Cheney and NAM Want to Protect Workers? Yeah, Right! (W's next veto?)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/02/14/cheney-and-nam-want-to-protect-workers-yeah-right/

Cheney and NAM Want to Protect Workers? Yeah, Right!

by Mike Hall, Feb 14, 2007

Who knew Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) held the cause of workers’ rights so closely to their hearts? They are so dedicated to workers’ rights that both the Bush administration and NAM vow to do everything in their power to squash the Employee Free Choice Act.

With friends like these…

Cheney promised NAM today that President Bush would veto the Employee Free Choice Act if it passes the House and Senate and gets to his desk.

Well, that’s no surprise. After all, the Bush administration and NAM share their extreme anti-union views and agenda. But Cheney’s reasoning, which echoes the business group’s public relations campaign against the bill, is priceless:

Our administration rejects any attempt to short-circuit the rights of workers.

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers could make their own decisions about whether to form unions free from management interference and intimidation. That’s a pretty good definition of workers’ rights. The Employee Free Choice Act would:

* Establish stronger penalties for violations of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations,
* Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes, and
* Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

The Bush administration’s definition of workers’ rights is something far different.

This is the same administration that has attacked the collective bargaining and workplace rights of federal workers in the Defense Department and Homeland Security Department with new personnel rules so extreme that federal courts have blocked large portions of them from taking effect.

It is the same administration that, under the guise of national security, has barred Transportation Security Administration airport screeners from joining together in a union.

It is the same administration that engineered changes to Fair Labor Standards Act regulations that potentially eliminated overtime eligibility for millions of workers.

It is the same administration that approved Republican legislation to repeal a national ergonomic standard, which workplace health and safety professionals said would have prevented millions of repetitive strain injuries each year.

The list goes on and on and on. Click here for a complete rundown from the AFL-CIO’s BushWatch website.

Cheney told of Bush’s veto vow at a breakfast meeting of 200 members of NAM in Washington, D.C., to kick off the group’s lobbying efforts against the Employee Free Choice Act and other legislative priorities. (The House Education and Labor Committee is expected to report the bill out of committee today, and Republican members are expected to offer a series of weakening amendments to the bill. We’ll keep you posted on the action.)

Pat Cleary, senior vice president for communications at NAM, summed up the group’s legislative goals:

What we want is for government to get out of our way.

Unless, of course, the government, in this case Bush and Cheney, can do the group’s bidding.