In My Opinion: War Profiteering at Workers' Expense

With great justification, America is celebrating its blue collar heroes in the aftermath of September 11. Even often maligned government workers are receiving the respect they deserve as politicians and celebrities sport NYPD and FDNY ball caps for the cameras and the nation comes to realize how dependent we are on the postal employees who now, shockingly, are on the front lines of this strange terrorist war.
But there is more than a little hypocrisy afoot. We keep hearing that America underwent a fundamental change on September 11. But those who haven’t changed a bit are some of our far-right elected officials, who not only have shown no sympathy for the more than 500,000 working people left jobless by these tragic events, but who are exploiting the crisis atmosphere for political advantage and to further enrich their well-heeled supporters.

The first blow to working families came when Congress rushed to pass a $15 billion airline industry bailout package but failed to do anything for the 150,000 airline employees who suddenly were thrown out of work.

Shortly thereafter when Senate Democrats introduced a measure to give airline workers extended unemployment benefits, continued health care and job training, GOP senators with White House support blocked it with a filibuster. A vote to break the filibuster fell four short of the 60 votes needed, with 44 Republicans holding firm against the Senate majority that wanted to assist the workers.

On the House side, Republican leaders made sure that worker relief was a non-starter and even went so far as to jeopardize the public’s safety by blocking vital airline security legislation solely because of the anti-union animus of that venal Texas duo, Majority Leader Dick Armey and GOP Whip Tom DeLay.

The Senate unanimously passed an airport security measure which would federalize airport security personnel among other moves to beef up protection against terrorists. But as I write this in late October, no bill has been put before the House because Armey imagines, and has stated, that making airport security workers federal employees would create “new dues-paying union members.” The aptly named DeLay admits to holding up legislation because he didn’t have the votes to defeat federalization.

As hundreds of thousands more workers lost jobs in the aftershocks from the terrorist disaster, the House Republicans then fashioned and narrowly passed a so-called “economic stimulus” bill that practically ignores the needs of working families while delivering a cornucopia of corporate welfare and permanent tax breaks for the rich.

On the paltry worker side of the ledger, this bill calls for extra unemployment benefits that are stingier than those granted during the 1991 recession of the elder Bush’s administration — it wouldn’t even help two-thirds of those now unemployed.

Essentially the bill is an attempt to ram through Phase II of the Bush tax cut program under the thin pretense of helping the economy and creating jobs. One incredible provision even eliminates the requirement that corporations pay at least some income tax and hands $25 billion, a quarter of the entire stimulus package for 2002, to huge corporations. What’s more, it’s retroactive for 15 years. General Electric, for example, would get a $671 million rebate check for all the tax it has paid since 1986. And not one job would be created by this raid on the U.S. treasury.

As for individual tax cuts, the House-Bush administration bill allocates two-thirds of tax reductions to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, with very little relief for the working families who might actually spend extra money on goods and services to help the economy.

This is nothing but war profiteering, and we can hope the Senate derails this measure. It represents the cynical exploitation of a national emergency to enrich plutocrats while growing numbers of workers are losing their jobs and worrying about keeping their health care and paying mortgages.

Equally outrageous is the use of wartime rhetoric for political profit. Shortly after September 11, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick had the nerve to suggest that opposing “fast track” trade authority — which takes worker protections out of trade talks — is somehow “unpatriotic.” That sparked a heated rebuke from Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), which forced Zoellick to apologize.

Then union-hating Gov. Jesse Ventura challenged the patriotism of AFSCME members in Minnesota during their recent strike, and UAW strikers at General Dynamics were asked by the news media whether they thought they were being unpatriotic.

President Bush tells us that we are in a war against terrorism to protect our basic freedoms. We need to remind America that our basic freedoms include the right to organize, to belong to a union, to engage in collective bargaining, to have a voice on the job, and to strike when necessary.

And we will continue to insist that the blue collar — and mostly union — heroes in New York and at the Pentagon — the cops, firefighters, construction workers, emergency personnel, and the CWA Verizon workers who put the New York Stock Exchange back on line — and the hundreds of thousands of others around the country who are now jobless after September 11, get more than a pat on the back from their elected officials in Washington.