Jobs and Joblessness on the Gulf Coast
The White House announced last week that it would reinstate the Davis-Bacon Act, the law that guarantees that construction workers on federally financed projects be paid at least the minimum prevailing wage. In an executive proclamation shortly after Hurricane Katrina, President Bush had revoked the law’s wage protections for workers in storm-struck parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Let’s hope this reversal is the start of a trend because more wrongs need righting.
…In the months since Katrina, plans to increase unemployment aid have flitted across Congress’s legislative radar screen, only to vanish as Republican lawmakers prepare to push a $70 billion tax cut package, much of it to benefit millionaire investors. As they did with the Davis-Bacon law, government leaders have to turn back from their wrongheaded pursuits and do the right things instead – and, preferably, soon.
nytimes.com