President Bush will literally place himself on an island tomorrow, in an announced Labor Day appearance with officials and apprentices of a union that he has been courting over the past year.
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| | | Russell W. Gibbons is editor of the Pennsylvania Labor History Journal and was with the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations at Penn State. | |
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The event at the Neville Island training center of the Carpenters District Council of Western Pennsylvania highlights the great American tradition of politicians breaking into the annual Labor Day commemorations regardless of the fact that their party may be opposed to most of the goals of the labor movement. "Security concerns" will keep him from marching in Pittsburgh's parade, saving him from a possibly disruptive photo opportunity.
The president represents this viable political contradiction at its worst: In early 2001, the first months of his administration, Bush issued Executive Order 13202. It effectively barred federal funds to union contractors who used Project Labor Agreements (which establish common work rules for an entire construction site). It became a license to disregard labor laws on federal projects, removing common work rules and quality public works projects. Hundreds of thousands of construction workers were adversely affected, the AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Department declared.
Perhaps Bush will use his visit to explain that to the apprentice carpenters. If the president believes that opening up the federal parkland in the Pacific Northwest to the logging industry is somehow addressing environmental concerns, then his visit here on Labor Day may be no less paradoxical.
Indeed some politicians who most of the year cast votes against the programs that are important to those in the line of march have been known to squeeze into the parade. They seek to perpetuate the facade that they are somehow the "workingmen's friend."
This, however, is no more of a fraud than county legislators who would show up at a Labor Day parade after defeating a living-wage ordinance or the mayor who says we cannot be "competitive" with such a law.
And while we can applaud the sincerity and empathy of Gov. Mark Schweiker, who was with the families of the Somerset miners during that near-tragedy, the fact is that his party beats back every effort to enforce mine safety and any increase in a budget that would make owners truly fear compliance and enforcement.
And the president who welcomed photo-ops with the union police, firemen, paramedics and volunteer construction/rescue workers at the World Trade Center in the past year now threatens a veto for Homeland Security legislation if he cannot get his way to turn it into one vast "open shop" where tens of thousands of unionized federal employees would lose a voice in their wages and working conditions. (President Bush scheduled another photo-op with the rescued miners, at a time when his congressional leaders have cut mine safety funding and staffed the mine enforcement agency with mining owners and executives.)
We all tend to overwork great quotations, but Santayana still comes up strong when we reflect on the economy and the condition of working people in past decades and a century ago: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Consider 1932, when one out of every four workers in the United States was jobless and labor was treated like any commodity with wages forced down by competition from millions of unemployed. Or 1902, when the great trusts answered to no one but themselves, paying little if any taxes and again considering workers as but a great commodity on the shelf, to be replaced or removed as needed, with thousands of fresh "inventory" coming off the boats daily.
Are things better now? A better work environment, perhaps, but fear and intimidation are still with us.
That's not just union rant. It was the conclusion of hearings before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in June, when witnesses gave accounts of the abuses workers suffer when they join a union. Thousands of workers who signed a card or became involved in organizing efforts are fired every year, the senators were told in the hearing on "Workers' Freedom of Association: Obstacles to Forming a Union." Fired, with no meaningful unfair labor practice consequences to the employer.
In fact, America's largest megabillion-dollar retail giant, Wal-Mart, reflects the New Economy's departure from any standards of treating workers with dignity or respect. This corporation -- which claims a million employees -- is fighting dozens of state and federal lawsuits for practicing "off the clock" coercion on its workers, forcing them to do overtime without adherence to federal wage and hour laws. Yet it is held up to us as a model employer for the new century.
The strange two-tiered morality of many of America's corporations in which executives plunder and walk away -- while workers and investors lose jobs and money -- is reflected in Bush administration appointments from many of this corporate litany of wrongdoing, industry advocates in the Labor Department, executive orders that terminate collective bargaining (as in the case of several hundred Justice Department lawyers) and the cuts in funding for the National Labor Relations Board, OSHA, the Americans for Disabilities Act and other agencies concerned with worker rights.
It may be reflected in a not-so-strange but little-noticed bureaucratic takeover of a long-admired institution in the Department of Labor's foyer -- the Labor Hall of Fame.
The Labor Hall of Fame contains a photo and narrative history of a century of advocates for working people -- such as Mother Jones, the legendary "Miners' Angel," and Philip Murray of the United Steelworkers. For many years, the Hall of Fame selection panel had 11 members: a former labor secretary, clergy, community members and labor educators. That great tradition came to an end when ideologues named by the Bush administration took over in 2001. A four-person selection panel was installed: the counselor to the secretary of labor, the solicitor of labor and two assistant secretaries. In other words, the bureaucrats tossed out the citizens.
The rest may be predictable: The four new nominations announced earlier this year included two from a senior fellow of the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank which would like to virtually eliminate government oversight in the workplace. One nomination was for Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, known in labor histories for the Taft-Hartley Labor Act of 1947, termed a "slave labor law" by unions for its limitations on picketing, prohibition of secondary strikes and union boycotts.
For a battered but proud labor movement, it is but a part of the Orwellian political world that now holds sway in Washington,
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