Preserving Social Security and defeating CAFTA, the latest controversial trade treaty, head labor?s legislative agenda.

In an interview with Press Associates Union News Service, federation Legislative Director Bill Samuel said that while the AFL-CIO expects to defeat President George W. Bush's partial Social Security privatization plan, it has a whole host of other battles to prepare for.

Unfortunately, in an indication of what labor faces in the GOP-run Congress, one struggle--against so-called "tort reform" which limits the potential for injured workers and consumers to win in court against guilty companies--has already been lost.

And the federation may face similar battles in two other legal-related causes: Establishing a trust fund for 300,000-600,000 people suffering from asbestos-caused cancer and other ailments, and bankruptcy "reform" that would help credit card companies and banks and hurt consumers and workers.

Legislation and politics will get approximately $45 million-$47 million this year, union leaders decided during the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting this week in Las Vegas. The top target for that effort, at first, will be to stop Bush's Social Security privatization plan.

Bush, arguing that the nation's retirement system is "bankrupt," wants to transfer one-sixth of the system's payroll tax revenues to Wall Street managed "private accounts."

"They're asking people to turn over $2 trillion to Wall Street, who created Enron, Tyco and WorldCom," adds Steelworkers President Leo Gerard.

Those same Wall Street interests "destroyed $7 trillion in pension investments" in the stock market slump that began in late January 2001, Gerard noted. The slump started just after the Supreme Court first seated Bush in the Oval Office.

"We'll lay that out and the truth will set you free" and Bush's plan will fail, Gerard declared.

At a late-February meeting with Sweeney and other union presidents, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., promised them the chamber's 45 Democrats would be virtually unanimously against Social Security privatization, with maybe one defection, Samuel said. And they'll filibuster it, he added.

Saving Social Security is part of a wider debate "about the whole issue of retirement security," Samuels told PAI. "We're working hard to tie that into...the real crisis on private pensions, where companies are eliminating" traditional pensions with guaranteed payments in favor of "defined contribution" plans where workers take the financial risks, he added.

Indeed, Bush said Dec. 20 he wants to turn Social Security from a traditional pension into a "defined contribution" plan.

Beating CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, is the second top goal. Building on 10 years' experience with NAFTA, the controversial U.S.-Mexico-Canada "free trade" treaty, labor will argue that CAFTA, like NAFTA, is a job loser with no labor rights and protections.

Since NAFTA's enactment by a Democratic Congress at the behest of Democratic President Clinton, more than 900,000 U.S. factory jobs have been lost to Mexico alone, said Industrial Unions Council Executive Director Bob Baugh.

"We ignore these figures at our peril and CAFTA offers more of the same," Baugh said. Figures like that and the whopping U.S. trade deficit with China have convinced lawmakers that CAFTA would be a bad deal, Samuels said--though he admitted "we?ll have our work cut out for us if he (Bush) decides to make this a signature issue." The president, however, seems to put Social Security privatization atop his congressional agenda.

After those two issues, Samuels told PAI, labor will work on the asbestos and bankruptcy bills, and try to stop the appointment of radical Bush judicial nominees to federal appellate courts. Such judges would rule on labor cases, he noted.

"An asbestos bill is getting closer" despite a dispute over how much money should go into an initial trust fund to compensate victims and their survivors. Business and Bush want to limit it to $140 billion and ban victims from suing in court. Labor wants no limit and the right to sue.

The bankruptcy bill itself is a bad deal, he adds. "Half of all personal bankruptcies are due to either health care emergencies, while the credit card companies are putting provisions into place that mean more evictions of working families, and (stiff) means tests for bankruptcies" where all debts are forgiven, even after major job losses, he said.

Other specific legislation labor will tackle this year include:

* Efforts by construction unions to again preserve Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws, against efforts by anti-worker contractors to eliminate them, thus cutting workers' wages. Transit and rail unions will wage a similar fight to keep wage protections on federally funded rail projects and systems.

* A continued labor effort to sign up congressional cosponsors for the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act, designed to give workers a more-level playing field in U.S. labor law, by outlawing such things as management-mandated meetings and ordering harsher penalties for law-breakers.

* Preparing to combat "a much broader assault" on overtime, after last year's unsuccessful battle against Bush rules that stripped overtime pay eligibility from 6 million-8 million workers. This year's assault will be new versions of "comp time" and "flextime" bills, both favorite GOP causes, Samuel says.

Both new versions will virtually let employers wipe out overtime for 80 million workers. One would order workers to take comp time instead--at the employer's discretion. The other would say that if a worker toils 60 hours one week and 20 the next, it adds up to 80 and makes the worker ineligible for overtime.

"They would virtually end the practice of overtime pay," Samuel said.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

For more information
Visit the national AFL-CIO website, www.aflcio.org and the Workday Minnesota special section, Trade and Jobs