Comp time for overtime. Vouchers. More tax cuts for the rich. Another attack on Davis-Bacon.

Those are just a few of the issues labor legislative representatives expect to battle in the coming 108th Congress, interviews show. The GOP-run Congress opens Jan. 7.

'What we face in the coming years may be far more than we ever faced before,' AFL-CIO President John Sweeney warned in December about the legislative plans of labor's foes. 'It will be fueled by enormous amounts of money and power.'

With the complete Republican takeover on Capitol Hill, fueled by almost $1 billion in corporate campaign contributions, 'It's payback time from the Bush administration' for its business friends, AFSCME Legislative Director Chuck Loveless told PAI.

That payback will be in anti-worker legislative initiatives both wide-ranging and industry-specific, the interviews reveal.

'There are people out there who want to do bad things' to workers, the Laborers' Don Kaniewski comments.

The legislative representatives agree the economy will override everything, as will the battle over GOP-big business plans to deal with it by putting more money in management pockets. The impact filters down to local workers: Bush's tax cuts and the recession leave states and cities strapped for cash.

Anti-worker measures labor expects to combat include:

• Incoming Senate Education and Labor Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., may resurrect a "flextime" bill to let employers have workers toil up to 80 hours--in any pattern--over a two-week period before paying overtime, says AFSCME's Marge Allen, who tracks labor-specific legislation. She warns Gregg may fold flextime into the comp-time-for-overtime bill.
• Several labor representatives say they expect talk, but no action, on Bush's plans to partially privatize Social Security--with groundwork laid for action after the 2004 election.
• Gregg plans to review alleged worker 'abuses' of the Family and Medical Leave Act, which grants workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave for birth, illness, or to care for sick children or elderly family members. Business hates the FMLA.
• Health insurance. Federal commissions shined a spotlight on the rising millions of uninsured, and co-pays and premiums for the insured are skyrocketing. The Fire Fighters, the Teachers and AFSCME all told PAI health care will be a key issue for unionists--but they expect little aid for workers from Congress.
• Bush's plan to make his $1.6 trillion tax cut for the rich permanent. The cuts are scheduled to take effect between now and 2010, but expire in 2011. Bush, citing the recession that began virtually the day he was seated, wants to remove that deadline.
• Business wants to add its own tax-cut goodies to the Bush economic stimulus package, the legislative reps say. 'Corporate dividends would be exempt from taxation, which would be an enormous boon for wealthy investors while average people get nothing,' Loveless comments. Same story for tax cuts for quick business purchases of new plants and equipment, and for 401(k), Enron-type account contributions, he adds.
• Anti-worker interests will once again attack Davis-Bacon, the 1931 law that guarantees prevailing wages--not cut-rate wages--on federally funded construction projects, Kaniewski predicts. But he notes the Building Trades have pieced together bipartisan coalitions to defeat past Davis-Bacon attacks and expects to do so again.
• AFT expects the right wing to resurrect vouchers, which give taxpayer dollars to parents of private--mostly religious--school students. A filibuster killed voucher plans in 2001.

The representatives offer three ways to stop the anti-worker agenda, but concede they might not always work:

Grass-roots lobbying by unionists and their allies. Politics and lobbying--and how they tie into organizing--will be one topic at the AFL-CIO organizing conference on Jan. 10-11.

Senate filibusters. Even GOP Senate aides admit the new Republican majority there will need 60 votes to accomplish anything, since 41 votes can keep a filibuster going. The Republicans hold 51 seats, to 48 Democrats and independent James Jeffords of Vermont.

Political pressure on the White House. Point out the political hazards and hope the White House will try to moderate its supporters' fanatic impulses as President George W. Bush plans his re-election campaign.

'Maybe it's the optimism in me, but I think they'll be sensitive' to the damaging potential of extremist legislation, says AFT Legislative Director Charlotte Fraas. 'And anti-worker initiatives fall into that category. The question is how much the White House will have an eye on the prize of '04 and moderate how much the Republicans go off the deep end,' she added.

'A lot of what the White House will be doing will be through the prism of 2004, but it remains to be seen' if Fraas is right, Kaniewski cautions.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service.