10/04/05: Bush Rebuilding Order Favors Contractors Over Wage Earners - David Newby

Bush Rebuilding Order Favors Contractors Over Wage Earners

The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: 9A

Tuesday, October 4, 2005
David Newby president Wisconsin State AFL-CIO

Dear Editor:

Estimates now top hundreds of billions for reconstruction of the Gulf Coast. Apparently President Bush is ensuring his gang's share of the loot. On Sept. 8, Bush suspended the application of Davis-Bacon minimum wage requirements on federally funded reconstruction projects in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and parts of Florida.

The prevailing wage requirements under Davis-Bacon ensure that employees of contractors are paid local minimum wages for their jobs in construction. In the affected areas these wages range from $9 to $14 an hour for laborers, carpenters, electricians and others who will undertake the difficult work of making these ravaged areas functional and, more importantly, livable for themselves and their neighbors.

President Bush has eliminated the minimum wage paid to these individuals who have already faced storm, flood and fire in their lives. While the president makes sure nothing over a few dollars makes it into the pockets of those most in pain and whose skills are most needed to rebuild our Gulf Coast, he has made no law or proclamation that would prevent war- and disaster-savvy contractors from filling their carpetbags with those same wages they will not pay.

I have a disturbing vision of a flotilla of yachts carrying contractors out of our southern Gulf, with oversized carpetbags full of spoils earned for them by those who toiled for cents on the dollar by proclamation of George W. Bush.