Brochure (PDF, 124kb) gives many good reasons for Boilermakers to oppose McCain.
THE ANTI-UNION BUSINESS group, Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC), has endorsed John McCain for president. That should be no surprise, considering his anti-union positions listed on their brochure. Look for yourself. The statements given below are direct quotes from their publication.
“John McCain opposes… Project Labor Agreements (PLAs).” PLAs have been successfully used to make construction projects run smoothly for over 60 years. They guarantee that basic terms and conditions for labor are established in advance. They include no-strike, no-lockout language and include both union and nonunion companies – and they stifle a contractor’s ability to pay substandard wages. By opposing PLAs, McCain supports substandard wages.
“John McCain believes the Davis-Bacon Act should be repealed.” The Davis-Bacon Act protects the wages of workers on projects financed with federal tax funds. Repealing Davis-Bacon would help nonunion contractors pay substandard wages and open the door wasteful spending. A University of Utah study showed that when Utah repealed its prevailing wage law, lower incomes reduced state income tax revenues by $4 million, while cost overruns on state-funded jobs more than tripled.
“John McCain supports anti-salting… legislation.” In the construction industry, salting refers to the union organizing tactic of hiring on to organize. Groups who want to rid the world of unions oppose salting because it works. By eliminating it, McCain would seriously harm our ability to organize the construction industry.
”John McCain believes that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) policies must be thoroughly reviewed to ensure it does not overburden American employers.” In 2006 (latest year for which BLS provides statistics), nearly 6,000 workers died as the result of injuries on the job – a rate of 4.0 per 100,000 workers. As terrible as that statistic is, in 1970, before OSHA began requiring employers to protect their workers, the fatality rate was more than four times as high. So OSHA works. Its programs have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and helped workers avoid millions of jobsite injuries and illnesses. But McCain wants to weaken OSHA, because sometimes those safety regulations reduce profits.
Visit these Web sites to learn more about McCain’s stated positions:
- www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/mccain.cfm – the AFL-CIO’s Web site explaining his record and his proposals
- therealmccain.com – featuring video footage using McCain’s own words and dramatizations about his proposals.
