Region News

Opportunity Knocks
By John Davis UAW Region 8 Webmaster

That pounding sound you may have recently heard was not opportunity knocking; see while opportunity knocks, greed pounds. Yes, that was greed pounding at the door in the form of the federal government. Over the past three weeks the news has been dominated by the effects of Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast. It appears that literally hundreds may have lost their lives and billions of dollars of damage was done by the storm. Weeks later the death toll is still being taken as recovery efforts have just gotten under way.

There are debates at all levels of government concerning the response time of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the tragedy. The vast majority of Americans have wondered aloud how the federal government could wait three days to get involved in the situation where tens of thousands were stranded without food and water. FEMA Director Michael Brown resigned his post amid the scandal that followed the lack of response by this taxpayer-funded agency that failed our country’s citizens terribly.

While it took three days for the federal government to show up to help the victims, the response time to the corporate buddies of the Bush Administration was a lot faster. By the time the flood waters had crested, Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) had been issued a $29.8 million contract to begin rebuilding military bases damaged in Louisiana and Mississippi. If KBR sounds familiar to you, it should. Kellogg, Brown and Root is a subsidiary of Halliburton. Former FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh – you know the guy responsible for getting former horse show director Michael Brown his old job – visited the areas devastated by the hurricane on September 07, 2005 to view the damage. He wasn’t there to help the victims; he was there in the capacity of his new job – being a lobbyist for Halliburton. He told reporters he was there to help his “clients get business.” However, Allbaugh wasn’t just there for Halliburton. The other company he represents is the Baton Rouge based Shaw Group. Shaw was just awarded a no-bid government $100 million contract by FEMA to provide housing and construction projects in New Orleans. In addition, they received another $100 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for work in the hurricane recovery efforts. Not a bad day at the office for Allbaugh.

As a footnote, Vice-President Cheney’s 2004 tax return included $194,852 from Halliburton in deferred pay from his prior stint as their CEO. Another interesting fact is that Joe Allbaugh was Bush’s Chief of Staff when he was the Governor of Texas.

Since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Halliburton shares have risen 10% on the stock market. I guess that is what you could call “insider information.” Another firm with White House ties, California based Bachtel Corporation, has won a contract to provide short-term housing for FEMA by providing trailers for the victims to live in. So one man’s misery is another man’s profit.

Davis-Bacon Act
But why stop with giving your buddies massive contracts, when you can wave federal laws to allow you to further take advantage of the situation? Over the weekend, President Bush issued an executive order to waive the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 for contracts concerning the rebuilding and clean up from Hurricane Katrina. The Davis-Bacon Act requires federal contractors on federally funded construction contracts to pay workers at least the prevailing wage in the area where the work is conducted. This will allow those fortunate ones who receive these no-bid contracts to further line their pockets off the misfortune of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Waving Davis-Bacon allows these corporate buddies of the White House to hire displaced workers as a result of the storm and pay them below the normal scale. With Louisiana already having a low prevailing wage, so it is another win-win situation for those campaign contributors. It is a classic example of the old “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” scheme.

Bush waved the Davis-Bacon Act one day after he received an appeal from 35 Republican members of Congress who felt the action was needed “to protect the public interest during the extended rebuilding period ahead.” This begs the question “to which public are they referring?” The letter these 35 “defenders of the public” sent to the President went on to say they felt that the Davis-Bacon Act discriminated against contractor employment of non-union companies. With Bush’s cronies being issued all these non-bid contracts, it is safe to assume that non-union companies will not be disadvantaged. However, I guess no one in Washington is worried about disadvantaging the victims of the hurricane. After all, they have had all the luck of having their homes and lives torn apart by the hurricane. Surely they can’t expect the perk of making a fair wage on a job that is being paid for by tax dollars.

Poor old Halliburton needs every advantage since they lost money in 2004 due to their responsibility in 391,000 asbestos and silica claims against their subsidiaries Dresser Industries Incorporated and Kellogg, Brown and Root. Halliburton filed bankruptcy on these two companies in the fourth quarter of 2004 to protect themselves against further liability. One can only guess if that was done in the “best interest of the public.” This is the same company that has been caught time and time again for overcharging the U.S. military in Iraq. They have been found guilty of overcharging the government $27.4 million for meals never served to our troops in Iraq. They have bounced back from last year’s slide and recently announced a 285% percent increase in KBR profits from the operations in Iraq for the second quarter of 2005.

While opportunity knocks, greed definitely bangs on the door and you can hear the noise all the way to the coast. When you connect the dots on this profiteering by corporations at the expense of Hurricane Katrina victims, the image you get resembles the White House.