Bush Uses Disaster to Ram Through Low-Wage Work

There’s more bad news today for Gulf Coast region workers still reeling from the hurricane’s onslaught. First, there’s the New York Times article describing the plight of some one million people thrown out of jobs, many of them without skills that would make them readily employable in other regions. We’re reminded again how many people labor for a lifetime in low-wage, dead-end jobs that leave them with few options or opportunities at a moment like this.

Then there’s Bush’s order suspending the application of the Davis-Bacon Act on federally-financed construction projects in parts of Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.

Leave it to George Bush to find a way to exploit the tragedy he helped to create to further his own ideological ends—and further emiserate tens of thousands of workers whose lives have already been shattered.

Step right up and watch how it’s done—baldly and without any shame. See your president, with the stroke of a pen, strip construction workers of the federal wage guarantees that have helped to lift them out of poverty in one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the country.

Bush and his right-wing allies have been gunning for the Davis-Bacon Act for years now, dreaming of the day when they could wipe out the requirement that contractors on federal projects pay the area’s prevailing wage for comparable work. According to the Washington Post, Republicans believe Davis-Bacon “amounts to a taxpayer subsidy to unions.”

But Davis-Bacon doesn’t require that a penny be paid to unions. Or even that union workers be employed on federal projects. It regulates the wages that are paid to workers. Funny how Republicans don’t like to mention the fact that they’re actually out to cut workers’ wages.

And funny how Bush failed to mention that the prevailing wage for construction labor in New Orleans has been about $9 per hour. I don’t know why he didn’t want to discuss the fact that when you get much lower than that, you’re talking about paying people poverty-level wages.

Bush claims the suspension will result in lower construction costs. But actually it will just result in higher profits for construction companies and shoddier construction work.

And, in all likelihood, it will make the rebuilding of the Gulf Region much more difficult to accomplish as construction workers simply move on to work in other regions where the pay isn’t an affront to their skills and experience.

It’s an ugly sign of things to come—the fate of hundreds of thousands of people, of one of our greatest cities, of some of our most important natural resources, in the hands of an Administration that is governed by the basest of motives.

But there are other signs that must be read as well—and that portend something better. Certainly, there’s the fact that the most recent polls reveal an ever-growing disillusionment with the prep-boy president. And then it appears that even some of the more craven of Democrats are discovering that they have spines—and beginning to see the political wisdom—if not the moral imperative—of taking on the Administration’s gross malfeasance.

And perhaps most important, there is the unyielding spirit of the poor and working people of the Gulf Coast region. Today a friend sent me an eyewitness account of the early aftermath of the hurricane that has been circulating on some listserves. It comes from two paramedics (Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky) who were visiting New Orleans when the storm struck. Here’s the part that struck me:

What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, “stealing” boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

They—and so many other citizens of that ravaged region—have done their part. Now it is up to the rest of us. We should strongly protest the suspension of Davis-Bacon, not because it is the worst thing that Bush might do, but because it is the first of the many bad things he will try to do. And then we need to press the Democratic leadership not just to attack the gross mismanagement of the rescue and relief operations, but to develop their own plan for a massive rebuilding and renewal program that will provide decent jobs and assure decent housing for all those in the region.

“I want to go back and help rebuild New Orleans,” Gregory Woods, a master plumber, told the New York Times. He and so many others like him stand ready to do that if we can ensure that our government gives them the opportunity.

http://warrenreports.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/9/155638/7739