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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (148852)	5/25/2001 1:19:50 PM
From: ThirdEye	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

If you knew how much some companies spend on actual Work Comp costs we would all be amazed. For example, how many pennies of every stamp you use go directly to work comp costs? I think we would be shocked if we knew. The original consideration for unions was, I think, worker safety. And it should remain so. Having read the recent Ergonomic Standards that Bush overturned, I will grant that there were certain provisions that would have been problematic and it would have been difficult to implement them. But the message that is understood by the masses by that act is that Bush doesn't particularly care about worker safety. State laws are certainly not uniform and workers are not granted the same level of protection regardless of where they work. Federal standards are, I think, less stringent in the areas of manufacturing than in other industries and besides, they are notoriously subject to strong lobbying efforts by the effected industries. And for you to suggest that the federal standards should be relied upon in the place of unions is ironic since you probably have strong opinions about the intrusion of the governement into the conduct of private enterprise. As far as the specific industries I cited, I think there are issues in each that suggest elimination of unions would be followed immediately by degradation of working conditions. IN the case of garment workers in particular, the flight of manufacturing to the third world because of lower wages and in some cases no doubt because of a general anti-union environment has resurrected the term "sweatshop" into the vernacular. I don't see how you can regard this as positive.