BushWatch 2006: Another Year of Attacks on Workers

by James Parks, Dec 31, 2006

Every year since taking office in 2001, the Bush administration has attacked working families. This past year was no exception. Here is a look at some of the most egregious anti-worker actions supported, proposed and taken by the Bush administration in 2006.

For a complete list of President Bush’s attacks on workers, visit the AFL-CIO BushWatch.

• In September, the Republican-majority National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) enabled employers to reclassify charge nurses as “supervisors.” The expanded definition means 8 million workers, including nurses, building trades workers, newspaper and television employees and others, may be barred from joining unions.
• The Bush administration quietly let expire in early January a controversial sweetheart deal with Wal-Mart that gave the giant retailer advance notice of any federal child labor or safety inspections. The U.S. Labor Department’s inspector general found that the department allowed lawyers for Wal-Mart to write their own settlement agreement with the federal Wage and Hour Division after the giant retailer was cited for violating child labor laws.
• Again in September, the Bush administration declared itself exempt from nearly two decades of federal legal precedent that shields whistle-blowers under the Clean Water Act. Federal employees who report unhealthy conditions in the workplace, environmental problems, public safety hazards and other situations had been protected from retaliation for their actions.
• Over Labor Day weekend, the Bush Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) unilaterally imposed work rules on its air traffic controllers that the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) said could reduce passenger safety.
• The U.S. Coast Guard, part of Bush’s Department of Homeland Security, in September, gave a Philadelphia shipbuilder the green light to outsource U.S. jobs. The Coast Guard gave Aker Philadelphia Shipyard Inc. permission to import large parts—equipment, bows, propellers, ready-made crew quarters—from Korean manufacturer Hyundai. U.S. workers at Aker no longer will create ships from stem to stern.
• In November, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said the federal government does not need to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for seniors. Although millions of retired seniors say they went to the polls because of dissatisfaction with Bush’s Medicare prescription drug plan, Bartlett said that prices had “come down” and drugs were already cheap enough
• In July 2006, Bush’s Internal Revenue Service moved to halve the number of lawyers who audit the tax returns of individuals subject to gift and estate taxes. In an interview with The New York Times, Sharyn Phillips, a veteran IRS estate-tax lawyer, called the cuts a “back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax.”
• Also in July, the New York Daily News revealed the Bush White House gave then-Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christine Todd Whitman the power to bury embarrassing documents by classifying them “secret” after the Sept. 11 attacks.
• On April 27, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it no longer would reimburse contractors for the cost of their employees’ defined-benefit plans—plans that pay a guaranteed benefit at retirement. The move will encourage existing contractors to dump their traditional pensions in favor of 401(k)-type plans.
• In June, the Bush administration issued new rules that made it more difficult for states to serve people struggling to move from welfare to work. Bush set new and stringent requirements for what constitutes “work” and “training” that could stifle innovations that had reduced the number of welfare recipients from 12.2 million to 4.4 million.

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