As good
neighbors, private charities, and government agencies rushed to aid
the victims of Hurricane Katrina, CNNs Lou Dobbs and Lisa Sylvester
offered their own charitable assistance to labor unions and
anti-business crusaders.
In response to the Presidents decision to
suspend a little-known federal wage law, the September 12 Lou Dobbs
Tonight gave a cynical report on the big business interests that
would exploit the change. Meanwhile, the challenges of rebuilding a
region, the market principles of labor, and the workers who would
benefit from the Presidents decision totally escaped CNNs
business anchor.
Lou Dobbs introduced Sylvesters report
with a stacked deck: Critics say there are few safeguards in place
to prevent rampant overspending and fraud by large firms that are
already winning lucrative no bid contracts in the Gulf, at the same
time as Gulf Coast workers are losing out. Sylvester tied one
corporation to Dick Cheneys old employer, Halliburton, and to other
administration officials like Joe Alba, the former FEMA director.
Ignoring those corporations qualifications to get the job done
quickly and efficiently, she colored them as robber barons with
virtually no spending restraints. And, even worse, their employees
wouldnt benefit from the windfall because the President suspended
a depression era rule, the Davis-Bacon Act.
The Davis-Bacon Act requires federal
contractors to pay a prevailing wage to employees. But, the
federal government doesnt specifically define what that means, so
prevailing wage is often interpreted to mean union wage. Dobbss
broadcast has something in common with that principle: his
business reports are often union reports as well. To explain the
consequences of suspending Davis-Bacon, Lisa Sylvester turned to Rod
Bennett from the AFL-CIO: those moneys will not be filtered down to
the workers. They will be paid the lowest of the lowest wages.
Artificially higher wages would not only
inflate the cost of rebuilding the region, they would shut out
unskilled workers competing for those jobs. The widespread poverty
of the New Orleans area and the swath of newly unemployed on the
Mississippi coast highlight the necessity of market wages that give
all workers a chance to compete. For hurricane victims its not just
any job, but the reconstruction of their home. Still, Sylvester was
shocked at how hurricane victims' Congressmen have been pretty
quiet on this one.
Of course, theres another angle to this
decision that CNN callously ignored. The 1931 passage of the
Davis-Bacon act was motivated by segregationist labor unions. Rep.
Robert Bacon (R-NY) introduced the legislation to help his white
constituents lock out Southern blacks from construction projects in
New York. According to a 1993 paper by George Mason University law
professor David Bernstein, The act continues to have discriminatory
effects today by favoring disproportionately white, skilled and
unionized construction workers over disproportionately black,
unskilled and non-unionized construction workers. Thankfully,
unions no longer discriminate racially but their practices deny
unskilled workers the opportunity to make any wage. Yet, dont
expect Lou Dobbs to expose the deep pockets of their lobbyists.
This biased reporting is consistent with
the findings of a recent Business & Media Institute Report: [1]Trade
Secrets: Lou Dobbs Tonight Hides Good News Behind Negative View
of Free Market.
