Bush Nominates Another Fox to Guard Henhouse—At Workers’ Expense

[Omaha Steve]

Full story: http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/08/01/bush-nominates-another-fox-to-guard-henhouse%E2%80%94at-workers-expense/

Legislation & Politics, Bush & Co.

Aug 1

Bush Nominates Another Fox to Guard Henhouse—At Workers’ Expense

Knowing the Bush administration, maybe it’s not such a surprise that President Bush wants a former lawyer for Wal-Mart—with a long paper trail outlining his opposition to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA’s) overtime pay and other provisions—to run the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD).

After all, one of Bush’s major domestic goals was to gut the FLSA’s overtime eligibility rules. The new rules, muscled through in 2004, mean millions of workers no longer have overtime pay protection.

During the debate on those new rules, Paul DeCamp, Bush’s WHD nominee, wrote that the proposed changes in overtime laws represented:

a window of opportunity, particularly in light of the federal elections of 2002, for the business community to achieve positive results that can bring the FLSA into the 21st century.

During this morning’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s confirmation hearing, AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel testified that DeCamp’s long legal career has been spent:

defending employers against workers in a wide range of employment matters, including FLSA collective actions and sexual harassment individual and class actions, and he has served as counsel to Wal-Mart appealing the certification of a nationwide class of 1.6 million women alleging systematic gender discrimination in pay and promotions.