Hurting workers

Another agenda on President Bush's radar screen that has gone virtually unnoticed by the American public has been his blatant targeting of working families ever since he took office last year. In one of his first acts as president, 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 each year.þþSince then, he has proposed to dismantle the federal and state unemployment system, attempted to strip some 170,000 federal workers of their civil service and collective bargaining rights under the proposed Homeland Security Department, and tried to eliminate cost-saving and safety-minded project labor agreements on the federal level.þþNow he has ordered the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) to end its lockout of 10,500 dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports and a return to work without a contract. Not since President Ronald Reagan in his infamous firing of air-traffic control workers have we had a top administrator so determined to intervene in a proven collective-bargaining process that levels the playing field between employers and employees. The president let employers lock out workers in an extended quest to undermine the workers' union and then rewarded the employers' action with government intervention. The dockworkers agreed to work under their expired contract throughout mediation but were undermined after only four days of mediation by the president's threat and then ultimate use of the Taft-Hartley law. It's long overdue that we focus on these crucial workplace matters and our own country's economic challenges.þ