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NOVEMBER 2005
Bush
bows to pressure, reverses his Gulf Coast wage cut
by Rick S. Bender, President of
the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
President
Bush has bowed to outrage over his “Gulf Coast Wage Cut,” and
cancelled his executive order that suspended federal community wage
standards for Katrina hurricane repair work. The reversal was a
vindication of more than 350,000 American union members who sent letters
of protest to the Bush White House.
One of the first Bush acts after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast was to lift the Davis-Bacon Act which ensures high-quality building standards and community prevailing wage rates for federally funded rebuilding projects. This federal law has been on the books since 1931 as a way to protect community wage standards from “fly-by-night” contractors.
The unintended side effect of the President’s executive order was to encourage a flood of illegal workers to travel to the Gulf Coast and apply for federal jobs in the massive rebuilding effort. With no wage or quality standards, the jobs for rebuilding the region were not going to go to the local skilled workers who lived in the region. The licensed and trained electricians, plumbers, ironworkers and carpenters were being bypassed. The jobs were going to go to people who would work for whatever was the lowest common denominator. Many of the jobs went to undocumented workers.
When it comes to decent building standards, you get what you pay for. Just consider the massive destruction in Pakistan following the recent earthquake. The quake was strong, but not that much stronger at 7.8 on the Richter Scale, as the quake that shook Washington state a few years ago. The reason all our buildings did not collapse is because we insist and maintain decent building standards and build our buildings with highly skilled, certified and trained workers. The poor Pakistanis are victims of weak governments that do not enforce decent standards.
The majority of skilled building trades workers in our area are union journeymen who graduated from rigorous union apprenticeship programs. They build the infrastructure for our country and our region. When you cut corners in building and rebuilding projects, you invite future disasters. But the Davis Bacon Act does not require paying union wages, it simply requires “prevailing” wages for the region. Surveys establish what the wage standards should be.
That President Bush would chose to undermine workers’ wages -- at a time when they needed the most help -- was a revealing look at how his Administration views working people. In fact, at least nine times in the past decade, the right-wing Republicans in total control of our federal government have tried to repeal or undermine the Davis-Bacon wage standard. The president obviously tried to take advantage of the hurricane disaster to move an agenda item they had failed to pass through normal channels.
The reversal came after California Congressman George Miller introduced an unprecedented Joint Resolution that would have forced a vote in Congress to overturn the President’s Gulf Coast Wage Cut. The Resolution had the support of every single House Democrat and 37 House Republicans, and they had the votes to overturn the President’s action. Faced with that embarrassing scenario, the White House reversed itself. Miller forced the showdown by using an unusual parliamentary procedure and he observed, “The President is backing down only because he had no alternative.”
Reinstating community wage standards will bring stability to the contracting work in the Gulf Coast. All contractors, in state, or out-of-state, will have to compete on a level playing field. That’s not only fair, it’s a way to guarantee decent, safe building standards for a hurricane-vulnerable region of our country.
Rick Bender is President of the
Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO,
the largest labor organization in the state.
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Copyright © 2005 Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO