Oct. 26—In response to working families and their unions, as well as community and religious groups and some members of Congress, President George W. Bush on Oct. 26 rescinded his executive order that allowed contractors to pay substandard wages to construction workers rebuilding Gulf Coast areas devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The order, which suspended the federal Davis-Bacon Act, now will expire Nov. 8.
Grassroots activists sent more than 350,000 e-mails and letters to their representatives demanding fair wages be reinstated for the Gulf Coast, where skilled, full-time workers average less than $20,000 a year in pay.
One of Bush’s first acts after Hurricane Katrina hit was suspending Davis-Bacon. Enacted in 1931, Davis-Bacon ensures high-quality work standards and community prevailing wage requirements for federally funded rebuilding projects. A few days after suspending Davis-Bacon, Bush also suspended affirmative action rules for Katrina contractors.
“President Bush has done the right thing by reversing his decision to suspend prevailing wage—but it’s only the first step. He must now reinstate affirmative action requirements for contractors in the Gulf and end his attempts to slash programs for working families while adding new tax breaks for the rich,” says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
Thirty-seven House Republicans urged the White House to reverse the suspension, and Rep. George Miller led unanimous opposition by Democrats to the president’s suspension.
Gulf Coast Wage Cut Hurt Workers and Their Families
“President Bush finally realized that his Gulf Coast wage cut was a bad idea that hurt the workers and their families affected by Katrina,” says Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). “But let me be clear—the president is backing down today only because he had no other choice.”
Miller forced a showdown on the Davis-Bacon suspension by using an unprecedented parliamentary procedure under the National Emergencies Act to introduce a resolution to restore Bush’s Gulf Coast pay cut (H.J. Res. 69). Under the law, the House would have been required to vote on Miller’s resolution no later than Nov. 4—a vote many observers believed workers would have won.
All Democratic House members also were supporting a separate bill to rescind Bush’s wage cut, but Republican leaders in the House did not bring it to a vote. "The President is doing the right thing," said Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio). "You may save a couple of dollars an hour by suspending Davis-Bacon, but you invite all kinds of other problems—including the hiring of unskilled workers." LaTourette and Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), co-chairs of the Republican Working Group on Labor, spearheaded a letter to Bush signed by 37 Republicans calling for the reinstatement of the prevailing wage rules and suggesting the Nov. 8 date.
At least nine times in the past decade, extremists in the Republican party tried unsuccessfully in Congress to repeal or undermine the Davis-Bacon law, leading critics to charge the Bush administration has taken advantage of the hurricane disaster to move an agenda it otherwise could not.
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