WASHINGTON (PAI) - Speaking to a sun-splashed rally of building trades delegates workers on Capitol Hill, and a conference in a hotel ballroom - a number of pro-worker politicians told members of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department that the new Democratic-run 110th Congress would pass several key job-creating public works bills.

And all with Davis-Bacon prevailing wage provisions.

The March 27 rally was the midpoint of the Building Trades Department's annual legislative conference, which drew 3,000 delegates from around the nation. Key issues that sent the workers to lobby lawmakers included the Employee Free Choice Act and several public works bills.

"It shouldn't be this hard to give American workers a voice in the workplace," said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), a 20-year Iron Worker and former president of Local 7 in Boston. "The only way it'll become right and safe on the job is if we have the power to stand up to the employer and say: 'We have the right to a decent workplace.'"

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), said he was one of 15 GOPers to support the Employee Free Choice Act (HR 800) because, as a conservative, he knows "labor is both a pillar of our prosperity and of the middle class." McCotter warned that "If the bitter struggle persists" between workers and management "it'll result in the destruction of both American labor and American business."

Many of the lawmakers concentrated on the construction workers' causes, notably preservation of the Davis-Bacon Act. That act mandates prevailing wages, state by state, for all federally funded construction projects. In their prior 12-year reign over Congress, GOP leaders tried to repeal Davis-Bacon, but BCTD lobbying beat them. GOP President George W. Bush tried to waive it for Katrina-hit areas in 2005, but BCTD enlisted Republicans to force him to back down.

But as a result of the wrangling, key public works legislation, such as the Clean Water Act and another bill renewing a $14 billion federal revolving fund for state and local treatment plants, was held up.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney laid it on the line to building trades delegates: "It's a good thing we stayed on the job, because over the past three decades, a bunch of anti-worker, anti-union, anti-middle-class crackpots and their corporate supporters have really done a job on America."

The building trades and the Communication Workers - who also held a convention in Washington that week - also heard from a number of candidates running for president. Invited were Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).

Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel was invited but did not attend. None of the five GOP hopefuls - including Hagel - who addressed the Fire Fighters union in mid-March even discussed labor rights, much less backed the legislation.

All the Democrats stressed their pro-worker stands, and all strongly supported the Employee Free Choice Act, labor-backed legislation designed to level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing drives and in bargaining over first contracts.

Clinton called the bill "as American as apple pie."

Biden coupled his support of the EFCA with his repeated warning that President Bush is waging war on unions, too. "These guys want you out of the way. It's time to draw a line in the dust and say: 'No way!'" he declared.

The Democratic-run House passed the bill (HR 800) last month. But the Senate GOP plans to filibuster it - talk it to death - and President Bush promises to veto it. That threat drew scorn from the presidential hopefuls, Dodd and Richardson included. "In 2008, unions will come out and we'll have a Democratic president," Richardson said, after citing union turnout in prior elections and praising building trades and CWA members for their get-out-the-vote efforts.

"We've got to stand up for the middle class and the best way to do that is to support unions," he added. "Republicans have passed right-to-work laws, but I'll fight by your side for the Employee Free Choice Act until every worker has the unfettered right to join a union."

Added Dodd: "The time is long overdue that we had an administration that understands what it means to put in a day's work in a safe workplace, with a secure retirement, and improving collective bargaining rights…empowering working people and creating jobs."

Clinton agreed and added she would "end this practice of harassing and bureaucratizing labor organizations, making them run through hoops" - the hundreds of pages of forms and paperwork, disclosing spending on everything from paychecks to paper clips, that the Bush Labor Department now forces unions to fill out. "

Clinton advocated building "21st-Century infrastructure" in her speech to the BCTD.
"That means we need bold leadership on project labor agreements," she said. PLAs, which unions sign with contractors setting out union representation on the job, are more efficient than non-PLA construction, Clinton added, and said she would promote them.

Kucinich said "my first act as president would be to cancel NAFTA and the WTO," the job-losing trade treaties pushed by Presidents Clinton and Bush.

BCTD President Ed Sullivan later said unfair trade is a bigger issue for construction workers than is realized. He said when firms move plants overseas, construction of public works stops as U.S. workers lose their jobs and local governments lose income. And the plants that would have been built here, with U.S. labor, are instead built abroad.

Obama turned on the crowd at the Building Trades conclave, as he did at CWA, by casting his campaign as a people's crusade for change. He said his young daughter asked him, on his first campaign trip to Iowa, "Daddy, why are we doing this?... My answer today would be that 'We're here because the country calls us, because history beckons us and challenges us with challenges as great as any we ever had."