Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [32]
Bush, Rove, DeLay, and Scalia won and won big. The CRA also prohibits any federal agency from writing rules similar to those killed by the legislative process. Ergonomic Protection for Workers, RIP.
“The good companies make their workplaces safe for their employees,” said Jackie Nowell, who lobbied on ergonomics for the United Food and Commercial Workers. “People are going to be hurt by the bad companies.” The only reason regulation is ever necessary is because of bad companies. One bad company was the subject of a devastating series in The New York Times in early January 2003: McWane Inc.’s Tyler Pipe plant in the president’s home state is so callous about its workers the series was sickening to read. There are also entire industries with miserable records—beef packing among the most notorious. Every bad company operating in the country got a nod and wink from the White House when President Bush joined forces with Eugene Scalia to kill the ergonomics guidelines that began in the White House of the first President Bush.
Seven months after he signed the death warrant on ergonomics regulation, President Bush, who has never held a job involving physical labor, appointed Eugene Scalia solicitor of labor. The appointment put Scalia in charge of the federal government’s labor-law firm: five hundred attorneys responsible for enforcing 180 federal laws covering everything from workplace safety to child labor. The laws protect the worker, but there’s a catch. The worker can’t hire a lawyer to enforce them. There are many federal workplace protections that can only be enforced by the Department of Labor. “A worker has no individual cause of action with these laws,” explained a Senate staffer. “They are enforced by the solicitor of labor.” Sherry Durst, meet your lawyer: Gene Scalia. The president had decided that decisions whether to file suit against an employer for breaking workplace-safety laws, child-labor laws, or hundreds of other federal protections for workers would be made by an anti-worker zealot.
The Democrats never saw the Scalia nomination coming. Despite repeated campaign promises of a bipartisan approach to Congress—“the way politics is practiced in Texas”—Bush never consulted them. “He wasn’t looking for any Bob Bullocks on this one,” said a Democratic staffer, referring to the late lieutenant governor of Texas, who theoretically favored bipartisanship. (Actually, he favored his own control over everything.) “On their big issues, we never hear from them.”
By the fall of 2001, Bush and Rove had already driven Vermont senator Jim Jeffords out of the Republican Party and Democrats controlled the Senate, so confirming Scalia was not going to be as easy as killing the ergonomics regs. A Democratic Senate majority meant that Kennedy chaired the Health, Education and Labor Committee. “The senator was furious about the Scalia appointment,” said a committee staff member. Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, whose daddy had worked in a mill for thirty-seven years, asked, “Just out of curiosity, have you yourself ever had any personal experience working in a manufacturing plant or the kind of poultry facility that Senator Wellstone was asking about?” Scalia replied, “No, I have not worked in a facility like that.” Kennedy pressured his committee members to vote no, but Jeffords “reluctantly” cast the deciding vote to support the nomination.
Kennedy admits Scalia is a skilled lawyer, qualified to do many things. But to serve as an advocate for the nation’s workers? Kennedy’s staff discovered that Scalia had once actually represented workers—a group suing their own union after they had crossed a picket line. Kennedy decided to filibuster. Tom Daschle, then Senate majority leader, took his time scheduling a vote, predicting Scalia would lose whenever it happened.