GCIU Vice Pres. Lawrence Martinez meets newly elected U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud of Maine's 2nd District. Michaud is a member of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers International Union. He and served in the Maine State Senate before he was elected to Congress in November.

With 8.6 million Americans without jobs and a projected deficit of $199 billion this year, President Bush's proposal to give the wealthy another large tax cut is unfair and short-sighted, said GCIU Vice Pres. Lawrence Martinez.

Martinez, who chairs the General Board Legislative Committee and directs GCIU legislative activities, said the Bush administration's push to eliminate taxes on stock dividends "is just taking care of those who have–and it won't infuse a lot of money into the economy right away even though the economy is suffering now. Their argument is that, if we give money to the wealthy, it will trickle down to the rest of us. That's been tried before by George W. Bush in 2001 and by Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s and it hasn't worked yet."

A Commerce Department report in January said the economy remains weak, with growth in the final quarter of 2002 at just a 0.7 percent annual rate.

Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO noted in a new economic report that some 1.9 million Americans have been unemployed for six months or longer; wages have been stagnant and recently began falling; the "bleeding" of the manufacturing sector has cost 2.4 million jobs; personal bankruptcies have soared; fewer Americans have health insurance and those who do are paying much more for it; millions have lost their retirement savings linked to the stock market declines; and the trade deficit is at an "unprecedented" level.

The AFL-CIO said the Congressional Budget Office's projection of a 10-year budget deficit of $1.2 trillion "is a breathtaking turnaround in the nation's fortunes and a devastating indictment of the Bush administration's failed economic policies."

Bush inherited a projected 10-year budget surplus of more than $3.1 trillion–not counting another $2.5 trillion surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund–from the Clinton administration and squandered most of that on the 2001 tax cut, which favored the wealthy and corporations, the AFL-CIO said. Bush's newest tax cut is projected to add another $1.6 trillion to long-term deficits.

'Deeply unfair'

To put it in perspective, the AFL-CIO said: "Half of America's families live on less each year than the president and vice president will get from these tax breaks alone."

"It is deeply unfair, lavishing rich benefits on the fortunate few while most Americans would get only $130 on average," said AFL-CIO Pres. John J. Sweeney. "And it will rob us of vital resources we need to improve health care, education and job training, and homeland security and public safety for all Americans. The president's plan does a disservice to America and should be rejected by Congress. We simply cannot afford further setbacks on the road to economic recovery and long-term economic health," Sweeney said.

Martinez noted that the Bush administration's response to increased plant closings was to discontinue the Labor Department's monthly report on mass layoffs.

Plant closings are hitting many Americans doubly hard, he said, because the law requiring companies to continue to make health insurance available to laid-off workers only applies if the company has other plants in operation.

Bush's only response to the health care crisis–with some 42 million Americans without health insurance–was to propose a plan to provide seniors with a prescription drug benefit but only if they leave their own Medicare doctors for HMOs. Martinez said this proposal is a thinly veiled push toward the privatization of Medicare. The AFL-CIO noted that far from being broke, the Medicare trust fund is projected to be solvent until 2030.

Martinez said the Bush administration also wants to privatize many other government functions, including the Government Printing Office where GCIU members work, the Postal Service, and the National Park Service. Martinez said that "not only would these plans undoubtedly erode wages, benefits and working conditions for tens of thousands of workers while probably costing taxpayers more money, but they also would erode the protections and services in these functions that were established to benefit all of the people."

Working families can't expect much help from majority leadership in the 108^th Congress. Even with Democrat Mary Landrieu's victory in the Dec. 6 runoff election in Louisiana, Republicans control the Senate by a 51 to 49 majority.

With the recount in Colorado's 7^th District that delivered a victory to Republican Bob Beauprez and the election of Democrat Ed Case to succeed the late Democrat Patsy T. Mink in Hawaii's 2^nd District, the House is controlled by what the AFL-CIO called "ultraconservative" leadership on a Republican majority of 229 to the Democrats' 204, with one independent.

According to labor analysts, the Republican majority is expected to push for Bush's tax cuts, as well as other items on their corporate sponsors' wish lists. The AFL-CIO said these include legislation to "gut" the 40-hour workweek and overtime laws established under Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and to eliminate political contribution payroll checkoff for union members–but not corporate political action funds.

In a demonstration of its anti-worker stance, the Republican majority in Congress already bowed to Bush's insistence on denying civil service protections and union representation for employees of the newly created Homeland Security Department, including 60,000 baggage screeners. Noting that hundreds of union workers risked their lives on Sept. 11, 2001, Sweeney said: "...once again, the administration has used the war [on terrorism] as a weapon to deny rights to the very workers it relies on to win the war."

Martinez said Bush is "so arrogant" in his anti-unionism that he refused to obey the law requiring labor representation on the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations, the primary trade advisory group to the president, until the AFL-CIO filed a lawsuit to force Bush to obey the law. Bush then appointed Teamsters Pres. James P. Hoffa to the committee.

Bush also is ignoring pleas for moderation in his court nominations. For example, in January, Bush resubmitted the nominations of Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen to the 5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who were rejected by the Democratic majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee last year over concerns by civil rights, women's, consumer and labor groups about the nominees' demonstrations of hostility to workplace and citizen rights and to environmental protection.

In another area of attack, Bush announced shortly before the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday that his administration is joining the case pending in the Supreme Court on the side against the University of Michigan's affirmative action program.

"President Bush's decision to take a stand that would push America backwards, while shocking, is just the latest blow against the advancements of women, people of color, workers, and the poor," the AFL-CIO's Sweeney said.

Congress also is expected to approve Bush's plans to engage in a costly–in terms of lives and dollars–war in Iraq. Sweeney and John Monks, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress of Great Britain, sent a joint letter to Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair urging them to "take every possible step to achieve the legitimate ends of disarming Iraq without recourse to war." The labor leaders also urged the United States and Britain to seek "a firm and broad consensus," particularly between the United States and European Union nations, before taking action.