Occupational Safety and Health Administration by $6.5 million. For the third year in a row, he is proposing to slash OSHA’s worker training and education programs, from $11.1 million to $4 million.
Medicare? Don’t count on it
The Bush budget is most callous in its cut to health care for the nation’s impoverished. This year’s budget once again proposes to disperse Medicaid funds through block grant to the states. Under the proposal, states have the option to cut benefits to certain Medicaid populations and to roll back benefits.
Underfunding education
The Bush budget also give lie to his much-touted commitment to education. It provides only half the funds promised for afterschool programs, freezes funding for Pell grants for students trying to afford college and cuts $22 million from reading programs. The administration highlighted $250 million of funding for job training programs for community colleges, but other job-training funds were cut by close to $300 million. The budget cuts another $316 million in vocational training funding from the Department of Education. In all, Bush has proposed $1.5 billion in spending reductions for job training and vocational education since he took office.
Money for war profiteering
The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office reviewed Bush’s budget and concluded that it not only would fail to cut the deficit in half in five years as Bush claims, but it would actually add another $2.75 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. And that does not even include any money for the biggest sink hole of Bush policies—the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—past this September. The White House has acknowledged it will ask Congress for another $50 billion for the wars after the election.
The only way for Bush to pay for his military ventures and pay off Haliburton, SSA and other corporations profiteering from the war during this period is to steal yet more money from programs that help the poor and needy and transfer the money to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Values, principles and priorities: The Bush budget values the WEALTHY. Its principle is to take money from the needy and give it to the greedy. The Bush priorities include JOB DESTRUCTION and more profits for corporations. If you disagree with the Bush budget, let your member of Congress know. They can be reached at (202) 225-3121. ◆
ILA and United Maritime Alliance reach agreement on six year pact
TAMPA, Florida—Negotiators for the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance representing longshore employers announced agreement on a six-year master contract on March 23, 2004. The agreement comes six months before the September 30 expiration of the contract. The union will continue to negotiate separate, local agreements covering port-specific conditions and rules. ILA members on the East Coast and Gulf ports are scheduled to vote on both the master contract and their local agreements on June 1, 2004.
The ILA and ILWU are two separate unions with very different traditions and organizations. The ILWU represents longshore and other workers on the West Coast and Hawaii.
The ILA agreement will increase the pay for regular longshore workers from $27 an hour to $31 an hour in the last year of the contract in 2010. There are $1 an hour increases in the first, third, fifth, and sixth year of the contract.
Unlike the ILWU, the ILA has a two-tiered wage system which was established in their 1996 contract. New workers will start at $16 an hour. Their wages would increase by a total of $7 over the life of the contract to $23 in the last year.
The new agreement also includes an agreement over technology issues and increased employer funding for health and welfare benefits. While management agreed to increase its payments for health and welfare, the union accepted changes that include multiple levels of benefits and increased co-payments. ◆
