Bush's Labor Day Gift

Right before Labor Day, Bush gives labor the finger:

President Bush this afternoon made another backdoor appointment to his administration. He used a recess appointment to install a lawyer who represented Wal-Mart with a long record of urging restrictions to the Fair Labor Standard Act’s (FLSA’s) overtime pay and other provisions to head up the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.

Paul DeCamp, who was grilled at an August Senate confirmation hearing, backed the Bush administration’s move to gut the FLSA’s overtime pay protections saying it presented:

a window of opportunity, particularly in light of the federal elections of 2002, for the business community to achieve positive results that can bring the FLSA into the 21st century.

Dem Rep. George Miller says this of Paul DeCamp:

"As a lawyer, Paul DeCamp has never represented American workers in a single case. He has worked on behalf of Wal-Mart – a company with an abhorrent record of labor relations – and other companies against the interests of American workers and consumers in numerous cases. Yet he is the man that President Bush has chosen as one of the nation’s top enforcers of workplace rights. It’s no surprise that President Bush would appoint a corporate lawyer to a position intended to safeguard workers against corporate abuses. This recess appointment is one more reminder that the President does not care about making sure that workers are treated fairly on the job or enforcing laws that he doesn’t happen to like."

The Washington Post:

DeCamp also drew criticism for having represented Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in a class-action lawsuit by 1.6 million low-wage female workers over alleged sex discrimination.

"Have you ever defended a worker in a lawsuit against an employer?" asked Sen. Patty Murray(D-Wash.).

"I have not," DeCamp replied.

So Bust chose a man who consistently sided with big corporations, a man who has never in his legal career fought for the working class, as his nominee for wage and labor administrator.

I'm not surprised.

This is emblematic of what Bush and the conservatives are all about. They willingly screw the middle class, rigging the system in order to preserve and promote the interests of Big Business and the uber-rich which they consider to be the engines of progress in this country.

Liberals think the opposite. We consider the protection and expansion of the middle class paramount because it is the true engine of progress, and the reason why we fight for the common good.

More on the fleecing of the middle/working class:

Newsweek: Going For Broke

Newsweek: Health Hazards

New York Times: Real Wages Fail to Match Rise in Productivity

Think Progress: New Census: Uninsured Up, Real Income Down for Men and Women, Poverty Unchanged

(h/t: Think Progress

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