"We were just doing what we do best, using our skills, helping our communities." —Bobby Gray, IUOE Local 14

“We were just doing what we do best, using our skills, helping our communities,” says Bobby Gray. A member of Operating Engineers Local 14, Gray worked tirelessly as a crane operator for up to 16 hours a day throughout the nine-month process, cleaning up debris and removing bodies of many of the victims of the attack at the World Trade Center. Gray and the other workers worked 1.5 million hours, removed more than 1.8 million tons of rubble—and completed the work six months ahead of schedule and under budget.

“We just wanted to be there,” Gray, 47, says. “I feel fortunate to have worked there. To me it was America at its best.”

Facing new challenges on the job

  Like the 30,000 workers cleaning up the World Trade Center site, Gray suffered no immediate life-threatening injuries—but ultimately may face serious health problems after being exposed to carcinogens, asbestos and other health hazards. Some medical experts have estimated at least half the workers cleaning up the World Trade Center site will require treatment for serious diseases as a result of their exposure. “It’s like a sleeper. No one knows the extent of the damage. We may not know for years,” Gray says.

But in a clear slap in the face to the workers, President George W. Bush said Aug. 13 he would not fund $90 million sought by New York City union workers and state AFL-CIO leaders to establish a health-screening program for the workers. New York State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes says the money would be used to establish a lifelong screening program to track the workers who loaded and hauled debris, restored utilities and performed other cleanup work that exposed them to unknown quantities of several toxic substances.

Other workers are facing new challenges on the job after the attacks. Thousands of workers—postal employees, letter carriers, emergency medical service workers, airline pilots and flight attendants—now must be prepared to deal with a possible threat from chemical or biological substances that might be sent through the mail or carried on board a plane in a passenger’s luggage. The Flight Attendants are lobbying Congress for training and tools to enable them to thwart potential hijackers on planes.

Thousands of New York City firefighters endure tremendous emptiness and sorrow at the loss of 343 of their brothers in the attacks, says Capt. Peter Gorman, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association/Fire Fighters Local 854.

“Some things are just hitting us now that the recovery is over. The emptiness was easier to deal with when we were focused on helping the families of the victims. It was like an extended family funeral. Everyone is there to support you until the funeral is over, then you’re left alone and the next day the emptiness sets in,” he says. Many of the firefighters have sought psychological counseling, he says, and others are finding other ways to cope.

Behind the guise of security

	"No one is more interested in making their homeland secure than the dedicated men and women of the federal government who put their lives on the line every day of the year." —AFGE President Bobby Harnage

Hailed as America’s heroes one year ago, many workers whose efforts were critical to saving lives and shoring up the devastation following Sept. 11 today find themselves under attack from demands for concessions, threat of job loss—and even efforts to take away collective bargaining rights.

Bush, who praised the construction workers’ heroic efforts at Ground Zero, last year signed an executive order banning project labor agreements (PLAs) on federally funded construction projects. PLAs establish common work rules on large, multicontractor construction projects. A federal judge blocked Bush’s order on PLAs but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld Bush’s order in a July 12 ruling. The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department may appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some congressional Republicans are attempting to remove Davis-Bacon protections—which require construction workers be paid the local prevailing wage on federal infrastructure projects—from all projects related to the Homeland Security Department. Current rules allow for prevailing wages on projects funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), one of the agencies that will be merged into Homeland Security.

Also at stake is the right of federal workers on the front lines of homeland defense to belong to a union. Bush has proposed removing collective bargaining rights for about 50,000 employees in the new Homeland Security Department and denying the opportunity for a voice at work to 30,000 airport screeners expected to be hired for the first time as federal employees. Bush has threatened to veto any Homeland Security bill that includes collective bargaining rights.

These actions follow a Bush executive order in January excluding from collective bargaining hundreds of Justice Department employees, many of whom had been represented by unions for decades. Says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI): “I think it’s outrageous that there are moves to limit the democratic rights to bargain under the guise of security when it was union members who came to the rescue on Sept. 11.”

Bobby Harnage, president of AFGE, which represents 600,000 federal employees, says, “No one is more interested in making their homeland secure than the dedicated men and women of the federal government who put their lives on the line every day of the year.

“Union representation allows federal employees to speak out about problems they see on the job without fear of retribution from their superiors.”

Before approving the new department, the House in July defeated an amendment by Rep. Connie Morella (R-Md.) to keep collective bargaining rights for Homeland Security employees who were represented by a union when the new agency was created. The Senate will take up the issue of collective bargaining rights for Homeland Security employees this month.

On the line: collective bargaining

	"The leaders of big airline corporations ought to be ashamed of their hypocritical behavior." —TWU President Sonny Hall

The nation’s transportation workers—the vanguard of defense if a plane or train is hijacked or under attack—also are fighting to stop the airlines from severely weakening the collective bargaining process and to prevent Bush administration efforts attacking Amtrak. The airline unions are battling industry-backed legislation that would allow the Secretary of Transportation to impose binding and compulsory arbitration—which Transport Workers President Sonny Hall calls a winner-take-all, “baseball style” arbitration process—and to block legal strike actions. This process would deny workers the right to negotiate issues such as wages, benefits and safety by tilting the collective bargaining process toward management, the leaders of six transportation unions said in a letter to Congress.

The major airline carriers, which received $10 billion in federal bailout money after Sept. 11—although the thousands of displaced airline workers received no aid—“don’t miss a day pleading poverty or demanding massive wage and benefit concessions from their workers,” says Hall, who heads the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department. “Yet they hire the most expensive Washington lobbyists money can buy to advance a bill to decimate airline workers’ rights. The leaders of these big airline corporations ought to be ashamed of their hypocritical behavior.”

To counter the airline industry’s lobbying efforts, the Air Line Pilots union is launching its SCAM—Slanted, Compulsory Arbitration Method—campaign, which will focus on educating union members and lobbying Congress to defeat the bill.

The Bush administration, under the guise of national security, threatened to call out the National Guard—and perhaps the military—to support a government-precipitated lockout in the collective bargaining talks between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association.

At the same time, Amtrak employees are mobilizing and lobbying members of Congress to ensure adequate funding for the national railway system, under attack by the Bush administration, which is trying to privatize Amtrak and put the railway system’s 23,000 workers out of a job. Although the nation’s airlines received billions in bailout funds after Sept. 11, Amtrak is under a congressional mandate to become operationally self-sufficient beginning in 2003. Noting that every developed nation subsidizes a national rail transportation system, Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), chairman of the Commerce Committee, is calling for the repeal of Amtrak’s self-sufficiency requirement.

Facing the threat of Amtrak shutting down due to a lack of operating funds, working families mounted a campaign that led to Congress in June approving a temporary bailout package that would keep the trains running through August.

As the price for the stopgap funding, the Bush administration demanded the rail system seek concessions from workers, even though the employees took a wage freeze from 1987 to 1992 and have been working without a contract for more than two years.

Congress is considering several bills to fund Amtrak, and the TTD estimates it will take at least $1.2 billion to keep the trains running through the end of fiscal 2003. Complicating the decision is a recommendation by a hand-picked Bush administration commission that Amtrak be privatized and its routes be sold. The privatization model has been tried in Great Britain, Hall says, and has been a failure with chronic delays, lousy service, high fares—and multiple fatal accidents.

Balancing the budget on the backs of workers

	From America@work, September 2002.

Across the country, state and local public employees are bearing the brunt of a $50 billion cumulative budget deficit caused by the recession, skyrocketing health care costs, staggering unemployment and years of tax giveaways to wealthy individuals and large corporations. The biggest factor behind the red ink is diminishing federal aid to states as more and more money—at least $70 billion so far—is targeted for homeland security. States have used up two-thirds of their cash on hand and “rainy-day funds” trying to cope with budget crises, according to a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Many state and local governments are seeking to balance the budgets on the backs of working families, cutting jobs and vital community services. In Illinois, Gov. George Ryan (R) plugged a $1.5 billion shortfall by eliminating 7,000 jobs through layoffs, closing two prisons and cutting funds for vitally needed services such as schools, hospitals and nursing homes.

In Florida, a combination of massive tax cuts and a loss of $350 million in pension funds invested in Enron Corp. stock left the state with few resources. Since Sept. 11, Florida has cut more than $1 billion from education, says Florida AFL-CIO President Cindy Hall.

The struggles state and local workers are facing one year after Sept. 11 are a result of the federal government “offloading a lot of expenses to the states,” says Elaine Bernard, executive director of Harvard University’s Trade Union Program.

The situation also shows workers who their real friends are, she says. “The unions were there for the workers and they still are. The government was there to applaud and give a moment of recognition. But then it’s not around when these workers are in need. It just shows the importance of people organizing themselves and having their own programs.”