Attack on Workers' Rights in Phony Packaging

Right-wing forces and their allies in the House and Senate - with support from corporate America - have an anti-worker agenda that uses duplicitous packaging in an effort to try to fool the American people:

• The so-called "Paycheck Protection Act" is in reality an effort to block workers from participating in the political process by regulating union political fundraising while ignoring political contributions from big business and wealthy individuals.
  
  
• The so-called "Welfare Flexibility Act" is in reality an attack on public workers and would replace them by privatizing some of their job functions.
  
  
• so-called "SAFE" Act is in reality a congressional ploy to gut Occupational Safety and Health
  protections, and
  
  
• so-called "Family Friendly Workplace Act" is in reality a measure that would allow employers to give workers comp time instead of paying overtime, and would eliminate the promise of time-and-a-half pay for 65 million American workers.
  
  Various speakers at the Legislative-Political Conference railed against these and other measures that would, to one degree or another, roll back or eliminate laws that organized labor has fought to enact over the last three quarters of a century.
  Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.) characterized all these extremist attacks on labor unions and workers' rights as "duplicitous," and said that "today's workers find themselves between a rock and a hard place." He has introduced legislation that would deny government contracts to any company that abuses provisions of the National Labor Relations Act and supports a proposal that would force companies to offer the same benefit package to temporary workers that permanent workers receive.
  
  Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, "We've got an agenda to block the assault on workers - and we will prevail, with your help." He notes that business already outspends labor 11 to one in politics.
  
  Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) pointed out that he and his colleagues in the House of Representatives are engaged in a defensive battle for working people every day. "Without reform of the labor laws - laws that would strengthen, not weaken - organized labor and America's working people - everything is stacked against you," Gephardt warned.
  
  Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a prime target of the right because of her strong support of labor, said she sees a "constant assault on workers' rights" in this Congress.
  
  Other speakers who addressed CWA's 1998 Legislative-Political Conference include: Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.); Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Lois Capps
  
  (D-Calif.) and Karen Thurman (D-Fla.); Katie Whelan, executive director, Democratic Governors' Association; andGeorge Kourpias, president, National Council of Senior Citizens.