posted on September 1, 2003 12:18:24 PM new
yep that a boy BUSH, this is how to stimulate the economy...NOT.....that much less money to circulate within the system, that much less spending, and thus the domino affect takes place...........and those people who stand with BUSH, are contributors to the decline of a once great nation, traitors, to the American people.....
THE GRINCH THAT STOLE LABOR DAY
by Greg Palast
Friday, August 29, 2003
In celebration of the working person's holiday, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has announced the Bush Administration's plan to end the 60-year-old law which requires employers to pay time-and-a-half for overtime.
I'm sure you already knew that -- if you happened to have run across page 15,576 of the Federal Register.
According to the Register, where the Bush Administration likes to place it's little gifts to major campaign donors, 2.7 million workers will lose their overtime pay for a "benefit" of $1.53 billion. I put "benefit" in quotes because, in the official cost-benefit analysis issued by Bush's Labor Department, the amount employers will now be able to slice out of workers' pockets is tallied on the plus side of the rules change.
Nevertheless, workers getting their pay snipped shouldn't complain, because they will all be receiving promotions. These employees will be re-classified as managers exempt from the law. The change is promoted by the National Council of Chain Restaurants. You've met these 'managers' - they're the ones in the beanies and aprons whose management decisions are, "Hold the lettuce on that."
My favorite of Chao's little amendments would re-classify as "exempt professionals" anyone who learned their skill in the military. In other words, thousands of veterans will now lose overtime pay. I just can't understand why Bush didn't announce that one when he landed on the aircraft carrier.
CHOICE NUMBER FOUR: BREAK THE LAW
Now I should say that, according to Chao's press office, the changes will actually extend overtime benefits to 1.3 million burger flippin' managers. How does that square with the billion dollar "benefit" to business owners? Simple: The Chao hounds at the Labor Department suggest that employers CUT WAGES so that, added to the new "overtime" pay, the employes won't actually take home a dime more.
I can hear the moaners and bleeding hearts saying this sounds like the Labor Department is telling Big Business how to evade the law. Yep, that's what the Department is doing. Right there on page 15,576 of the Federal Register it says,
"Affected employers would have four choices concerning potential payroll costs: (4) converting salaried employees' basis of pay to an hourly rate that result in virtually no changes to the total compensation paid those workers."
And in case some employer is dense as a president and doesn't get the hint, Madame Chao repeats, " The fourth choice above results in virtually no (or only a minimal) increase in labor costs."
For decades the courts have thrown the book at cheapskate bosses who chisel workers out of legal overtime by cutting base pay this way but now they'll have a new defense: Bush made me do it.
But then, there likely will not be any cases against employers anyway since Chao herself is supposidly the labor cop whose job it is to stop paycheck theft. She's well qualified for that job. Her resume reads, "Married to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky." I called her press office to ask if she qualifies for overtime, but they'd left the office early.
And there is good news for our sporting President. Word from the White House is he'll be golfing on the Labor Day weekend. Under Chao's rules he need not worry if he wants to replay that hole. "Exempt professionals" who cannot earn overtime - once defined as doctors, lawyers and those with specialized college degrees - will now include anyone who provides skilled advice like caddies ("You might try the other end of the club, Mr. President".
THE ACORN FALLS ONLY SO FAR
Finally, on this Labor Day weeend, it's time this nation took a cold look at the issue of hard-core unemployment. Neo-conservatives have warned us about families that pass on joblessness from generation to generation.
Take, for example, the sad case of the Bush family. When Poppy Bush was president unemployment hit a generational high of over 9 million Americans. Bill Clinton, through education and hard work, put more than 3 million of those citizens back on the job.
Now Bush Junior, repeating his family pattern of encouraging joblessness, has presided over the return of unemployment for 9 million Americans.
This was not unexpected, sociologists warn us. Hard core unemployment, through failed schooling and a don't-care attitude, takes on a nearly genetic character. The acorn falls only so far from the tree. Especially when the nut falls on its head.
Labor Day has gone all soft on us, and it's time to harden up on its true meaning.
This holiday is not some vague tribute to men and women who labor. Rather, it's a radically-democratic declaration of the intent to build and sustain a middle class in America as a bold statement (and as fraught with perils) as Jefferson's Declaration and Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Far from being about taking a day off, Labor Day is about people taking democratic power.
Today, our middle-class power is being steadily filched by thieves in high places the BushCo government, the corporate-friendly Wobblycrats in congress, and the corporate Kleptocrats themselves. All are busily hauling truck loads of money and power out of the middle class to the top, dumping it into the hands of CEOs and the wealthy investors.
We've seen pieces of this theft: the looting of our public treasury through givebacks to the rich, the White House assault on regulatory protections for everything from workplace safety to the 40-hour workweek, the high-tech industry's despicable manipulation of immigration loopholes to displace middle-class American employees, the privatization push through every agency of government, the secretly negotiated trade deals that empower global corporations to overturn labor protections throughout the world, the maneuvering to gut the pension laws so corporations can evade their legal and moral obligations to retirees... and so many more.
But the whole adds up to far worse than the parts, for it's the very framework of our middle-class possibilities that they're dismantling, and it's the egalitarian ethic of the common good that they are abandoning. It's said that the rich and the poor will always be with us. Perhaps, but it is not assured anywhere or in any time that the middle class will be there.
This Labor Day is no different than the first one that workers themselves declared in 1882 it's about taking back power from the thieves who are trying to steal our middle-class future
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