The Grinch that Stole Labor Day/plus Robert Fisk

The Grinch that Stole Labor Day

by Greg Palast
August 30, 2003

In celebration of the working person's holiday, Secretary of Labor
Elaine Chao has announced the Bush Administration's plan to end the
60-year-old law which requires employers to pay
time-and-a-half for overtime.

I'm sure you already knew that -- if you happened to have run across
page 15,576 of the Federal Register.

According to the Register, where the Bush Administration likes to place
its little gifts to major campaign donors, 2.7 million workers will lose
their overtime pay -- for a "benefit" of $1.53
billion. I put "benefit" in quotes because, in the official cost-benefit
analysis issued by Bush's Labor Department, the amount employers will
now be able to slice out of workers' pockets is
tallied on the plus side of the rules change.

Nevertheless, workers getting their pay snipped shouldn't complain,
because they will all be receiving promotions. These employees will be
re-classified as managers exempt from the law.
The change is promoted by the National Council of Chain Restaurants.
You've met these 'managers' - they're the ones in the beanies and aprons
whose management decisions are, "Hold
the lettuce on that."

My favorite of Chao's little amendments would re-classify as "exempt
professionals" anyone who learned their skill in the military. In other
words, thousands of veterans will now lose
overtime pay. I just can't understand why Bush didn't announce that one
when he landed on the aircraft carrier.

CHOICE NUMBER FOUR: BREAK THE LAW

Now I should say that, according to Chao's press office, the changes
will actually extend overtime benefits to 1.3 million burger flippin'
managers. How does that square with the billion
dollar "benefit" to business owners? Simple: The Chao hounds at the
Labor Department suggest that employers CUT WAGES so that, with the new
"overtime" pay, the employees won't
actually take home a dime more.

I can hear the moaners and bleeding hearts saying, this sounds like the
Labor Department is telling Big Business how to evade the law. Yep,
that's what the Department is doing. Right there
on page 15,576 of the Federal Register it says,

"Affected employers would have four choices concerning potential payroll
costs: � (4) converting salaried employees' basis of pay to an hourly
rate that result in virtually no changes to
the total compensation paid those workers."

And in case some employer is dense as a president and doesn't get the
hint, Madame Chao repeats, "�The fourth choice above results in
virtually no (or only a minimal) increase in labor
costs."

For decades, the courts have thrown the book at cheapskate bosses who
chisel workers out of legal overtime by cutting base pay this way � but
now they'll have a new defense: Bush
made me do it.

But then, there won't be any cases against employers, because Chao is
the labor cop that is supposed to stop paycheck theft. She's well
qualified for the job. Her resume reads, "Married
to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky." I called her press
office to ask if she qualifies for overtime, but they'd left the office
early.

And good news for our sporting President. Word from the White House is
he'll be golfing on the Labor Day weekend. Under Chao's rules, he need
not worry if he wants to replay that hole.
"Exempt professionals" who cannot earn overtime - once defined as
doctors, lawyers and those with specialized college degrees - will now
include anyone who provides skilled advice �
like caddies ("You might try the other end of the club, Mr. President").

THE ACORN FALLS ONLY SO FAR

Finally, on this Labor Day weekend, it's time this nation took a cold
look at the issue of hard-core unemployment. Neo-conservatives have
warned us about families that pass on joblessness
from generation to generation.

Take, for example, the sad case of the Bush family. When Poppy Bush was
president, unemployment hit a generational high of over 9 million
Americans. Bill Clinton, through education and
hard work, put more than 3 million of those citizens back on the job.

Now Bush Junior, repeating his family pattern of joblessness, has
presided over the return of unemployment for 9 million Americans.

This was not unexpected, sociologists warn us. Hard core unemployment,
through failed schooling and a don't-care attitude, takes on a nearly
genetic character. The acorn falls only so far
from the tree. Especially when the nut falls on its head.

Greg Palast is author of the NY Times bestseller The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy (Penguin USA 2003) and the worstseller, Democracy and
Regulation, a guide to electricity
deregulation published by the United Nations (2003, written with T.
MacGregor and J. Oppenheim). See Greg Palast's award-winning reports for
BBC Television and the Guardian papers of
Britain at www.GregPalast.com. Contact Palast at his New York office:
media@....

***

Independent Portfolio Content

Unless the White House abandons its fantasies, civil war will consume
the Iraqi nation
Robert Fisk

30 August 2003

In Iraq, they go for the jugular: two weeks ago, the UN's top man,
yesterday one of the most influential Shia Muslim clerics. As they used
to say in the Lebanese war, if enough people want you
dead, you'll die.

So who wanted Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim dead? Or, more to the
point, who would not care if he died? Well, yes, there's the famous
"Saddam remnants" which the al-Hakim family are
already blaming for the Najaf massacre. He was tortured by Saddam's men
and, after al-Hakim had gone into his Iranian exile, Saddam executed one
of his relatives each year in a vain attempt to
get him to come back. Then there's the Kuwaitis or the Saudis who
certainly don't want his Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq to achieve any kind of "Islamic revolution" north of their
border.

There are neo-conservatives aplenty in the United States who would never
have trusted al-Hakim, despite his connections to the Iraqi Interim
Council that the Americans run in Baghdad. Then
there's the Shias.

Only a couple of months ago, I remember listening to al-Hakim preaching
at Friday prayers, demanding an end to the Anglo-American occupation but
speaking of peace and demanding even that
women should join the new Iraqi army. "Don't think we all support this
man," a worshipper said to me.

Al-Hakim also had a bad reputation for shopping his erstwhile Iraqi
colleagues to Iranian intelligence.

Then there's Muqtada Sadr, the young - and much less learned - cleric
whose martyred father has given him a cloak of heroism among younger
Shias and who has long condemned "collaboration"
with the American occupiers of Iraq; less well-known is his own
organisation's quiet collaboration with Saddam's regime before the
Anglo-American invasion.

Deeper than this singular dispute run the angry rivers of theological
debate in the seminaries of Najaf, which never accepted the idea of
velayat faqi - theological rule - espoused by Ayatollah
Khomeini of Iran. Al-Hakim had called Khomeini, and his successor
Ayatollah Khamanei, the "living Imam". Al-Hakim also compared himself to
the martyred imams Ali and Hussein, whose family had
also been killed during the first years of Muslim history. This was a
trite, even faintly sacrilegious way of garnering support.

The people of Najaf, for the most part, don't believe in "living Imams"
of this kind. But in the end, the bloodbath at Najaf - and the murder of
Mohamed al-Hakim - will be seen for what it is: yet further
proof that the Americans cannot, or will not, control Iraq. General
Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, said only 24 hours earlier
that he needed no more troops. Clearly, he does if he
wishes to stop the appalling violence. For what is happening, in the
Sunni heartland around Baghdad and now in the burgeoning Shia nation to
the south, is not just the back-draft of an invasion
or even a growing guerrilla war against occupation. It is the start of a
civil war in Iraq that will consume the entire nation if its new rulers
do not abandon their neo-conservative fantasies and implore
the world to share the future of the country with them.

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