NET-workers

I was fortunate to attend a screening of Mardi Gras: Made in China at the DC Labor Film Fest last week. The movie documents the path of mardi gras beads from "the factory to the festival." I wanted to mention what I thought was one of the most interesting points made in the film -- many sweatshop owners often try to recruit young female workers because of their supposed docility and ability to handle monotony. One of the owners interviewed in the film was forthright in discussing the benefits of hiring women: he liked hiring women because "they are easier to control." That particular factory around 95 percent female, and a few men were only hired to perform heavy lifting and manual labor that the women couldn't handle. While the high numbers of females employed in factories globally may have positive effects for women's independence, it also may put women in increased danger (for example, the women murdered in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico). In any case, this is a complicated issue that I just wanted to bring up briefly here. For more information on this issue, check out Miriam Ching Louie or Leslie Salzinger's work.

Dan Haar, a business columnist for the Hartford Courant, brings some important issues about Bush's recent actions to harm workers to light in his Saturday column. He criticizes President Bush for suspending the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which was supposed to protect workers from exactly this sort of slashing of worker's rights during difficult economic times.

Bush used his powers to suspend a law that for 74 years has guaranteed a decent wage to construction workers in federal contracts. The suspension applies to more than 100 counties and parishes in the states hit by Katrina - indefinitely, for all contracts, whether or not they are meant to clean up and rebuild devastated areas.

The order cancels "prevailing wages," which assure that workers on federal jobs receive hourly pay akin to workers doing similar work in those areas. Prevailing wages in the Deep South states are barely above poverty: $9.55 an hour, for example, for a construction laborer in New Orleans.

He closes up his column with a much needed attack on Bush. I've heard so many times over the past week how we didn't know such poverty existed, etc., etc., but it seems to me at least that it should be the Bush administration's responsibility to know what the economic situation is for the millions of workers on the Gulf Coast. Saying that no one knew the people were impoverished, had no means to evaculate, etc. is not an excuse.

Much has been said these past two weeks about how Katrina has laid bare America's racial and economic divide. Hogwash. The divide has long been obvious to everyone. Bush, never complacent, has acted to make it worse.