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Bush Campaigners Call OT Protesters "Labor Thugs"
Bush campaign workers confronted this week with union members calling attention to the devastating effects the overtime rule changes will have on working families dismissed the demonstrators as "thugs" and ignored their message.
CWA members and hundreds of other activists in 20 cities across the country attempted to deliver 200,000 postcards to Bush-Cheney campaign offices decrying the administration's rule changes that strip overtime rights away from at least 6 million workers.
Several offices wouldn't accept the postcards at all, and others called police, making grossly exaggerated claims about the chanting, sign-waving demonstrators.
A spokesman for the Florida GOP, Joseph Agostini, complained to the Tampa Tribune that just hours before the vice presidential debate, "we have these organized labor thugs using terror tactics in America."
Rob Ray, a Democratic Party official in Tampa, where one of the protests took place, told the paper, "That's what they always try to say about working people - that when you demonstrate together for a cause, you're being a mob or a thug. No one was hurt. We abided by what the police officers asked us to do."
A police spokeswoman confirmed that protestors stayed in the public area of the headquarters or on the street and left when asked. "They didn't threaten anybody," she said.
The postcards, which were also delivered to federal buildings and U.S. Department of Labor offices in the various cities, called on Bush to revoke the new rules in the face of overwhelming opposition from the public and members of Congress.
"The Bush administration is taking food from our families by taking our overtime pay," said John Goldstein, president of the Milwaukee County Labor Council, which organized a rally of more than 200 people outside the Bush-Cheney headquarters in West Allis, Wis.
Despite votes in the U.S. House and Senate opposing the changes, none of the legislation was able to stop Bush and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao from finalizing changes in August to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that protects American workers' right to a 40-hour workweek.
Since then, lawmakers have passed an amendment in the House and in a Senate subcommittee that could repeal the rules if it is included in the final Labor, Health, Human Services and Education appropriations bill. Bush, however, is so determined to give employers the right to deny workers overtime pay that he has threatened to veto the critical spending bill if the language is included.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has voted in the Senate to protect workers' overtime protections and said he would immediately repeal the harmful aspects of the rules if elected.
CWA members and hundreds of other activists in 20 cities across the country attempted to deliver 200,000 postcards to Bush-Cheney campaign offices decrying the administration's rule changes that strip overtime rights away from at least 6 million workers.
Several offices wouldn't accept the postcards at all, and others called police, making grossly exaggerated claims about the chanting, sign-waving demonstrators.
A spokesman for the Florida GOP, Joseph Agostini, complained to the Tampa Tribune that just hours before the vice presidential debate, "we have these organized labor thugs using terror tactics in America."
Rob Ray, a Democratic Party official in Tampa, where one of the protests took place, told the paper, "That's what they always try to say about working people - that when you demonstrate together for a cause, you're being a mob or a thug. No one was hurt. We abided by what the police officers asked us to do."
A police spokeswoman confirmed that protestors stayed in the public area of the headquarters or on the street and left when asked. "They didn't threaten anybody," she said.
The postcards, which were also delivered to federal buildings and U.S. Department of Labor offices in the various cities, called on Bush to revoke the new rules in the face of overwhelming opposition from the public and members of Congress.
"The Bush administration is taking food from our families by taking our overtime pay," said John Goldstein, president of the Milwaukee County Labor Council, which organized a rally of more than 200 people outside the Bush-Cheney headquarters in West Allis, Wis.
Despite votes in the U.S. House and Senate opposing the changes, none of the legislation was able to stop Bush and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao from finalizing changes in August to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that protects American workers' right to a 40-hour workweek.
Since then, lawmakers have passed an amendment in the House and in a Senate subcommittee that could repeal the rules if it is included in the final Labor, Health, Human Services and Education appropriations bill. Bush, however, is so determined to give employers the right to deny workers overtime pay that he has threatened to veto the critical spending bill if the language is included.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has voted in the Senate to protect workers' overtime protections and said he would immediately repeal the harmful aspects of the rules if elected.