that will shelter income for the wealthy.

Ø  Read an analysis of Bush’s budget proposals, including sections about:

Ø  Tax cuts for the wealthy

Ø  Help for the jobless

Ø  Medicare prescription drugs

Ø  Shortchanged aid to the states

Ø  Worker safety and health

Ø  Education

Ø  Examine the AFL-CIO’s Agenda to Create Jobs and Lift the Economy

On Jan. 30, a Bush administration official terminated the collective bargaining rights of more than 1,300 workers at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). Following the lead of other Bush administration officials, James Clapper Jr., the agency’s director, invoked the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as the reason for curtailing workers’ rights. However, union leaders said the move comes just as NIMA workers—members of AFGE Local 1827 in St. Louis and Local 3407 in Bethesda, Md.—were pursuing concerns about safety, promotions and gender and racial bias in the agency. AFGE President Bobby Harnage Sr. said Clapper’s decision “falls in line with President Bush’s anti-union policy.” Harnage noted that Bush stripped workers in the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Attorney’s offices nationwide of their collective bargaining rights, as well as the union rights of newly federalized airport screeners. “The fight against terrorism, in which federal employees have always been on the frontlines of the homeland, is about preserving our freedoms—including our right to organize—not destroying them,” said Harnage.

• AFGE news release on termination of NIMA workers’ rights

President Bush proposed a plan Jan. 31 that would drastically overhaul the nation’s Medicaid program serving some 44 million poor families, children, persons with disabilities and elderly patients in nursing homes. The changes would give states the right to increase payments from patients, restrict certain medical services and benefits—such as visits to emergency rooms and hospitals—and move more people to managed care. States that choose to participate in the program would be given more federal funds, with few restrictions on how to use the money, than states that choose to operate a traditional Medicaid program. Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), ranking member of the health subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which handles Medicaid, said, “Instead of investing sufficiently to protect current Medicaid beneficiaries, [Bush] is ‘permitting’ states to kick some people off the rolls so others can come on. If that's not shortsighted, then shortsighted has no meaning.”

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• The Washington Post
• Rep. Sherrod Brown
  
  

The Bush administration filed a brief Jan. 17 with the U.S. Supreme Court siding with a suit that challenges affirmative action policies of the University of Michigan that are designed to help shape a diverse student body. Along with grades and test scores, many universities consider an applicant’s race, national origin or gender among many factors in the admissions process, including geography, athletic ability, special talents and whether an applicant is a child of an alumnus. For example, Bush, an admitted “C” student, won admission to Yale University, where both his father and grandfather were graduates.

• Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
• Statement from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
  
  

The Bush administration’s Department of Labor is expected to issue new rules in March that could eliminate overtime pay for many of the 80 million workers currently covered under the overtime pay rule of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which says workers are entitled to time-and-one-half pay for every hour worked above 40 hours in a week. According to news reports, the Bush administration is considering changes to several exemptions to the current rules, which may allow employers to exclude more workers from overtime. Currently, workers who are legitimately classified as executive, professional or administrative employees are exempt.

President Bush, in his State of the Union address Jan. 28, called for a plan to help seniors pay for costly prescription drugs. He offered no details. But that plan, according to a general outline released by the White House Jan. 24, would force Medicare beneficiaries into private health plans such as HMOs if they want to receive help paying for their prescription drugs. Currently, about 5 million of the 40 million Medicare beneficiaries take part in a private insurance experiment pilot called Medicare+Choice. But that program has dropped more than 2.4 million seniors from coverage since 1999 and many of those plans “don't serve rural communities or anywhere else if the profit margin is not high enough. Private plans have not been a good deal for the Medicare program,” said Ron Pollock, executive director for the health advocacy group Families USA.

• USA Today
• National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare
• Families USA
  
  

In a Dec. 24 memo, the Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services ordered Medicare contractors to halt outreach and information activities that educate Medicare patients about their rights under the program. The contractors review and pay Medicare claims for the government and have operated beneficiary education and information programs through newsletters and visits to senior housing sites and centers, health fairs, hospitals and other venues. The outreach efforts included information on new Medicare benefits and how to appeal denied claims, obtain prescription drug discounts, select a nursing home, report Medicare fraud and fight hospital overcharges.

• The New York Times news story

A federal commission is considering letting colleges and universities limit the number of scholarships they award to female athletes. The Secretary?s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, part of the Bush administration?s federal Education Department, is reviewing Title IX, the 30-year-old law that bans sex discrimination in college-level sports. The law is credited widely with increasing young women?s participation in sports. According to an investigation by The Washington Post, the proposal would allow schools to devote as little as 43 percent of their athletic scholarships to women?even though women make up 55 percent of students enrolled at four-year colleges. Currently, schools comply with Title IX if they ensure that the percentage of male and female athletes is about equal to the ratio of genders enrolled.

• The Washington Post investigation
• National Women?s Law Center page on Title IX
• Women?s Sports Foundation background on Title IX

Officials in the Bush administration appointed an anti-gay extremist to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. According to news reports, Jerry Thacker described AIDS as the "gay plague" and referred to "the sin of homosexuality" as a "deathstyle." On Jan. 23, just a few days before he was to be sworn in, Thacker withdrew from the council amid objections from members of Congress and civil rights advocates. Spurning the notion that the buck stops at the Oval Office desk, Bush aides pointed the finger at Tommy Thompson, Department of Health and Human Services secretary, for approving Thacker's appointment. "Thacker was right to step aside and we hope that future administration appointments will reflect a commitment to epidemiology, not fringe ideology," said Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign.

• Statement from the Human Rights Campaign
• The Washington Post news story

President Bush Jan. 7 nominated Mississippi federal Judge Charles Pickering and Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen as candidates for federal appeals court seats. Last year both were rejected by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee because of their troubling records on Americans? rights. Along with Pickering and Owen, Bush nominated to various federal benches another 29 judges with extreme, ultraconservative records hostile to workers, civil rights and environmental and consumer protections.

• AFL-CIO news story
• Profiles of Pickering and Owens by watchdog group Independent Judiciary

In December, the Bush administration put in place an arguably illegal policy that would allow states to limit emergency care for Medicaid patients. The effect would have been to restrict medical treatment for the poor. After a storm of criticism?including threats from U.S. senators of both parties to block the policy?the administration reversed course Jan. 23 and decided not to go through with the change. Thomas Scully, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had said the limits were necessary to help states save money during their unprecedented fiscal crises. But instead of funneling more funds to states for Medicaid and other human needs, the Bush administration is advocating big tax breaks for the wealthy.

• The New York Times news story

The Bush administration denied collective bargaining rights to newly federalized airport security screeners. Adm. James Loy, undersecretary of transportation for security, on Jan. 9 signed an order precluding workers' rights to bargain, saying that such rights were not compatible with the nation's war against terrorism and "collective bargaining conflicts with national security needs." AFGE activists had been helping screeners at LaGuardia Airport in New York City and at Baltimore/Washington Airport form a union. "The statement by Admiral Loy is akin to saying that being a union member gives aid and comfort to the enemy," said Sonny Hall, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department. "It is time for this administration to stop hiding behind the war on terrorism to mask a brazen assault on the basic rights of working men and women in this country," said Hall, who is also president of the Transport Workers. Arguing that Loy does not have the authority under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act to prohibit screeners from organizing, AFGE filed a lawsuit Jan. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge the decision.

• AFGE statement

The Bush administration?s Department of Labor reversed more than 30 years of practice and closed the nomination process for the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) and on Dec. 31, 2002, announced the appointment of three new members. Since the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 established the committee, nominations have been open to the public to ensure a wide range of groups is represented on NACOSH. Five sitting committee members, including representatives from the AFL-CIO and the Steelworkers, were dropped from NACOSH.

As the centerpiece of his economic stimulus plan, Bush proposed the complete elimination of taxes on stock dividends. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, nearly two-thirds of the benefits of exempting corporate dividends from the individual income tax would flow to the wealthiest 5 percent of tax filers because they own the lion's share of stocks. The center also noted that the group with annual incomes of more than $1 million?about 226,000 tax filers in 2003?would receive roughly as much in benefits as the 120 million tax filers with incomes less than $100,000. Most economists agree that ending the tax on stock dividends would do little to stimulate the economy, provide little help for working families and drive up the federal deficit.

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• AFL-CIO Agenda to Create Jobs and Lift the Economy

Bush announced a plan in December to vaccinate health care workers and other first responders, such as firefighters and police officers, against smallpox. But while the plan protects drug companies that produce the vaccine from liability, it fails to protect workers from risks associated with the vaccine. The vaccine is risky for one in six Americans who are pregnant, suffer from eczema or other skin disorders or whose immune systems are suppressed because of such conditions as HIV, cancer or transplant treatments, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other recent studies show that one in three workers who get the vaccine will suffer side effects that will make them too sick to work for several days. The president's plan provides inadequate screening to determine who may be at risk and fails to protect against loss of income for those who become too ill to work or provide workers' compensation for those who become disabled from the vaccine.

• AFL-CIO statement
• SEIU press release
  

On Dec. 23, the Bush administration proposed new financial reporting and disclosure requirements for national and local unions that create a huge tangle of red tape and estimated compliance costs of as much as $1 billion year. These regulations apply to small unions that often rely on part-time and voluntary staffing, as well as large unions. The requirements are far more stringent and sweeping than those on corporations. They are so burdensome "they will weaken unions as a force for workers' rights and economic fairness," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

• AFL-CIO statement
  

The Bush administration nominated 32 persons to serve on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations (ACTPN) in December. But contrary to the law that created the committee in 1974, Bush did not include a single representative from labor, environmental or consumer groups among the nominees for the trade panel announced in December. ACTPN is the primary advisory committee on trade policy to the president. In the past, Republican and Democratic administrations have adhered to the law's requirement concerning appointees. The law explicitly states the membership of the committee shall include representatives of labor, environmental and consumer interests and that the committee membership shall be "broadly representative of the key sectors and groups of the economy, particularly with respect to those sectors and groups which are affected by trade." The Dec. 13 issue of Inside U.S. Trade (a weekly trade newsletter published by Inside Washington Publishers) reports that the nominees include "major Republican campaign donors, free trade theologians and a few people with close ties to [U.S. Trade Representative] Robert Zoellick." The AFL-CIO filed a lawsuit Dec. 20 demanding the Bush administration comply with legal requirements to include a broad group of advisors on the panel. Only thereafter did the administration move to appoint representatives of the labor movement to ACTPN.

• AFL-CIO statement
  

The Bush administration announced Dec. 24 it no long would issue public reports on mass layoffs and plant closings. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly analysis details every layoff of more than 50 workers and the type of industry. The last report to be issued was for November 2002, and it reported 2,150 mass layoffs and about 240,000 workers who lost their jobs, mostly in the manufacturing industries. State officials said the monthly reports were vital in helping them plan and fund their dislocated worker programs and services.

• The Miami Herald
• The Washington Post
  

President Bush appointed a nine-member commission, with no representative from any postal union, to study the United States Postal Service as part of his plan, according to The Washington Post, "to allow private contractors to compete for nearly half of the government?s civilian jobs." The Postal Service employs about 750,000 workers at 38,000 facilities. The commission is "a thinly veiled attempt to dismantle the Postal Service as we know it. The president's action puts into motion the most serious threat in 200 years to modify the underpinnings of the U.S. Postal Service, including universal service, uniform rates and six-day-a-week delivery," said Postal Workers President William Burrus. The lack of a postal union representative on the commission continues a Bush administration pattern of excluding workers' representatives on government panels studying workplace issues.

The Bush administration announced in December its intention to repeal a rule that allows states to use unemployment compensation funds to provide benefits to workers who must leave their jobs temporarily to care for newborn or newly adopted children. The Birth and Adoption Unemployment Compensation rule?also known as the ?Baby UI? rule?that took in effect in 2000 is completely voluntary for states that are exploring new ways to help working families balance work and family requirements. No state has implemented such a program, but in 2001, bills were introduced in 20 state legislatures to establish birth and adoption unemployment benefit programs. A number of states are considering options for providing paid leave to workers, and California adopted the nation?s first such program earlier this year. The Bush action follows the failure of administration and Republican congressional leaders to extend unemployment benefits to close to 800,000 workers who will exhaust their UI benefits three days after Christmas.

• National Partnership for Women & Families statement
• AFL-CIO statement

In March, the Bush administration overturned a ban on cash bonus awards to political appointees in federal government patronage jobs but did not publicly announce the change. News reports brought the action to light in December. Such awards were banned under White House policy in 1994 because of past abuse and favoritism including, according to The Washington Post, ?questionable payments to some outgoing aides in the final days of the administration of President George H.W. Bush, the president?s father.?  About, 2,100 political appointees are eligible for awards of up to $25,000. Total awards could exceed $25 million. The action came to light just days after Bush announced he was withholding a quarter of the pay adjustment career federal employees were to receive in 2003. ?Whether it's tax cuts for the rich or privatizing 850,000 jobs to boost the fortunes of contractors, this administration knows how to enrich the rich and to impoverish working families,? said AFGE President Bobby L. Harnage Sr.

• The Washington Post
• AFGE statement

The Bush administration announced formation of a national advisory committee on ergonomics Dec. 4 to study causes and methods to prevent workplace ergonomic injuries that hurt some 1.8 million workers a year. But for the first time in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration?s 32-year history, a workplace safety advisory committee did not contain an equal number of union and management representatives. Two union safety staff members were appointed, compared with seven management representatives. The Bush administration also has formed several ?alliances? in specific industries, such as meatpacking, airlines, printing and others, to study workplace safety, but none of those alliances include union or worker representatives. In fact, many of the corporations tapped to serve on the ergonomics advisory board and the alliances opposed creation of a federal ergonomics standard to prevent workplace repetitive motion injuries and were instrumental in the law?s repeal when Bush took control of the government.

• Transportation Trades Department statement
• AFL-CIO news story

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, with backing from the Bush administration, in a straight party-line vote rejected a Democratic economic stimulus proposal that would have extended the emergency federal unemployment benefits program for long-term laid-off workers for another six months and added 13 weeks of regular benefits for jobless workers in all states. The Republican plan, backed by the Bush administration, would help the jobless in only three states, would do nothing to help the long-term unemployed workers who already have exhausted their benefits and would deny any benefits to 2.9 million laid-off workers who are expected to run out of emergency and regular benefits in the next six months.

The Bush administration announced plans Nov. 14 to make it easier to eliminate federal jobs and contract the work out to private companies. Proposed changes to the rules that govern contracting out?OMB Circular A-76?will give private companies the advantage over federal workers in the private-public competition process. Of the 850,000 jobs the Bush administration hopes to put up for bid eventually, the White House has set a goal to bid out at least 15 percent, or 127,500, by October 2003, according to news reports. Leaders of the largest federal workers union, AFGE, said they would reserve final judgment on the proposal until they have a chance to examine its detail, but said they view it with skepticism because ?Bush administration officials are at war with reliable and experienced rank-and-file federal employees. They are systematically conspiring to bust their unions, gut their civil service protections and hand over their jobs to politically well-connected contractors.?

When the Bush White House asked Prince Georges County, Md., Fire Fighters Local 1619 President Thomas McEachin to resign his appointment to its Medal of Valor Commission?a group that recognizes firefighters and other public safety officers for service above and beyond the call of duty?because of his IAFF affiliation, he refused. So this October the administration simply removed him. The White House asked McEachin to resign because IAFF leaders criticized the Bush administration?s opposition to the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Firefighters Act?which will provide money for 75,000 additional firefighters nationwide?as well as additional funding for the Firefighter Investment and Response Enhancement (FIRE) Act and money to monitor the health of firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center. ?This was a real eye-opener for me,? said McEachin. ?My removal smacks of retribution and pettiness on the part of the administration.?

In an unprecedented move, the Bush administration invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to intervene in a lockout at the nation?s West Coast ports. President George W. Bush secured a court order Oct. 8 ordering the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) to temporarily end its lockout of 10,500 dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports and ordering work to resume without a contract. The court later continued the injunction as an 80-day cooling off period during which work is to continue. From the beginning of the contract negotiations between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the PMA, Bush has threatened to use federal power to intervene in the talks. Bush?s threats ?tainted the water of negotiations, giving employers no incentive to engage in good-faith bargaining,? AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said. This is the first time Taft-Hartley has been used since 1978 and the first time ever in a lockout.

• AFL-CIO news story
• AFL-CIO Executive Council statement

When the Senate Finance Committee held hearings Oct. 3 on three options President Bush?s Social Security privatization commission endorsed last December, Treasury Secretary Paul O?Neill was absent, having rejected two requests to testify before the committee. Bush created the commission in 2001, handpicking proponents of diverting a portion of payroll taxes away from Social Security and into individual, private accounts. Despite the ongoing stock market collapse and corporate scandals in which workers lost their retirement security, Bush reportedly still supports privatization and hopes for action in the next year, after the elections. ?Secretary O?Neill?s absence deprives the American people of the information they deserve about exactly what privatization action the president plans to pursue,? AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.

• AFL-CIO statement on privatization hearings

President Bush is opposing a request by fire chiefs, unions and lawmakers to use federal money to help fire departments hire more personnel. The Fire Fighters and the International Association of Fire Chiefs are seeking a federal grant to help communities with understaffed departments hire 75,000 new firefighters over the next seven years at a cost of $7.6 billion. Bush has proposed spending $3.5 billion for police officers, firefighters and other first responders in the next fiscal year, with most of the money going for training and equipment. ?All the right equipment in the world and all the training isn?t really of much value if you don?t have adequate numbers of personnel to perform their mission,? said IAFF President Harold Schaitberger.

• The Washington Post

Bush appointee Solicitor General Theodore Olson filed a brief in late September with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the drug companies? suit to outlaw Maine?s prescription drug program. The Maine Rx Program, passed in 2000, allows the state to bargain with drug companies on behalf of its senior citizens to lower their prescription drug costs through bulk purchases. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry?s lobbyist, filed suit to nullify the law, claiming it violated federal Medicare statutes. The Bush administration is pushing a federal prescription drug plan that would privatize prescription drug benefits and force seniors to pay all costs between $3450 and $5300 out of their own pockets. It also allows insurance companies and HMOs to decide whether to offer drug coverage in a given area, what drugs to cover, and how much beneficiaries would have to pay. Congressional Democrats and senior advocacy groups back a plan that provides prescription drug benefits under Medicare, covers the drugs seniors need and controls the costs of premiums and co-pays.

The Bush administration in August excluded 178 imported steel products from high tariffs imposed this year, threatening the goal of saving the nation's steel industry. Many of the exclusions are for products American steelworkers make every day. Since the steel crisis began in 1998, more than 50,000 steelworkers have lost their jobs and 35 companies have declared bankruptcy. The tariffs, adopted last March, gave a ray of hope that there might be an opportunity for the American steel industry to consolidate and assure our country will have a steel industry. ?The administration cannot give with one hand, while taking it away with another. It leads to a steel trade policy of confusion that won't result in fulfilling a national security need for a healthy, globally competitive American steel industry,? said Steelworkers President Leo Gerard.

• Steelworkers statement

President Bush said Aug. 13 he will not release the $5.1 billion Congress approved for supplemental homeland security programs. Those funds include $90 million to monitor the health of workers who cleaned up the rubble at Ground Zero, as well as $150 million for equipment and training grants requested by some of the nation?s 18,000 fire departments and $100 million to improve the communications systems for firefighters, police officers and other emergency personnel.

Bush?s action prompted the Fire Fighters to launch a campaign to lobby Congress to include the money in the spending bills for the federal fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. IAFF President Harold Schaitberger also said he planned to write a letter of protest to Bush. Despite some reports, Schaitberger said the Fire Fighters will not boycott an Oct. 6 ceremony in Washington, D.C., where 343 firefighters who died responding to the Sept. 11 attacks will be honored along with 100 other firefighters who also died in the past year.

Included in the $5.1 billion homeland security spending measure is money to improve the communications systems of firefighters, police officers and other emergency personnel. The Sept. 11 rescue efforts were hindered by communications problems when the various agencies? radios and other devices could not communicate with one another. Other items that Bush?s veto will kill include funds to increase and improve inspections of cargo containers at the nation?s ports, enhance the FBI?s counterterrorism technology and strengthen security around the nation?s food and water supply.

The Bush administration admitted it is considering using federal troops to help West Coast port management keep the ports open if workers are locked out of their jobs or if they strike. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents some 16,000 workers, and the Pacific Maritime Association are in contract talks. But the Bush administration has assembled a task force to explore ways for the federal government to intervene, including changing labor laws to remove the dockworkers from National Labor Relations Act jurisdiction and make them subject to the more restrictive Railway Labor Act. The Bush administration?s threatened intervention has hindered bargaining and taken away the maritime association?s incentive to negotiate, the union said. ?We will never get to productive bargaining until the Bush administration gets out of business,? ILWU President James Spinosa said.

• Associated Press
• AFL-CIO news story
• AFL-CIO Executive Council statement

President Bush nominated Priscilla Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In seven years on the Texas court, Owen has issued a series of decisions and dissents that are hostile to the interests of working men and women, especially in workers' compensation cases and other workers' rights cases. A report by Texans for Public Justice also cites Owen's anti-consumer decisions and dissents along with her opposition to reproductive and women's rights. Many legal observers say Owen's record is outside the mainstream, even by conservative Texas Supreme Court standards, and she is considered a conservative judicial activist who frequently ignores the plain language of the law in her decisions. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on her nomination this fall.

• Texans for Public Justice

President Bush?s proposal for a homeland security department would strip some 170,000 federal workers of their civil service and collective bargaining rights. The administration proposal would combine 150 existing agencies, departments and offices into one mega-department. The House approved the administration?s plan, including stripping workers of their rights, July 26. A Senate version, approved by the Governmental Affairs Committee, would maintain the workers? rights and the Bush administration has threatened to veto that bill. Since taking office, Bush has stripped several hundred Justice Department workersof collective bargaining and threatened the rights of air traffic controllers.

• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
• AFGE report on homeland security

President Bush signed an executive order June 4 that strips the nation?s air traffic control system of its designation as an ?inherently governmental? operation. In effect, that opens the door to privatizing the system. Under the Federal Aviation Administration, about 15,000 controllers at airports and air traffic control centers throughout the nation control flights carrying about a million passengers a day. On Sept. 11, FAA controllers safely landed some 5,000 planes within two hours after all flights were ordered grounded. Private for-profit companies, which operate air traffic control systems in Canada and Australia, are in financial trouble and many aviation experts fear such problems could compromise the safety of the traveling public.

• National Air Traffic Controllers Association
• AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department
• Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association

A White House spokesman refused to say June 12 if federal workers who would be transferred to President Bush?s proposed Homeland Security Department would be allowed to maintain their union representation rights. About half of the 170,000 workers in the existing agencies and offices slated for consolidation into the new department are union members. Bush?s proposal calls for ?significant flexibility? in hiring, firing, setting pay scales and other worker issues that are for the most part now governed by collective bargaining agreements. Workers and union leaders have expressed concern that Bush?s past actions against Justice Department workers and a recent executive order concerning air traffic controllers against unionized federal workers indicate the Bush administration may attempt to strip the workers of their union rights.

The Bush administration?s Labor Department reached a $10 million settlement with Perdue Farms May 9 that will give some 25,000 former and current workers back pay for the time the workers spent ?off-the-clock? putting on and taking off required safety equipment. It is estimated the settlement will mean about $500 per year per worker. The Labor Department also filed suit the same day against Tyson Foods over the same issue. The fight to pay workers for all their hours on the job began with a Food and Commercial Workers initiative in 1998 that was supported by a number of groups such as the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice and a number of members of congress. The Clinton administration began the government?s enforcement effort in the matter.

• The New York Times

After the U.S. Civil Rights Commission voted in December not to seat Bush administration appointee Peter N. Kirsanow for a disputed seat on the panel, the Bush administration took the issue to court. Kirsanow is known for his arch-conservative views and disagreements with the civil rights community. The Bush administration?s action came shortly after the Civil Rights Commission issued a report that was highly critical of voting irregularities in Florida during the 2000 presidential election and cited discrimination against minority voters in Florida. The administration claimed the term of commission member Victoria Wilson expired in December, when the term of the commission member she was appointed to replace would have expired, and that a vacancy existed. However the Civil Rights Commission contended Wilson was entitled to a full, six-year term and there was no vacancy. In February, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in favor of Wilson and the Commission, but the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned that decision May 9.

The Bush administration in April proposed a plan that would have forced student loan holders who consolidate their federal student loans to pay higher variable interest rates rather than the normally lower fixed rates that are applied currently to loan consolidation. The change, according to consumer groups, could have cost the average student some $2,800. But outcry on Capitol Hill and protests from student groups forced the Bush administration to reconsider its support of the proposal. On May 1, a White House spokesman acknowledged that without congressional support the plan ?won?t move anywhere.?

The Bush Labor Department announced a watered-down, voluntary and unenforceable plan April 5 to replace the tough ergonomics standard the Bush administration helped kill last year. The new plan would rely on as yet undeveloped voluntary guidelines for selected industries, which are not even identified. On April 19, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao admitted during a Senate hearing that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has no plans to enforce voluntary guidelines. Except for the announcement that nursing home guidelines might be developed by the end of the year, Chao couldn't name other potential targeted industries or offer a timetable as to when other industry-specific ergonomics guidelines might be ready. Since Bush signed the legislation repealing OSHA's ergonomics standard, more than 1.8 million workers across the country have suffered injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, caused by repetitive motion, heavy lifting and poorly designed work.

Under its welfare reform proposal released in late February, the Bush administration planned to give states permission to pay a subminimum wage to welfare recipients in "workfare" jobs. But after news reports March 6 revealed the subminimum wage proposal?one sentence buried in the 36-page proposal?the administration backed down and said these workers would be covered by the minimum wage law, as they had been under the Clinton administration. However, the administration has yet to seek the introduction of legislation that would ensure working TANF recipients are covered by the same workplace protection laws as any other worker.

• The Washington Post
• Statement from AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson

President Bush imposed tariffs on imported steel of up to 30 percent for three years on March 5. The decision came just days after nearly 30,000 Steelworkers and steel community supporters rallied near the White House and called for 40 percent tariffs for four years on unfair steel imports. USWA President Leo W. Gerard said Bush?s announcement was ?not as comprehensive as we had hoped?but raises our hopes that the steel industry can be saved.? According to the USWA, the unfair imports have fueled a crisis that has forced 31 American steel companies to file for bankruptcy protection, while 16 have ceased operations altogether, and nearly 47,000 steelworkers and iron ore miners have lost their jobs

President Bush's welfare reform plan requires recipients to work additional hours to remain eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, posing a hardship to many seeking to move from dependency to self-sufficiency even as it eliminates vocational training and educational activities that have been counted toward fulfilling the work requirement. The proposals for the welfare law also require states to place even more recipients in jobs or work programs but provide no increased funding for states to meet the higher job levels nor increased funding for the larger number of recipients who require child care to meet the work requirements. It also fails to restore TANF benefits to legal immigrants unfairly excluded from eligibility in 1996. Originally, Bush's plan proposed paying subminimum wages to recipients in job programs, but after protests, the administration backed down. The 1996 welfare law expires this year and the Bush administration will seek to include its proposals in the new law.

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• The Washington Post

President Bush?s proposed budget seeks to establish a $2,500 refundable tax credit for parents to send children to private schools. The tax credit would work nearly the same as the private school vouchers Bush long has supported. It also would be available to all families regardless of income, so even the richest families would be eligible. While public schools must meet certain federal standards, the government does not hold private schools accountable to the same standards. These tax credits, like private school vouchers, drain taxpayer dollars that could be used to improve public schools. It is estimated that Bush?s plan would cost about $5.7 billion over the next five years. Bush was unable to win congressional approval of private school vouchers in the recently passed and signed bipartisan education bill and some have called the tax credit proposal a backdoor effort to private school vouchers. Vouchers are a controversial issue and the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of Cleveland?s voucher program later this year.

• AFT statement

President Bush?s fiscal year 2003 budget proposes radical changes in the nation?s unemployment system that would lower taxes on corporations and loosen federal standards on states. Bush?s plan would slash by 75 percent the taxes that corporations pay (under the Federal Unemployment Tax Act) to finance the administration of the unemployment insurance system and help the program maintain stability. It would shift the administration costs to the states and provide fewer resources to the states. It also reduces the federal oversight role, such as requirements that states cover certain classes of workers and meet other standards. While Bush?s program lowers corporate taxes, it doesn?t provide benefit increases, expanded eligibility to part-time and low-wage workers or other improvements for the jobless.

• AFL-CIO analysis

President Bush?s proposed fiscal year 2003 budget calls for siphoning almost $1 trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund during the next decade. Bush?s budget breaks a promise he made a year ago to a joint session of Congress that the Social Security Trust Fund would be set aside and not used for tax cuts or spending. While increased defense spending and the impact of the recession account for some of the funds, between 2004 and 2009 more than $500 billion of the Social Security Trust Fund will be used to pay for tax cuts that primarily benefit the rich.   

• USA Today
• Campaign for America?s Future
• AFL-CIO analysis
• Los Angeles Times
• The New York Times editorial

President Bush?s proposed budget ignores the sharp increase in unemployment and economic hardship by cutting worker training programs by 9 percent. The proposed cuts in job training run counter to the emphasis in his State of the Union message about creating jobs to ?defeat this recession.? He said, ?My economic security plan can be summed up in one word, jobs.? But the various job training programs targeted for cuts are designed to help jobless workers learn new skills, prepare adults moving from welfare to work in the job market and provide educational and training opportunities for young people in poverty.

• AFL-CIO analysis

In his proposed budget, President Bush cuts $9 million in funding for health and safety initiatives. He also seeks to eliminate 83 full-time Occupational Safety and Health Administration jobs. Funding cuts include workplace safety and health standard setting and enforcement and safety training for workers. Along with the OSHA cuts, the Mine Safety and Health Administration is slated for a $4 million cut and the loss of 46 jobs.

• AFL-CIO analysis

President Bush proposed cuts of more than 29 percent in highway construction and maintenance repair funds could cost as many as 140,000 jobs in a peak construction year and 380,000 jobs over the next decade. Bush?s budget cut proposals also affects the rail and air transportation sectors and could cost 7,000 Amtrak workers their jobs and result in privatization of the nation?s air traffic control system.

• American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
• AFL-CIO analysis

President Bush?s proposed budget assumes Medicare costs will be some $300 billion less over the next decade than the Congressional Budget Office has estimated. The only way to achieve the $300 billion in lowered growth would be through cuts in benefits to seniors or cuts in reimbursements to health care providers. His proposal for a Medicare prescription drug plan for seniors is under funded severely and would do nothing to control the consistent climb in drug prices.   

Acting while Congress was in recess and bypassing the Senate confirmation process, President Bush appointed Eugene Scalia as the U.S. Labor Department solicitor or chief attorney. Scalia faced considerable opposition in the Senate because of his extreme views. He has written that ergonomics is ?quackery? and fought numerous worker protection initiatives by OSHA and other agencies. As the Labor Department?s chief lawyer, Scalia now is responsible for enforcing the laws that provide basic worker protections in areas such as safety and health, minimum wage, equal employment opportunity and pension security. His appointment lasts until the end of the 2002 congressional session.

The Bush administration fired the seven members of the Federal Service Impasses Panel Jan.7. The panel helps protect federal workers? collective bargaining rights. Federal workers do not have the right to strike and the FSIP is the last resort when unions and federal agencies reach an impasse on issues such as organizing and contracts. It tries to reach a compromise and, if that is not possible, it can impose settlement terms. On Jan. 10, the Bush administration nominated four conservatives to the board, including Becky Norton Dunlop, vice president of the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation, as chairperson.

• AFGE
• International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers

President Bush issued an executive order Jan. 7 that revoked union representation for workers in the Justice Department?s U.S. attorney?s offices, the Criminal Division, the U.S. National Central Bureau of INTERPOL, the National Drug Intelligence Center and Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. ?Accordingly, the following bargaining units, previously represented by AFGE as their exclusive representative under the Federal Service Labor Management Relations Statute, cease to exist as do their corresponding bargaining units,? the Justice Department said in a letter to AFGE. News reports said Bush acted to prevent strikes by workers in offices engaged in intelligence, investigative and law enforcement work. However, current federal law prevents workers in those offices, and other federal agencies, from striking.

• The Washington Post

As part of its fiscal year 2003 budget, the Bush administration will seek to restore food stamp eligibility for documented immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years. In 1996, welfare reform legislation made most immigrants ineligible for food stamps and many other welfare programs. An estimated 360,000 additional people a month would qualify for food stamps under the Bush proposal. Some 18.4 million people a month now receive food stamps. The food stamp program helps low-income families, who might otherwise go hungry, purchase needed groceries.

• The Washington Post
• Food Research and Action Center

The Bush administration continued its efforts to undermine workers? right to choose a voice at work when it announced it would appeal a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruling overturning one of Bush?s first anti-worker executive orders. The Bush order required employers to post notices telling workers about their right to avoid unionization and union dues obligations?but did not compel contractors to inform workers about their right to join a union. The court ruled Jan.2 that the Bush administration had no authority to issue the measure and prohibited the administration from enforcing it.

• AFL-CIO statement
• The New York Times

Women?s rights activists have learned the Bush administration is planning to eliminate all regional offices of the Department of Labor Women?s Bureau. This follows elimination of the White House Office for Women?s Initiatives and Outreach and of the Equal Pay Matters Initiative. ?Taken together, these actions constitute a real threat to the well-being of working women throughout the country,? says the National Partnership for Women and Families on its Agency Watch Alert listserv on Dec. 14. The regional offices educate women about their legal protections against workplace abuse, inform women about training programs and provide other services. However, after severe criticism from women's organization, civil rights groups, unions and others, the department announced Jan. 22 that the Bush administration had withdrawn the proposal to close the offices.

• The New York Times
• Report from the Women?s Enews website
• Statement from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

On Dec. 11, President Bush?s hand-picked Social Security privatization commission issued its final report outlining three ways to privatize the nation?s retirement system that would require benefit cuts for most future retirees. Only days later, privatizers on Capitol Hill began drafting legislation based in part on the report. An analysis of the commission?s draft proposals by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and The Century Foundation notes that ?all three plans would reduce traditional Social Security benefits,? and ?none of the three plans appears to restore long-term balance to Social Security.

• AFL-CIO Social Security page
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and The Century Foundation report

The Bush administration repealed a federal responsible contractor rule requiring scrutiny of the legal track records of companies seeking government contracts. The Dec. 27 repeal followed Bush?s April 2001 suspension of the rule that makes it clear that compliance with federal labor, consumer, tax, antitrust, workplace safety, environmental and civil rights laws is part of the test for being deemed a ?responsible contractor.? Also, this rule prohibited contractors from using government funds for activities that discourage employees from seeking a voice at work by forming a union.

• AFL-CIO statement

Bush, on Dec. 20, appointed a Presidential Emergency Board, which bars any job action by United Airlines? 15,000 mechanics, who are members of the Machinists, for 60 days. The workers have been bargaining for more than two years to recoup some of the wage concessions they made in 1994 to help save the company from bankruptcy. The United mechanics are working under 1994 wage rates. Earlier, with a 99 percent approval rate, the United workers voted to authorize a strike. In March 2001, Bush became just the second president in 35 years to tell airline workers that they cannot use their right to strike to help win a fair contract?intervening at that time in the bargaining of mechanics at Northwest Airlines.

• Statement by IAM President R. Thomas Buffenbarger

The Bush administration?s Department of Labor regulatory agenda for 2002 withdraws or halts action on 16 pending Occupational Safety and Health Administration and 13 pending Mine Safety and Health Administration safety actions. These actions would have strengthened job safety protections for workers. It also does not include any action on a new ergonomics regulation. The agenda, released in December, outlines the department?s priorities and plans for the coming year. Last year, the Bush administration supported congressional action to overturn the nation?s first ergonomics standard designed to prevent work-related musculoskeletal injuries. Since that action, more than 1.25 million workers have suffered ergonomic-related injuries.

• AFL-CIO Safety and Health website

Attorney General John Ashcroft approved a rule in October that allows federal officials to eavesdrop on conversations between lawyers and clients in federal custody, including people who have been detained but not charged with any crime. The rule went into effect immediately and allows the monitoring for up to one year at a time. The monitoring can be conducted without a court order whenever the attorney general certifies there is ?reasonable suspicion? that the communications between the two would facilitate terrorism. Trial lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union vowed to test the rule in court at the first opportunity.

• The New York Times
• Report from the Women?s Enews website

• Statement from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

Bush, as part of his economic stimulus package proposed in October, would strip $11 billion from the State Children?s Health Insurance Program that allows lower-income families to afford health care for their children. Bush?s proposal would move the money to a block grant program designed to help laid-off workers maintain their health insurance coverage. The proposal does not guarantee unemployed workers will have health coverage. Any coverage unemployed workers receive from SCHIP funds will be at the expense of children in low-income families.

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Bush, in August, approved a change in the way Social Security payroll taxes are credited to the retirement program that has the effect of adding a more than $4 billion buffer-zone before federal spending is forced to dip into the Social Security surplus funds. Critics say because of the economic downturn under the Bush administration and the massive Bush-backed tax cut, the federal, non-Social Security surplus is near exhaustion and the government will be forced to dip into the Social Security surplus to pay for the tax cut and other government programs.

• The Washington Post news story
• USA Today news story

The Bush administration delayed implementation of patients? rights regulations for health maintenance organizations and other managed care plans that serve low-income people under Medicaid. The regulations were due to take effect April 19, but twice before this August 2001 action the Bush administration delayed the regulations? effective date. The new regulations cover emergency access, specialty care, the appeals process for denied claims, women?s health and truth in marketing rules.

• Families USA

A new report from Bush?s Social Security privatization commission includes errors, misleading claims and alarmist statements, critics charge. Among other things, the commission?s July 21 draft interim report asserted that Social Security has no real assets and no legal obligation to pay benefits. According to independent analysts, both assertions by the commission are false and instead reflect the commission?s ideological opposition to Social Security.

• AFL-CIO Social Security website
• AFL-CIO news story on commission
• Joint analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and The Century Foundation

On July 12, Bush offered a plan for a prescription drug discount card program for seniors. The voluntary and private plan is patterned after many existing discount programs already widely available to seniors. Bush?s plan does not include any mechanism to limit the cost of medicines that pharmaceutical companies can charge or cap out-of-pocket expenses for seniors. Lawmakers and advocates for seniors criticized the plan as an insignificant and trivial approach to the real problem of providing Medicare prescription drug coverage for all seniors. An editorial in The New York Times said, ?because the president's discount club plan does so little now, Congress should get to work on a prescription drug benefit without delay.?

• The New York Times editorial
• The New York Times news story
• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
• Alliance for Retired Americans

On June 19, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, responding to business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, rejected a Labor Department proposal requiring employers to separately report musculoskeletal injuries as part of a workplace injury record-keeping rule going into effect next year. These problems, including carpal tunnel syndrome and back sprains, accounted for more than one-third of the 1.7 million workplace injuries reported in 1999, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

• National Academy of Sciences
• AFL-CIO Safety & Health website

Just a few months after Bush and his allies in Congress overturned the ergonomics job safety rule in March, the president nominated Eugene Scalia to be solicitor of the Department of Labor, its top attorney. Prior to his nomination Scalia helped lead Big Business?s charge against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration?s ergonomics workplace rule while working as a lawyer for a Washington, D.C., corporate law firm. His clients included UPS, Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. and the National Coalition on Ergonomics?a coalition of corporations and business groups.

• AFL-CIO Safety & Health website

The Bush administration?s Justice Department filed a brief in June with the U.S. Supreme Court siding with Toyota Motor Corp. in its fight against an assembly-line worker. The worker, who was suffering with repetitive motion injuries, sued the carmaker under the Americans with Disabilities Act after the company refused to assign her to a different job. The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case in November and a decision is expected later this year. 

• The Dallas Morning News

To head the Department of Education?s Office for Civil Rights, Bush nominated the former president of an organization that, according to The New York Times, opposes affirmative action and other federal civil rights measures. Gerald Owens is the former president of the conservative Center for New Black Leadership, a group that frequently opposes mainstream civil rights groups on civil rights issues. He also served as counsel to the Center for Equal Opportunity, another conservative group also opposed to affirmative action and other government efforts to provide opportunities for minorities and women. Linda Chavez, Bush?s controversial and failed choice as Secretary of Labor, is president of CEO. The Office for Civil Rights enforces laws dealing with discrimination based on race, nationality, gender, disability and age in the nation?s schools, from kindergarten to graduate school. 

Bush, on June 25, announced he would appoint again a Presidential Emergency Board to deny airline workers their right to strike, thwarting the collective bargaining process for a second time during his brief period in office. The 23,000 flight attendants at American Airlines, members of an unaffiliated union, have worked without a contract for two-and-a-half years. Under the terms of a PEB, workers would be banned from striking for up to 60 days; if an agreement is not reached, the PEB could recommend a settlement and ask Congress to impose it. Flight attendants and management reached an agreement under the threat of a PEB.

Bush called on Congress to allow him to negotiate trade agreements without including workers? rights or environmental protections. Speaking to business leaders at the White House in mid-June, President Bush said, ?We should not let legitimate environmental and labor concerns undermine the capacity of the president to make good free-trade agreements.? Bush?s statement is relevant to the current congressional debate over Fast Track. If Congress grants Bush this power, he could negotiate trade agreements that would move through Congress without amendment and without protections for workers? rights or the environment.

In what may be the first wave of extreme funding cuts in vital working family programs to pay for Bush?s multitrillion-dollar tax cut for the rich, the House Appropriations Committee June 14 eliminated $259 million from current funding for the dislocated worker programs and another $100 million in adult job training programs. In addition, Bush?s budget request for fiscal year 2002 would cut those programs by another $200 million and $50 million respectively. Studies of the massive tax cut bill show it uses most of the projected budget surplus and will force huge spending cuts.

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report on the tax cut?s impact on budget surplus and domestic programs

Despite the massive opposition of most Puerto Ricans to the U.S. Navy?s live bombing exercises on a portion of Vieques, Puerto Rico, Bush, in a June 13 decision, allowed the bombings to continue until 2003, instead of ordering an immediate halt. Working families on the island have stepped up their protests of the bombing in recent years, citing the disruption, noise and environmental degradation. In 1999, a civilian guard was killed when a Navy bomb missed its target.

• The New York Times
• 1999 AFL-CIO Convention resolution
• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, June 2000

As recently as June 12, in a meeting with California lawmakers, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated the Bush administration?s opposition to federal energy price controls to help combat the state?s energy crisis, which has resulted in rolling blackouts and soaring electric bills. But on June 18, as public criticism mounted and as unions and consumer groups continued public protests, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission acted to place some restraints on the wholesale price of electricity in a number of Western states, many of which sell power to California. Consumer groups called FERC?s action a good first step, but pledged to continue to seek tougher, consumer-oriented price controls.

• CNN.com

Bush ordered his Department of Transportation June 5 to begin processing applications that will grant operating authority to Mexican firms to provide truck and bus service throughout the United States. While the firms would have to attest to the safety of those trucks, as long as 18 months could elapse before the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration completes a thorough safety audit of the carriers. The North American Free Trade Agreement mandated an end to restrictions on cross-border truck and bus service. But in 1995, the United States, citing safety concerns with Mexican vehicles, issued a moratorium on allowing the trucks and buses into the country. A NAFTA dispute panel ruled that the ban violated the trade agreement. On June 26, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to block unregulated Mexican trucks from operating in the United States.

On June 7, Bush signed his tax cut bill that gives nearly 40 percent of the benefit to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers and just 12.7 percent to the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers. Officially the bill?s price tag is $1.35 trillion through 2011, but most estimates peg the cost to be much higher, up to $2.3 trillion. The tax cut consumes revenue needed to pay for improved schools, a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and strengthening Social Security. In the following decade the cost could climb an additional $4.3 trillion. In addition, 34 million taxpayers will not receive a rebate check and another 17 million will get just a partial rebate. Working families did win some modest breaks, including a reduction in the tax rate for low-income taxpayers, and improvements in the child care tax credit and dependent care tax credit.

• Citizens for Tax Justice on rebates
• Citizens for Tax Justice on tax cut distribution
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on tax cut costs

In response to foreign steel dumping in the United States, which has caused lost jobs and steel company bankruptcies, Bush ordered an International Trade Commission investigation into steel imports. This action is allowed under the 1974 Trade Act and could result in trade sanctions against nations found to dump steel illegally in the United States. Dumping occurs when a country exports underpriced steel typically manufactured with government subsidies. According to industry and union figures, some 23,000 workers have lost their jobs and 18 firms have shut their doors due to illegal dumping since 1998. Steelworkers President Leo Gerard called the action "a significant first step" in fighting the problem.

The Bush administration?s Labor Department endorsed new black lung disability claims rules, backed by the Mine Workers and opposed by the mining industry. The rules are designed to ease and streamline the process miners and their survivors must go through to win their disability claims. The National Mining Association filed suit against the new rules in February and the Bush administration initially supported the suit. But after meeting with UMWA officials, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao announced May 8 that the department would endorse the new black lung rules.

• UMWA statement

Since 1987, the Department of Labor has been required to publish each year the results of regional surveys of the average hourly wage rates for field and livestock workers. These rates effectively set a wage floor for temporary or seasonal guest workers employed by agricultural employers under the H-2A program. Under that program, employers can legally employ workers who are not U.S. residents. The employers are required to observe certain labor standards, including these wage floors. Usually, the wage floors are published in February for use during that year. Bush?s Labor secretary, Elaine Chao, has delayed issuing the rates. As a result, some of the lowest-paid workers in the United States will not get a needed annual pay raise.

• More about the H-2A temporary agricultural worker program

Bush?s Treasury secretary, Paul O?Neill, said American corporations should pay no income tax, the capital gains taxes for businesses should be abolished and ?able-bodied? adults should take care of their own retirement needs and medical expenses. In a story and interview published May 18 on London?s Financial Times website, O?Neill said in his vision of Social Security reform, ?able-bodied adults should save enough on a regular basis so that they can provide for their own retirement and for that matter for their health and medical needs.? He also said Bush?s tax cut plan ?is clearly not the final thing we need to do for tax reform.? Sharing his vision for America, O?Neill told the Financial Times he would ?absolutely? abolish corporate income taxes and eliminate capital gains taxes on businesses.

Bush announced a new commission May 2, and instructed it to develop a plan to privatize the Social Security system. Bush has said repeatedly one of his main goals is to require working families to divert Social Security tax dollars into private accounts. In a May 1 report in The Wall Street Journal, a Bush administration official admitted that the 14-member commission was packed with people who favor privatization of Social Security. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said May 1, ?The commission that the president will announce will, of course, be comprised of people who share the president?s view that personal retirement accounts are the way to save Social Security.? Privatizing Social Security by diverting tax dollars into private accounts would threaten the program's long-term solvency and would require deep cuts in benefits, an increase in the retirement age or both.

• AFL-CIO Social Security website
• The Wall Street Journal (Subscription required)

Bush?s secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, previously supported a move to weaken the program that compensates workers who suffer from illnesses they acquired building and maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Chao wanted to shift the running of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act from her department to the Justice Department. This could have meant longer waits for workers in getting their compensation benefits because the Justice Department is inadequately staffed to administer claims and historically has fought compensation claims by these workers. On April 18, at the urging of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department and a bipartisan group of allies in Congress, Chao agreed to keep the program within the Labor Department.

• The Washington Post

Bush met with leaders of 33 North and South American and Caribbean nations in Quebec City, Canada, April 21 and 22, to negotiate details of the Free Trade Area of the Americas treaty. The agreement is patterned after NAFTA?some observers, in fact, have termed it ?NAFTA on steroids??which has cost U.S. jobs, lowered Mexican workers? wages and prompted development of maquiladora plants on the U.S.-Mexico border. While Bush said there should be a commitment to workers? rights and environmental protection, he opposed any enforceable manifestation of that commitment in the FTAA.

• More on NAFTA and the FTAA

Federal law requires labor relations consultants and attorneys to report to the Department of Labor their activity designed to influence workers? choice about whether to form a union. But for nearly 40 years the Labor Department exempted ?advice? given to an employer, not directly to employees. This loophole allowed a range of union-busting activity to go undisclosed to the public.

Recognizing this abuse, on Jan. 11, 2001, the Labor Department revised its interpretation of the law to require reporting when union-busters provide material (a script, letter or videotape, for example) for the employer to use in communicating with workers. The Bush administration rescinded that revised interpretation April 11, again permitting union-busting activity to take place beyond public view.

Bush?s Environmental Protection Agency revoked a rule March 21 to reduce the levels of the poison arsenic in the public?s drinking water. Studies show that 34 million people are exposed to elevated levels of arsenic in their water supplies. Arsenic is a result of industrial pollution and mining operations and some naturally occurs. A National Academy of Sciences study said arsenic in drinking water can cause cancer of the lungs, bladder and skin. The Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water said the revoked rule?which the Bush administration said was based on unsound science?was the product of 25 years of research and debate. The Bush EPA?s action returns the federal drinking water policy to a standard set in 1942.

• Campaign for Safe and Affordable Drinking Water statement
• The Washington Post

Bush submitted a fiscal year 2002 budget April 9 that sets his $2.4 trillion tax cut in motion and reduces the amount available for new investments in working family programs, debt reduction and strengthening Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Bush?s budget cuts could mean 70,000 fewer Head Start slots, 125,000 fewer students in after-school programs, 60,000 fewer child care slots, 630 fewer drug enforcement agents, 1,830 fewer FBI agents, 195,000 fewer dislocated workers served and 125,000 fewer young workers trained.

One of Bush?s first actions when he took office was to issue an executive order banning the use of project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects. PLAs are negotiated prior to the start of a construction project between unions and project owners or construction managers. The agreements establish generally a common set of work rules, working conditions, hiring practices and settlement dispute mechanisms, usually with the stipulation that there will be no strikes by the unions or lockouts by management. Following the order, construction unions began a drive to restore the use of PLAs and eventually more than 30 Republican members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Bush urging that he reconsider the move. On April 6, the administration modified the order to allow most covered projects by pre-existing PLAs to continue unthreatened. However, new project labor agreements are still banned by the Bush Executive Order.

• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
• Statement by Laborers General President Terence M. O?Sullivan

The Bush administration's Department of Labor revoked previously approved federal grants for safety and health training programs for immigrant workers, small business employers and employees and workers in high-risk jobs such as construction. The unions, universities and labor management groups that had been awarded the 19 grants totaling $4.8 million in January were told in a March 29 letter from the Labor Department that "because of budgetary circumstances and an evaluation of the financial projections for this program, the long-term grant you had applied for cannot be funded."

• Statement by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

Bush's Department of Health and Human Services budget for fiscal year 2002 would cut programs providing "health care access for the uninsured" by 86 percent from the current $140 million-a-year level to $20 million, The New York Times reported April 4. One of the major cuts targeted, the paper reported, is the community access program that helps communities with outreach to and care for people without health insurance. "We intend to phase out the community access program," a White House official told the Times. In addition, the proposed Health and Human Services Department budget will cut more than 60 percent from programs to train health care professionals.

• The New York Times

Bush suspended and proposed to revoke federal responsible contractor rules that require scrutiny of the legal track records of companies seeking lucrative government contracts. Under Bush's revisions, chronic law-breaking companies could profit from taxpayer dollars. For decades the law has required that the government only do business with "responsible contractors." The rules Bush is moving to revoke clarified these existing requirements to make it clear that compliance with federal labor, consumer, tax, antitrust, workplace safety, environmental and civil rights laws is part of the test for being deemed a "responsible contractor." Also, this rule prohibited contractors from using government funds for activities that discourage employees from seeking a voice at work by forming a union.

• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
• The Washington Post

Bush closed the office that had since 1995 reviewed proposed legislation and administration initiatives to determine their impact on women. The office also helped arrange meetings between top White House officials and women's groups to discuss issues such as domestic violence, equal pay, Social Security reform and other important women's issues. According to The Washington Post, the Bush administration made no public announcement of its intentions or actions. Callers to the office heard this recorded message, "As of Jan. 19, 2001, this office no longer exists."

Bush's secretary of labor, Elaine Chao, supports a move that would weaken the program that compensates workers who suffer from illnesses they acquired building and maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Chao wants to shift the running of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act from her department to the Justice Department. This could mean that it will take much longer for workers to get their compensation benefits, because the Justice Department doesn't have enough staff to administer the claims and it historically has fought these same workers when they filed claims for these diseases under state workers' compensation.

• The Washington Post
• The Blade
• Safety & Health on the Job

Bush has discontinued the practice of having the professional qualifications of nominees for the federal bench reviewed by the American Bar Association. For more than 50 years, Republican and Democratic presidents have turned to the ABA for help in evaluating the professional qualifications of nominees for federal judgeships, including Supreme Court nominees. President Eisenhower began the process in 1953 to "ensure an objective, nonpartisan review of the professional competence, integrity and judicial temperament of those who would have lifetime appointments to our federal court system," said ABA President Martha W. Barnett.

Speaking to a convention of cardiologists about the Patients' Bill of Rights March 21, Bush said he "cannot sign any one that is now before Congress." Bush told the physicians that he objected to provisions that allow patients to legally hold HMOs accountable for medical decisions in state and federal courts, such as those in the Bipartisan Patient Protection Act, introduced in February by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Reps. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) and Greg Ganske (R-Iowa). Generally, consumer and physicians' groups favor strong accountability standards, while employer groups, insurance companies and HMOs have lobbied against such provisions.

Bush's budget blueprint called for the elimination of the innovative federal FIRE Act grant program that provides money for local fire departments for training, equipment and fire prevention. The unique program "does not represent an appropriate responsibility of the federal government," the Bush administration said. The program had been set to receive $300 million in fiscal year 2002 before Bush's involvement. The IAFF, local fire departments, fire safety organizations and congressional supporters vehemently protested the action, and on March 20 the Bush administration announced it would restore $100 million to the FIRE Act program. IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger said that although the move was a good first step, the union and its supporters will not "rest until we get every penny of the Fire Act funds restored."

• IAFF's statement

Bush supported and signed the first-ever congressional repeal of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration worker protection rule, killing OSHA's ergonomics standard that would have prevented hundreds of thousands of workplace injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, each year. His March 21 signature overturned more than a decade of work by OSHA. The record showed that simple changes in how a job is structured could dramatically reduce the number of painful injuries. But Big Business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, made killing the ergonomics standard their No. 1 legislative priority. Congress used an extreme and previously unused maneuver?the Congressional Review Act, which prohibits OSHA from issuing a similar standard ever again unless Congress approves?to vote down the worker safety measure.

In a March 15 letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Bush outlined his campaign finance reform principles. Chief amongst them is "paycheck deception," which would silence the voice of working families in politics and legislation by making it very difficult, if not impossible, for working people to participate in the political process through their unions. Also, while most reformers seek ways to reduce the influence of wealthy contributors, Bush's principles include raising the limits on what individuals can contribute to campaigns.

• See what working families say about campaign finance and election reform?from McCain/Feingold to "paycheck deception"
• The Washington Post

The Bush administration has refused to adjust the U.S. Census 2000 that left an estimated 3 million people uncounted. The census figures are used to redraw congressional districts every 10 years. According to the Census, those uncounted are primarily minorities, children and the poor. Civil rights groups, unions and congressional Democrats supported an adjustment of the figures to guarantee political and electoral representation. Following the administration's decision, Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said, "This is a dark day in the nation's continued pursuit of equal opportunity and justice for all."

Bush became just the second president in 35 years to use his powers to tell airline workers they cannot exercise their right to strike for a fair contract. Mechanics at Northwest Airlines Inc. have been without a contract since their last pact expired four and a half years ago. They had set a March 12 strike deadline. But on March 9, Bush banned any strike for 60 days and created a Presidential Emergency Board, reducing the incentive for Northwest's management to settle the contract. Talks between the airline and the union broke off March 11 when Northwest rejected union proposals on pension benefits and wages, according to news reports. The 10,000 mechanics, cleaners and custodians are members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, a union not affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

To pay for nearly one-third of his tax cut, Bush's proposed budget would divert $526 billion from the Medicare trust fund over the next 10 years. The move would cost the trust fund an additional $172.5 billion in lost interest payments and deplete the trust fund 15 years earlier than projected, according to a report by the nonprofit Families USA.

Bush's inadequate proposal for a Medicare prescription drug benefit would only provide four years of help to low-income seniors, instead of a permanent, comprehensive drug benefit for all seniors who need help paying for their medicine. His plan would require setting up 50 different state-based programs that will take at least one year to set up. Each state would have lots of leeway in deciding what seniors will have to pay out of pocket?so how good your coverage is would depend on where you live.

• AFL-CIO Social Security and Medicare website
• AFL-CIO President John Sweeney's statement on the budget proposal
• Alliance for Retired Americans issue statement
• Alliance for Retired Americans "Friday Alert"

The Bush administration supports the mining industry's request to delay help for workers afflicted with black lung disease. The National Mining Association launched a lawsuit challenging new rules designed to ease the claims process for people afflicted with this disease. The Bush administration joined industry in seeking a delay in the implementation of the new rules. After intervention by the Mine Workers, the judge rejected the joint Bush/industry request for a broad stay. Instead, the judge issued a narrower injunction and put the case on a fast track, with a decision on the merits of the industry challenge expected in May.

• UMWA press releases
  

Working families' top priorities?improving education and health care and strengthening Social Security and Medicare?are not reflected in the Bush budget proposal, which instead places top priority on a massive tax cut that will benefit mainly the wealthy. Recent surveys by The Washington Post-ABC News, Newsweek, Opinion Research Corp. and the Pew Center show that working families would rather see investments in Social Security, Medicare, health care and education than have the federal budget surplus invested in a huge tax cut.

Bush has proposed a $1.8 trillion tax cut, which is likely to cost closer to $3 trillion?consuming the entire non-Social Security budget surplus?when higher interest payments resulting from failure to pay down the federal debt and other costs are factored in. This is a bad deal for working families. For $185 billion we could guarantee every child access to a modern, wired public school. For $315 billion we could extend Medicaid coverage to 12 million adults and children who are just above the poverty level. For $375 billion we could provide every Medicare beneficiary with a modest yet comprehensive prescription drug benefit. We could wall off the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and use the budget surplus to build a stronger retirement security foundation for tomorrow. Once these priorities are attended to, a more evenly distributed tax cut to benefit low- and middle-income families as well as the wealthy could be crafted.

• News story
• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Citizens for Tax Justice
• Economic Policy Institute

Bush will create a commission charged with building consensus for taking money out of the Social Security trust funds to pay for private retirement accounts, according to media reports. Rather than strengthening Social Security, creating private accounts would threaten the program's long-term solvency and could require raising the retirement age, cutting benefits or both.

• AFL-CIO Social Security website
• Social Security links

Bush issued four anti-worker, anti-union executive orders, sought by corporate contributors, that end job retention protections that cover "working poor" employees?largely immigrants and women?of service contractors in federal buildings; abolish labor-management partnerships that serve the federal government and hundreds of thousands of federal workers; effectively bar project labor agreements on federally funded construction projects; and require government contractors to post notices telling employees they cannot be required to become union members and may object to paying the portion of agency fees not related to collective bargaining.

• News story
• Statement by President John Sweeney

Bush's education proposals?which included a strong reading initiative that has many features long advocated by the AFT?also included a call for providing vouchers parents could use to send their children to private schools if their local public schools performed poorly. Vouchers drain resources from public schools, which educate 90 percent of our children. His plan also ignores the deteriorating physical condition of America's public schools, which desperately need upgrading and updating. Roughly one-third of our schools are in need of extensive repair or replacement. Sixty percent report that at least one major building feature, such as plumbing, is in disrepair. About one-half report one or more unsatisfactory environmental conditions, such as poor ventilation or heating. And nearly half lack basic wiring to provide access to computers in the classroom.

• AFT statement

Bush has proposed a massive tax cut?projected to cost nearly $3 trillion when higher interest payments from failing to pay down the debt are figured in?that would deliver three-fifths of its benefits to the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. taxpayers. Forty-three percent of the tax cut windfall would go to the top 1 percent. A tax cut of this size would leave no ability to invest meaningfully in such working family priorities as improving health care and education, rebuilding and modernizing schools and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.

• Citizens for Tax Justice analysis
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities online fact sheets
• AFL-CIO Executive Council Statement
• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
• Alternatives to the Bush tax cut from The American Prospect

On Feb. 6, a NAFTA dispute resolution panel ruled that the United States must end its current moratorium on considering Mexican applications for cross-border trucking privileges and consider these applications on a case-by-case basis. Failure to do so could result in paying higher tariffs on goods or services going to Mexico. Bush has indicated he will lift the ban, although Mexican truck, bus and driver safety standards are significantly below those in the United States, and U.S. inspection and enforcement programs are not adequate to assure the safety of American highways. Substandard safety and working conditions also jeopardize the safety and work standards of U.S. and Mexican truck and bus drivers.

• Teamsters website coverage
• AFL-CIO Executive Council statement

Using a little-known federal procedure called a "deviation," the administration blocked a new regulation requiring that taxpayer-funded projects be awarded to responsible companies, not chronic lawbreakers. It required agencies to take into account a company's record of complying with the law?including laws designed to protect workers, the public and the environment?before awarding contracts. The responsible contractor rule had been opposed vehemently by business groups, several of which filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia attempting to block its Jan. 19 implementation.

• News story
• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

Ashcroft's nomination offended civil and human rights groups as well as union working families because of his record and positions on school desegregation, affirmative action and other working family issues. He in essence sabotaged the federal judicial appointment of Judge Ronnie White, the first African American to sit on the Missouri Supreme Court, labeling White "pro-criminal" and incorrectly saying he had a "poor record on the death penalty." During his time in the Senate, Ashcroft amassed a voting record of just 2 percent on working family issues. He had tried to undermine public education by promoting religious school vouchers; refused to condemn crimes based on sexual orientation, gender and disability by voting against the Hate Crimes Act of 1999; and voted against measures designed to preserve Social Security. Ashcroft was confirmed as attorney general in an unusually close Senate vote of 58-42.

• News story: Ashcroft confirmed, working families to remain vigilant
• Senate votes
• AFL-CIO Executive Council Statement
• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on nomination
• Statement by President Sweeney on confirmation

The move was seen as an affront to workers and unions because Chavez had opposed such basic worker protections as the minimum wage and suggested that Department of Labor personnel who disagree are "Marxist." She has supported rolling back overtime protections and the 40-hour workweek, opposed the federal family leave law and dismissed the role of discrimination in explaining lower earnings of women. She opposed anti-discrimination programs, including affirmative action, which the secretary of labor is charged with enforcing. She had belittled women who file sexual harassment lawsuits as "crybabies," ridiculed the Americans with Disabilities Act as "special treatment in the name of accommodating the disabled" and expressed insensitivity to the privacy rights of injured workers. Chavez withdrew from consideration after a controversy in which the media questioned her relationship with an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant who stayed at Chavez's home from 1991 to 1993 and performed some household chores. Chavez reportedly provided her free room and board and occasional cash payments, but did not pay Social Security withholding. Since withdrawing, Chavez has announced plans to create an organization to monitor unions' political activities; previously, she indicated she would work for passage of federal laws to undercut unions' capacity to represent their members in the political arena.

• News story
• Linda Chavez revealed
• AFL-CIO Executive Council statement
• Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
• Statement by AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson