GOP Indifference to Workers

GOP Indifference to Workers

Republican officials in Washington, from President Bush to the majorities in both houses of Congress, are showing unconscionable indifference to the perils faced by rescue and clean-up workers, many of them in the public sector.

The most blatant example occurred when Congress last week decided not to restore $125 million in Federal funding to New York that Mr. Bush withdrew earlier this year because it hadn't been spent. That decision was reached despite lobbying by members of New York's Congressional delegation - including some Republicans - to have the money re-allocated for sick first-responders who were at the World Trade Center on or after Sept. 11.

Fire Commissioner Nick Scoppetta, who went to Washington two weeks ago with top staff members to urge that the money be restored, voiced disappointment that the funds will now be earmarked for other projects, although he joined with Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton in expressing the hope that it might eventually find its way to the city as part of an emergency appropriations bill connected to relief from Hurricane Katrina.

Uniformed Fire Officers' Association President Pete Gorman, even while he held out the same hope, put it more bluntly in scolding the President and others who used visits to Ground Zero to posture as caring about the rescue and recovery workers and those who gave their lives on Sept. 11, but withdrew from their initial financial commitment after getting maximum political mileage from those appearances.

"The money was promised - promised - to the city by every politician who came up here and stood on that pile," Mr. Gorman told this newspaper. "It's unimaginable that an elected official would turn his back on this provision if they understood where this money was needed."

Hard to believe, maybe, but true.

At the same time, Republican Senators are giving serious consideration to a bill that would prohibit employees at a disaster site from suing contractors hired by the Federal Government to assist in clean-up work.

The bill states that because of class-action suits that were brought against private contractors involved in the Sept. 11 clean-up, firms have "well-founded fears of future litigation and liability under existing law [that] discourage contractors from assisting in times of disaster."

The bill would primarily affect contractors' own employees, but any public workers deployed at a site - as city workers including cops, firefighters, and construction personnel employed by the Department of Design and Construction were during the Trade Center clean-up - would also have their right to sue eliminated.

A convenient straw man has been created by the bill's sponsors, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Sen. John Thune of South Dakota.

Never mind that the contractors are well-paid, often with slip-shod quality controls, for this kind of work, and that they carry liability insurance in the event that something goes wrong at a job that subjects them to lawsuits. They can minimize the financial risk to themselves merely by taking the appropriate safety precautions. That sometimes has the uncomfortable side-effect of cutting into their profit margins, however.

A group of activist unions - including Local 1180 of the Communications Workers of America - and workplace safety advocates has written to the Senate committee considering the bill and alleged that it would wrongly exempt Federal contractors from environmental laws.

As Joel Shufro of the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health put it, "No public policy reason justifies Congress granting Federal contractors legal immunity for negligence or illegal activity."

Too many Republican officials, from the White House to Capitol Hill, seem more concerned with protecting contractors' wallets than they do the health of the employees who work in these difficult circumstances. As Mr. Gorman said regarding the lost funding for firstresponders, that just isn't right.

Irrelevant and Incendiary

A New York City Transit supervisor is under fire for allegedly having told officials of the Civil Service Technical Guild last month that their members - many of whom are immigrants - were far better off than in their native countries and "should be kissing the ground, with the opportunities they are receiving."

The supervisor, Frederick Smith, last week issued a statement claiming that an article in a union newsletter "misquotes and misrepresents" his comments.

We have to wonder, however, why Mr. Smith would feel compelled to allude to conditions in some employees' homelands as a response to their complaint that he wanted them to submit digital photos of themselves. Mr. Smith asked for the photos, according to the Tech Guild, because he claimed he was having trouble putting together the names and faces of his subordinates.

A good supervisor should be able to remember those who work for him without the visual aids. The larger issue, though, is, how are conditions in the homelands of some staff members relevant in this situation?

Employees do not surrender any rights because they come from a place where freedom or opportunity was not as plentiful. If Mr. Smith believes otherwise, he has no business being a supervisor.

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