Saturday, October 01, 2005
Bush cuts wages for Gulf Coast workers
President Bush has signed an executive order suspending the prevailing wage requirements of the Davis-Bacon act for the areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. The Davis-Bacon act mandates that construction workers on projects for federal contractors are paid the prevailing local wage rather than the minimum wage. This means a wage cut for workers involved in rebuilding New Orleans. These workers would be paid $9 per hour at the prevailing regional wage for the New Orleans metro area, but due to the Bush executive order - they may be paid as little as $5.15 per hour. The action is further proof of the hostility of the Bush Administration to American workers. Bush has stripped overtime pay away from millions of workers and now is giving a wage cut to already hard-hit workers in areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Contact your U.S. Senators and Representatives and demand action to reinstate the Davis-Bacon act prevailing wage provisions.
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One could also argue that the executive order will help facilitate increased racial diversity in the building of projects - important in a place such as New Orleans - as many local unions cut out competitive black and Latino labor through various rules. Would it not also lead to the employment of more people (which would certainly help lower the black unemployment rate)?
If certain unions are engaging in racial discrimination in apprenticeship programs, then we need to deal with that issue. I do think unions and efforts to make employers pay a living wage such as the Davis-Bacon act have helped workers at the bottom end of the wage scale. Lower wages are no guarnatee that the local residents in New Orleans will get the jobs. The Department of Homeland Security has announced that they were not impose sanctions against contractors who hire employees without proper documentation of legal residency. This decision will turn New Orleans and the rest of the Katrina-impacted Gulf Coast into a magnet for illegal aliens. Guess who will be getting the construction labor jobs working for less than minimum wage ?
Shay's post above reminds me to give a plug to her blog Booker Rising. The blog is written from a moderate to conservative black perspective, but has a lot of items of interest to all Americans. Check it out with the link below:
http://www.bookerrising.blogspot.com
If anyone has doubts about the real agenda behind the Bush suspension of Davis-Bacon wage provisions, check out the column by Marcela Sanchez in the 9/22/05 Washington Post. Our so-called Department of Homeland Security has agreed not to sanction contractors who hire undocumented workers. The Bush Administration has invited every illegal alien willing to work sub-minimum wage to the Katrina impacted Gulf Coast.
http://tinyurl.com/yvwoa
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