From the summer 2008 issue of the IBEW Journal

Eight Years On the Wrong Track

The long primary season is over. Millions of Americans, including an impressive army of first-time voters and union members, are mobilizing for the 2008 presidential election. The world is watching our nation’s democratic process and the sharpening presidential contest.

While the media puts the voting public under the microscope of commentators and pollsters, be prepared for a long fall season in which events on and off the campaign trail will be magnified and sensationalized.

But there is one sensational story behind this year’s election. It is the story of what has happened to far too many hard-working Americans who have endured a declining standard of living over the past eight years. 

In this issue of the IBEW Journal, we zero in on the record of the Bush administration and the policies that have led an estimated 76 percent of the American people to conclude that our country is on the wrong track. 

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user respres

In the fall issue, we will analyze each candidate’s answer for fixing our problems so that we can put our nation and working families back on track to progress.

Economic Free Fall

When President Bush came to the White House in 2001 he inherited a strong and growing economy. The federal government posted a surplus, job growth was strong and unemployment was at a historic low. And Americans felt confident about the state of the economy. Even in a struggling state like Michigan, more than 70 percent of residents were optimistic about their economic future according to a poll taken by Michigan State University in 1999.

But the policies of the Bush administration have taken their toll. The popping of the housing bubble last year set off a full-blown mortgage and credit crisis, which has led to tens of thousands of foreclosures and dragged down the economy. The foreclosure rate surged 50 percent in 2007, while U.S employers slashed 63,000 jobs last February alone, the worst one-month drop in five years. (AFL-CIO)

Declining wages, scant benefits and debt-fueled consumer spending are taking a fearsome toll on working families, who are finding the road to the middle class increasingly rocky. Since Bush came to office, 5.4 million Americans have fallen into poverty. While corporate profits have doubled, weekly wages are only 1.4 percent higher than they were eight years ago. (Center for American Progress) Prices for basic consumer goods have also seen a big spike. Eggs are nearly 30 percent more expensive than they were one year ago, while the cost of milk has risen nearly 15 percent. (EPI)

But for the wealthiest Americans things have never been so good. The richest 13,000 households earn nearly as much income as the bottom 20 million and the top one percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. (EPI)

Bush’s tax cuts, largely responsible for inflating the federal deficit to record levels, will end up costing the nation upwards of $2.6 trillion by the time his breaks for the top earners are set to expire in 2010, passing to the next generation an almost insurmountable debt. (Citizens for Tax Justice)

While promoted as a benefit to working families, the cuts have mainly been a boon to those who need it the least. The richest 1 percent will get an average yearly tax cut of $92,000 by the time the cuts expire in 2010, while the poorest 60 percent will receive on average less than $600. (Citizens for Tax Justice)

The amount of tax cuts going to the top 1 percent – totaling $79.5 billion – exceeds the annual budgets of both the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security (Citizens for Tax Justice)  

It’s the newest generation of workers who have suffered the most in the last eight years. Wages and benefits for workers entering the work force today, even for those with college degrees, are lower than they were before 2001. The number of young workers with health insurance is 5 percentage points lower than when Bush first entered office while less than half of them have retirement coverage. (EPI)

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user glenn.batuyong

Energy Policy Disaster

One of the biggest financial headaches for consumers is at the gas pump. In 2000, gas averaged $1.54 a gallon. It is now averaging $4, with prices up by more than 20 percent in the last year alone. But it’s not only consumers who are getting squeezed. Businesses are spending nearly $150 billion more for energy than they were five years ago driving up costs for nearly everything. (House Government Reform Committee, Democratic Staff, 3/16/06)

Out-of-control gas prices are the most public face of the failure of President Bush’s energy policy. With a campaign war chest built on the generosity of the oil industry, it’s no surprise that when it comes to kicking our dependence on foreign oil and taking steps to confront the climate crisis, Bush has been missing in action.
Since Bush announced his first energy plan five years ago, imports of foreign oil have risen to 65 percent of U.S. consumption, a rise of nearly 10 percent. (House Government Reform Committee, Democratic Staff, 3/16/06) Instead of opening up new reserves of oil in Iraq, the indefinite occupation has created instability throughout the Middle East that has driven up prices, forcing an even greater reliance on foreign providers like Saudi Arabia. 
Our reliance on oil has even graver consequences than what it’s doing to our wallets. Scientists are in almost universal agreement: human activity related to the release of greenhouse gases is leading up to potential catastrophic changes in the global temperatures and weather patterns.
While the growing green energy sector, including solar, wind and biofuels, is becoming a popular alternative to oil, it has received little support from the White House. Before the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006, the most Washington spent on green jobs was a paltry $30 million, while fossil fuels received almost $14 billion in tax subsidies.

Workers’ Rights Under Attack

The National Labor Relations Board was created in 1935 to protect the constitutional right of freedom of association in the workplace. Tens of thousands of working Americans took advantage of the new law and joined unions, laying the foundation for our modern middle class.

But under the Bush administration, the board – now stacked with Bush appointees – has worked to undermine the right to organize and collectively bargain.

In what has come to be known as the September massacre, the board issued more than 60 decisions intended to weaken workers’ rights. Below is a sample of their September 2007 rulings.

• Nearly 50 Florida hotel workers were denied back pay after they were illegally fired for going on strike. The board argued that awarding back pay would “reward idleness.”
• On September 29, the board ruled that in a situation when a union is recognized through a process of card-check neutrality, an employer must post a notice telling employees that if 30 percent of them sign a petition saying they don’t want a union, a board-sponsored election must be held. On the same day, the board ruled that if a majority of workers signed cards to remove a union, the employers can decertify without holding a vote.
• The board ruled that it was perfectly permissible for an employer to target union supporters for layoffs, and then to force them to sign release forms that prevented them from challenging the legality of their termination as a condition for receiving severance pay.

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user aflcio2008

The board’s most controversial decision involved three rulings it made in 2006, collectively known as the “Kentucky River” decisions, which changed the definition of supervisor to include nurses, newspaper and television employees, building trades workers and dozens of other job classifications, denying union rights to more than 8 million Americans.

President Bush’s commitment to an anti-workers’ rights agenda was made clear when, after years of work by labor unions, he threatened to veto the Employee Free Choice Act, which had passed the House with a bipartisan majority in 2007. The act would remove barriers to union representation by allowing workers to join a union through majority sign-up and increase penalties for union busting companies. A report by American Rights at Work found nearly half of workers feel pressured by management during board-supervised elections.

The act failed to get the two-thirds needed in the Senate to prevent a GOP filibuster.

The anti-worker bias of this administration had also been reflected in the federal courts. Of the 109 cases workers and their unions have won before the labor relations board, the Court of Appeals refused to enforce 88 of them. And the bias goes all the way to the top.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled against former Goodyear Tire employee Lilly Ledbetter, who sued the company after she discovered that she was being paid less than her male co-workers for doing the same job. A House amendment to overturn the court’s decision was once again blocked by the Senate GOP, but not before Bush threatened to veto the bill.

‘Free’ Trade’s Hidden Costs

Our nation was once the world’s greatest provider. But after eight years of the Bush administration, our largest export is empty containers headed to China and other nations to be stuffed with commodities for Wal-Mart and our neighborhood pharmacies. Meanwhile, congressional hearings are held to investigate the safety of imports—the toys full of lead, toxic prescription drugs and tainted food that have lead to illness and death.

Economists who defend the current administration’s push for more “free trade” agreements like NAFTA ignore policies of our trading partners that put their own workers and the environment at risk. President Bush has refused to take a tough stand against China manipulating its currency or violating the rights of workers.

The administration’s apologists say that our current trade policies have been a net gain for our economy, filling our appetites for cheap consumer goods and adding jobs centered upon exporting and importing. But the statistics tell a different story:

• Three million manufacturing jobs lost since George W. Bush took office. (AFL-CIO)
• 520,000 white collar jobs exported since 2000. (AFL-CIO)
• Increased trade is responsible for about 20 percent of the recent increase in income inequality in the United States. This translates into a decrease in real wages for the majority of American workers -- roughly a 6 percent loss for two-thirds of workers who lack a college degree. (AFL-CIO)

Health Care: Declining Coverage, Increasing Costs

In the years since President Bush took office, he and the Republican Congress have stood by while the health care crisis has worsened, offering no realistic solutions while the situation has gone from bad (39.8 million uninsured in 2000) to worse (more than 47 million uninsured today).

Incomes are not keeping pace with the rapidly rising cost of health care, particularly as employers seek to push more costs onto the backs of workers.

Nearly 6.5 million fewer workers had employer-sponsored health insurance in 2006 than in 2000. The Los Angeles Times reported in April that more than 30,000 employers in the private sector stopped offering benefits to workers altogether between 2001 and 2005.

“If our members are going to continue to enjoy the benefits of health care coverage, we have to keep on pushing management,” said John Walsh, International Representative in the Political and Legislative Department. “We have got to keep fighting for the benefits we already have, otherwise we face losing them.”

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user aflcio2008

Financial problems due to the high cost of health care are not isolated to the working poor. For those who have been able to keep their insurance, coverage is increasingly hard to hold onto. Between 2001 and 2005, the Los Angeles Times reported, the average worker with benefits witnessed his or her earnings rise 3 percent while paying 30 percent more for health insurance coverage. Drug company profits have risen dramatically as more families pay out-of-pocket for care that used to be a built-in benefit.

Health insurance companies in business to make money – not provide the best care – are increasingly finding more ways to maximize profits and deny coverage. Medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States, a Harvard study found.

Instead of offering real solutions, Bush is proposing to cut health care benefits to the poor. Bush’s 2009 budget proposes $18.2 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next five years, which will leave more children of lower-income families with little or no coverage.

Bush also recently vetoed the bipartisan State Children's Health Insurance Program, which would have covered more than 3.3 million additional children of low-income families. To elaborate on his decision, Bush was quoted in The Nation saying he believes “government cannot provide affordable health care.”

In just one example of the wider problem, the current contract situation with Verizon shows the dire crisis working families face. Their five-year contract expires this summer, and members are fighting to ensure that medical coverage is included in their next contract.

“We went on a strike in 1989 to preserve our health care benefits,” said IBEW Local 2222 Business Manager Myles Calvey, who is also an International Executive Council member. “We are facing the exact same scenario in 2008.”
           
The High Cost of War

While the tax base of hundreds of cities and towns suffers from plummeting property values and reduced payrolls, the current administration has driven our nation into greater debt with a seemingly unlimited military budget for the war in Iraq.

The military budget is riddled with waste and cost overruns by some of the same politically-connected contractors who stand in the way of workers when they try to organize at home. The majority of Americans no longer support the way this war is being fought.

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major weapons systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion and are delivered nearly two years late on average. 

In 2003, the White House said that the Iraq war would cost from $50 billion to $60 billion and that Iraq would rebuild using its domestic oil revenues. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Today, the total cost of the war is expected to reach $3 trillion. Each day, the federal government spends $435 million in Iraq. As oil nears $120 a barrel, the Iraqi government is pocketing a $70 billion windfall in oil revenues this year. The money is adding to a surplus, not being spent on infrastructure repairs, which are still falling on the U.S. (The Week)

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, with $435 million per day, the United States could enroll 58,000 children in Head Start; put 8,900 police officers on the street; provide health insurance to 329,200 low-income children; hire 10,700 border patrol agents; provide college Pell grants to 163,700 students and provide foreclosure prevention counseling to 260,000 families.

But the financial cost of the war pales in comparison to the human toll. The Pentagon’s extension of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan to 15 months from 12 months has resulted in the longest Army combat tours since World War II. Dwell time, the period between deployments, has also been reduced for soldiers, many of whom have served two or more tours. Many service members are at a physical and psychological breaking point. Suicides increased 13 percent between 2006 and 2007. Thirty percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are experiencing post traumatic stress syndrome. Over 40,000 have been treated for substance abuse. Despite this growing need for professionals, the military has seen a 22 percent decrease in licensed psychologists in recent years.

The IBEW membership rolls include thousands whose love of country led them to enlist in the military. The sons and daughters of working families form the bulk of the troops in Iraq. The administration’s poor treatment of our troops is reason enough to call for a change in Washington.  USA Today reports that a Defense Department audit found that nearly half of the Army’s contractors performed no tests on body armor before sending it to the battlefield.

A bipartisan majority of the Senate has passed a new G.I. bill, introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), that will double current educational compensation for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Increased benefits will also be available to National Guard and Reserve veterans, above levels in the current G.I. bill.  After threatening to veto the measure, President Bush signed it. At the signing ceremony, Bush implied that he and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) were for the measure all along, despite their record of opposition.

America’s Neglected Infrastructure

Our nation’s bridges, roads and railroads are aging and failing. The United States needs an administration that understands that putting Americans to work rebuilding our infrastructure is essential to maintaining our nation’s productivity and our standard of living.

Look at the facts:

• Poor maintenance of roadways results in 13,000 traffic fatalities each year.
• 150,000 bridges are rated structurally deficient or obsolete.
• More than 3,500 dams are considered unsafe. 
• $11 billion is needed annually to replace aging drinking water facilities.
• $1.6 trillion of investment is needed for infrastructure repairs and rebuilding over the next five years. (American Society of Civil Engineers)
• America needs $2 billion a year in rail infrastructure investment to meet the minimum freight transportation needs outlined by the Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user FreaksAnon

Despite these extensive needs, the federal government has reduced investment in public infrastructure, leaving state and local governments to fill a gap that keeps widening.