President George W. Bush issued four new anti-worker, anti-union executive orders repealing rules protecting workers and labor-management relations that in some cases date back to the Nixon administration.

The orders:

• Effectively bar project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects, even in situations where they have been regularly used since the 1940s.
• Allow service contractors in federal buildings to layoff low-wage workers, who are mostly women, whenever there is a turnover of government contractors, which in effect erodes their job security.
• Abolish labor-management cooperation systems that serve the federal government and hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and that have resulted in numerous productivity gains and cost-savings measures benefiting all taxpayers.
• Require government contractors to post notices concerning workers' rights within their unions to object to dues and agency fee payments, while posting nothing at all about their fundamental labor rights to organize or join unions.

"I am appalled and outraged at President Bush's decision to issue four mean-spirited, anti-worker executive orders sought by his corporate contributors and by right-wing ideologues," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "These orders undermine worker rights and dismantle thoughtfully constructed and effective working relationships between labor and management."

The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department has called Bush's plan to ban project labor agreements "nothing short of a declaration of war on construction workers." Prohibiting project labor agreements could result in cost increases, scheduling delays and lower-quality work.

Word that Bush would issue the orders came just 24 hours after Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao appeared at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Los Angeles, promising to work with union leadership.

The Bush move "violates the president's own public pledges to consult widely, promote civility and 'change the tone' in Washington," Sweeney said. "His action appears to be pure retribution for the growing voice of working men and women in our nation's political life."