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Building trades focus on politics, pensions and transportation bill

Date Posted: April 16 2004

WASHINGTON (PAI) – Politics, pensions and the fate of the massive highway-mass transit bill captured the attention and the focus of 3,000 Building Trades delegates meeting in Washington.

The delegates, in D.C. for their March 29-31 legislative conference, went to Capitol Hill to lobby for several causes. Two key ones: More money for the six-year highway-mass transit construction bill, and preserving the financial health of multi-employer pension plans.

As it turns out, prospects are bleak that those issues will turn out in favor of the building trades.

The Bush Administration opposes the higher-cost transportation bill approved by the House Infrastructure and Transportation Committee. Bush wants $256 billion over six years, not the $318 billion pushed by the GOP-led Senate, even though each billion dollars creates an estimated 47,000 jobs.

Bush also opposes relief for the multi-employer pension plans, which like other pension plans, lost billions of dollars in asset values in the three-year stock market slump. See related story.

Without new standards for calculating pensions, multi-employer plans, which are prevalent in construction, would have to ante up millions for future payments.

Speakers emphasized those struggles, and everyone from AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney to Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Illinois U.S. Senate nominee Barack Obama (D) stressed the current regime’s anti-worker policies and the need for a change in government in Washington.

“This election is about jobs, jobs, jobs, good jobs,” said Sweeney. “We need leaders who believe in us. Our president has been AWOL on jobs.”

All got loud ovations, led by Clinton and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). After that greeting, Clinton said of the GOP: “What’s the first thing they do when they come in? They throw project labor agreements out the window.

“Then they begin an assault on Davis-Bacon, and then on overtime. They were intent on undermining the standard of living and the income of ordinary Americans,” she said.

After reciting other GOP abuses – turning the budget surplus into a deficit, tax cuts for the rich, endangering the pensions, forcing state and local governments to raise taxes, and to fund homeland security – Clinton challenged delegates: “If you think this has been hard to take for the last three years, imagine what it’ll be like with no election to face.

“They’ll want to transform America and the world, concentrate wealth and power and implement their right-wing agenda.”

The sole exception to the political talk was the sole GOPer, Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), an Infrastructure and Transportation Committee member who dealt with the highway-mass transit bill.

He reminded delegates his panel approved a bipartisan version of that bill that was $119 billion more than Bush wanted. LaHood said the bipartisan bill would create thousands of jobs and that it includes Davis-Bacon wage protection guarantees.

But, facing Bush opposition, the panel approved that big bill but did not send it to the full GOP-run House. Instead it sent a $274 billion transit-highway bill out, which was approved by the House.

“The Republicans have also refused to vote on billions for water treatment, school construction and roads because they don’t want to vote for Davis-Bacon’s prevailing wages,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) added.

Senators told unionists their bill is larger – $318 billion over six years – and they hope to prevail in negotiations later. Bush threatens to veto anything larger than what he demands.

Sweeney, Clinton and Harkin all said Bush wants to cut overtime. So did Pelosi: “Bush calls it ‘payroll adjustment.’ We call it what it is: ‘A pay cut for working families.'”

Sweeney and Building Trades Department President Edward Sullivan emphasized backing politicians who back workers. “Let your representatives and senators know you will fight them if they don’t fight for you,” Sullivan said. He said on March 30 that his department’s endorsement list of pro-worker lawmakers is bipartisan, including Democrats and several GOP-ers, such as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

Harkin discussed the GOP parliamentary maneuvers that prevented a Senate vote – which labor would have won – to protect overtime. Then, with a quip, he summed up the political theme:

“All you ever need to know about this election you learned in driver’s ed,” he said. Referring to an automatic-shift car, Harkin pointed out, “If you want to go backward, put it in ‘R.’ And if you want to go forward, put it in ‘D.’ “