Molly Ivins: Bush's labor play

This poignant Labor Day, when the numbers are bad, the policies are worse and the jobs are disappearing, it's not so much the economy that riles me as the disrespect and the gratuitous contempt with which this administration treats working Americans. The old insult to injury.

If we've had an administration so blinkered by class blinders before, it is not within my memory. What these people know about working-class Americans would fit in a gnat's eye. In the summer of 2002, when Ted Kennedy and the late Paul Wellstone were working to get an emergency extension on unemployment benefits -- something that has been largely pro forma under earlier administrations -- Majority Whip Tom DeLay protested that Democrats want "unlimited unemployment so people could stay out of work for the rest of their lives." Actually, one million unemployed workers had already exhausted their benefits before the House finally acted in January 2003, and were simply left in the streets with nothing under the too-little, too-late Bush bill.

The idea that workers lead the life of Riley on unemployment compensation and want to "stay out of work for the rest of the lives" is so blatantly untrue it would be comical, if one could dredge up a laugh. Anyone who has been through the mill of unemployment, with the endless rounds of appointments, waiting, applications, interviews, taking the bus to the job training program -- and finally walking when you can't afford a bus -- knows precisely how insulting this hooey is.

In February 2003, one of the most extraordinary sessions ever recorded between labor and a sitting labor secretary took place. Secretary Elaine Chao, whose chief qualification for the job seems to be that she is the wife of right-wing Sen. Mitch McConnell, met with the AFL-CIO's executive council. "Participants said Chao shocked the group by opposing any increase in the minimum wage, showing no sympathy for retired steelworkers who lost pension benefits, and reciting a list of legal actions her department has taken against unions and their leaders," reported The Washington Post. "We had a pretty unbelievable session," said John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO. "She was angry at points, insulting at points. I said that in all my years in labor, I've never seen a secretary so anti-labor.

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http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15520&CFID=9312692&CFTOKEN=78261834

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and should be treated as such.

The thing that gets me is, why does the working man continue to support these bozos?