WSLC Reports Today -- April 19-23, 2004

The following press release was distributed Wednesday by District 1199NW of the Service Employees International Union:

For more information contact Carter Wright, SEIU 1199NE Communications Director, at (425) 917-1199, or visit www.seiu1199nw.org.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21
Local grocery workers face loss of affordable health care

The following press release was distributed Tuesday by the coalition of United Food and Commercial Workers unions which are now in contract negotiations for some 15,000 Puget Sound area grocery workers:

TUESDAY, APRIL 20
Bush's "new" OT plan: Longer hours, less pay for Americans

Under extreme heat from the American public and an angry Congress controlled by his own party, reports indicate that the Bush administration will announce today a revised version of new overtime pay rules to be implemented in 120 days. And with a straight face, they will claim the new plan grants eligibility to more workers than under current rules.

The question is, why would anybody take this claim seriously? Are we to believe President Bush is suddenly concerned that not enough workers have the right to overtime pay? Of course not.

Given this fact-challenged administration's previous estimates on everything from job creation to the cost of the Medicare drug bill, President Bush has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. Everything his administration says deserves intense skepticism and scrutiny because Bush has demonstrated time and again that he will say anything to pursue his agenda.

BUSH'S AGENDA: The president's objective is to help Corporate America avoid overtime pay obligations. It's clearly not, as his spin doctors claim, to expand overtime pay rights for working Americans. The new rules are being written by the employers for the employers. Working people didn’t ask for this. In fact, several hundred thousand have written Bush, urging him not to change the existing overtime standards.

But Bush says this change is necessary because the rules are too confusing and need to be "modernized." What that means is that big corporations -- which are big contributors -- are losing too many class-action suits to workers who were illegally denied overtime pay. The suits themselves, brought by those evil-doing trial lawyers, wouldn't be a problem if companies weren't losing them. And companies wouldn't be losing them if they weren't breaking the law.

The real problem is Corporate America's increasingly aggressive efforts to control costs and increase profitability by suppressing wages have collided head-on with long-standing worker rights. Class-action overtime suits have led to a series of big judgments against companies like Wal-Mart and Taco Bell, punishing them for their transparent efforts to make employees work longer-for-less by calling them managers or forcing them to work off the clock.

THE PURPOSE OF OVERTIME: The 40-hour work week and overtime laws are intended to discourage employers from overworking employees and encourage them to hire enough people to do the job. But in Bush America, that whole concept conflicts with two disturbing trends: American workers' productivity continues to increase, but so do the average number of hours we work. In the past decade, U.S. workers achieved a productivity growth rate of 1.4 percent but also added 37 working hours per year, or nearly a full working week more.

It's no wonder that changing overtime rules is such a priority for Corporate America. And clearly, President Bush is willing to do whatever they tell him to. In fact, the president has invited big business to write their own overtime rules. Tammy McCutchen, the administrator of Bush’s Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, is the principal architect of the overtime changes. Before that, she was an attorney -- not a trial lawyer (shudder) -- for a Chicago law firm specializing in representing corporations on employee overtime and other wage claim disputes.

McCutchen & Co. came up with some modern new language in the original version of the plan that touts the “availability” of exemptions like they’re a door prize: “Exemption is also available to employees in such professions who have substantially the same knowledge level as the degreed employees, but who attained such knowledge through a combination of work experience, training in the armed forces, attending a technical school, attending a community college or other intellectual instruction."

That "armed forces" part probably comes as a surprise to America’s 26 million veterans, but not to the Boeing Co. They wrote Bush's Labor Department last June saying Boeing "strongly supports" revising the rules to classify employees with military training as "learned experts" who can be denied to overtime pay.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The president has taken a lot of heat for defying the will of Congress (both the Republican-controlled House and Senate have voted to block Bush's overtime pay changes), so he has rewritten the changes in an effort to deflect criticism.

The truth is nobody knows exactly how many people will lose their overtime pay. It will depend on how businesses respond to the new rules.

And we know that employers are always -- ALWAYS -- looking for ways to increase profits by cutting costs, and labor is their biggest cost. It’s fair to assume employers will use Bush’s new overtime rules, and use them aggressively, to do just that.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Bush what you think. Visit www.unionvoice.org/campaign/stopbush4otpay/ and your comments will be delivered via fax to the White House with copies sent to your U.S. Senators.

TUESDAY, APRIL 20
Sweeney: Bush OT pay rules one of biggest pay cuts in history

The following is a statement issued Tuesday morning by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, in response to President Bush's plan to restrict overtime pay:

Ignoring the protests of millions of American families and defying the wishes of Congress, the Bush Administration has pressed forward with new overtime regulations that will eliminate the right to overtime pay for many hardworking Americans. The Bush Administration staunchly opposed legislation which would preserve overtime pay for all workers and instead pressed forward with eliminating overtime pay for a huge swath of middle-class workers – many who make as little as $23,600 a year. The Bush overtime changes will take money directly out of the pockets of workers and put it into the hands of the President’s corporate campaign contributors. This has to be one of the biggest pay cuts in American history -- special delivery to American workers straight from the White House. It is a huge windfall for large corporations.

Last year both the House and the Senate voted for legislation to prohibit overtime cuts, but the White House strong-armed Congress to keep this overtime guarantee from becoming law. The Administration has also ignored a tremendous outcry from millions of workers who sent many millions of e-mails, faxes and petitions urging Bush not to eliminate their right to overtime pay.

President Bush claims that his overtime plan will have “no impact” on American workers and will preserve overtime pay for such workers as firefighters and nurses, but the president has a credibility gap when it comes to overtime. Over the past year, in promoting its plan to eliminate overtime rights for 8 million workers, the Bush Administration has left an appalling trail of misstatements, evasions, half-truths, and outright falsifications that destroy any credibility they might have as defenders of workers’ overtime pay. If the Administration really believes that workers will not lose their right to overtime pay under its proposal, it should support pending legislation in Congress that would guarantee workers’ overtime rights and repeal any part of the regulation that cuts overtime. Workers need a binding overtime guarantee, enacted into law, not empty promises from an Administration that doesn’t care about workers.

It’s not enough that President Bush has been AWOL on jobs during his entire presidency, during which the country has lost nearly 3 million private sector jobs and long-term unemployment has reached record highs. Now, the new regulation will further discourage job growth. Allowing businesses to stop paying for overtime will only encourage them to overwork their existing employees and refrain from hiring new workers. Americans should demand immediate repeal of any part of the President’s plan that cuts overtime pay.

MONDAY, APRIL 19
WSLC urges opposition to closure of Walla Walla VA hospital

Eastern Washington veterans groups, the American Federation of Government Employees and other concerned community groups have teamed up to oppose the Veterans Administration's proposed closure of the VA Hospital at the Wainwright Medical Center in Walla Walla. Last month, the WSLC joined the AFGE at a dramatic rally of support for the hospital.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) is leading the fight to keep this important facility open and to preserve and maintain our nation's commitment to its veterans. Last week, Sen. Murray convened a special field hearing in Walla Walla of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee she serves on and made a strong case that closure would be illegal, breaking a legal commitment to the facility made by Congress in 1987 (thanks to former U.S. Rep. Tom Foley). Visit Sen. Murray's website for more information.

CALL TO ACTION: Please send an e-mail to U.S. Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA), Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, at arlen_specter@specter.senate.gov -- and send a copy to Sen. Murray at senator_murray@murray.senate.gov -- urging that the facility be maintained. Following is a letter sent by Rick Bender, President of the Washington State Labor Council, last week to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee in support of this cause: