The Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is helping Big Business fight a California law that mandates accountability for the way state dollars are spent and requires state neutrality in worker organizing campaigns by banning the expenditure of state monies—pro-union or anti-union—in such campaigns. In 2000, the California legislature passed and Gov. Gray Davis (D) signed AB 1889, which prohibits employers from using taxpayer dollars to pay for employer-run campaigns to influence workers in their efforts to form or join a union. The law ensures the billions of dollars that flow to private employers each year through California grants and subsidies are used only for the purposes intended: public services and programs. In a 3-2 vote, the five-member NLRB voted May 29 to intervene in a federal court case brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, taking a position that protects employers who want to use taxpayer money to subsidize their anti-union campaigns and which denies states the right to control their own spending authority. The NLRB’s purported justification for its action is that federal labor law pre-empts the California statute. This position by the NLRB is directly contrary to that taken by the U.S. Department of Justice in two recent cases, which argued that federal labor law does not pre-empt Bush administration restrictions on the use of federal funds. The AFL-CIO and the California Labor Federation filed briefs in support of the California statute last April.

AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney’s statement

The Bush administration, when it sent its proposed budget to Congress in February, omitted a U.S. Treasury Department report that predicted huge deficits far beyond the administration’s projections. The study also said tax increases were needed to close the astonishing $44 trillion deficit the study predicted. Yet, Bush’s budget instead called for a $726 billion tax cut and projected a deficit of just above $200 billion. A May 29 report in the Financial Times revealed the study was commissioned by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who resigned under pressure in December.

BBC News

The Bush administration on May 29 unveiled the details of its plan to ultimately eliminate federal jobs and contract out the work to private companies. The changes are in the rules that govern contracting out—OMB Circular A-76—and give private companies the advantage over federal workers in the private-public competition process, federal workers’ unions say. In November, the Bush administration announced its goal of putting 850,000 federal jobs up for bid, including at least 15 percent, or 127,500 jobs, by October 2003. Administration officials reaffirmed that goal in their latest announcement. Last year, Bush demanded and won legislation allowing it eventually to unilaterally cancel the collective bargaining rights of 170,000 workers as part of the bill creating the Homeland Security Department. In January, the Bush administration took away the right of 60,000 airport screeners in the Transportation Security Administration to join a union.

AFGE statement

The Washington Post

The Bush administration halted efforts to establish workplace health rules protecting workers and patients from exposure to tuberculosis. On May 27, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) withdrew a proposed TB rule from its regulatory agenda. In 1997, OSHA published a proposed tuberculosis rule and in 1998 and 1999, held hearings and took comments. After the Bush administration came into office, OSHA reopened the comment period on the rule in 2002, but its newest move halts further action on the rule. The proposed rule would have established procedures to prevent and limit the spread of the infectious airborne disease. Health experts say the TB rule also would help guard against airborne diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). In 1997, OSHA estimated the new rule would help protect an estimated 5.3 million workers in more than 100,000 hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, correctional facilities, homeless shelters and other work settings with a significant risk of TB infections. It did not offer an estimate of how many millions of patients, residents, prisoners and others in those settings also would be protected.

The Washington Post

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

Reaction from AFSCME

The Bush administration proposed legislation April 29 to end a federal, low-income housing assistance program that helps some 2 million families afford modest housing. The Section 8 housing voucher program provides low-income working families, the disabled, retirees and families on assistance with vouchers. Those vouchers, given to private landlords, effectively limit a family’s housing cost to 30 percent of its income. The Bush administration proposal would rename the voucher program Housing Assistance for Needy Families and convert it into a block grant for states to administer with few federal guidelines and no guarantee the annual funding would cover the costs to provide needed housing. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, 53 percent of voucher holders are families with children, 40 percent are seniors or people with disabilities and only one in five receives welfare benefits.   

Scripps Howard News Service

National Low Income Housing Coalition

The Bush administration has developed legislation that would enable the Defense Department to gut the current personnel system that governs the department workers’ pay, salary increases, hiring, firing, job classifications, performance evaluations, due process and appeal rights, reduction in force rules and many other federal workplace rules. In all, the proposal would allow the department to waive a dozen chapters of Title 5 of the U.S. Code, which covers government organization and federal employment. It would allow the department to create an entirely new personnel system that could eliminate congressional oversight of many personnel policies, strip workers and their unions of current workplace rights and place much more personnel decision making power in the unchecked hands of supervisors.

The Washington Post

AFGE analysis   

The Bush administration wants to require working poor families to submit extensive new documentation to prove their eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Supported by President Reagan, the EITC provides a crucial safety net for low-income working families. To be eligible for EITC, a family cannot have an income above $34,692 and the actual amount of the credit varies depending on family size and income. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims the new rules are designed to prevent between $6.5 billion and $10 billion in improper EITC payments, but tax experts say that the documentation requirements are likely to discourage many eligible families from applying for EITC. In addition, studies show improper payments to non-EITC individual filers amount to $132 billion plus another $70 billion to offshore corporate accounts and $46 billion for corporations. But while Bush requested some $100 million and 650 new IRS employees to track EITC filers, other tax investigations have fallen by 37 percent and prosecutions by 50 percent.  
 

The New York Times news article 

The New York Times editorial

The Bush administration proposed new rules March 27 that would deny overtime pay protections for millions of workers. The changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations would affect a wide range of the more than 80 million workers protected by the FLSA. The proposed rules would enable employers to reclassify many workers currently eligible for overtime as managers, administrative or professional employees who are exempt from time-and-a-half overtime. They eliminate overtime protection for large numbers of aerospace, health care, defense, high tech and other workers and also for workers above a certain income level. While the rules raise the income ceiling for some low-income workers to automatically qualify for overtime, many low-income workers would remain uncovered by that automatic protection, and the new rules propose confusing standards on whether low-income supervisors qualify for overtime protection.

Houston Chronicle

The Bush administration backs an anti-family bankruptcy proposal that the U.S. House of Representatives passed 315–113 March 19. The measure includes a loophole that allows wealthy debtors in five states to shelter income in luxury homes and strips working families of the few financial protections they currently have under bankruptcy law and makes it harder for them to make a financial fresh start. It also forces those owed child support from someone who has declared bankruptcy to compete with other creditors for whatever money is available. Ninety percent of individuals who resort to bankruptcy have come to the financial crisis because of job loss, medical emergency, divorce or other catastrophic event, according to the nonpartisan American Bankruptcy Institute.

The New York Times
ABI World

The Bush administration issued new rules Jan. 24 that allow the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Aviation Administration to revoke an aviation worker’s certification without basic due process protections. The new rule was issued and took effect without any public comment period. It allows the government to revoke or deny needed federal certification for pilots, mechanics, flight instructors and other aviation workers if the government—under secretive and arbitrary procedures—concludes a worker is a “security threat.” The rule denies an employee the right to an impartial review of the facts and does not require workers be shown the evidence or be told the specific reasons behind a security-risk finding.

AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department statement

Air Line Pilots news release

The Bush administration delayed new rules governing repair and maintenance work performed on U.S. airlines’ aircraft at overseas repair stations certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The March 14 action, just days before the start of a war with Iraq and amid growing concern about terrorism and security, came at the request of the airline industry and is opposed by aviation unions and aviation safety groups. In 1988, many U.S. airlines began contracting out their routine maintenance and repair work on aircraft that fly domestic and international routes when the Reagan administration watered down repair station safety regulations. Previously, most work was performed by U.S. mechanics at U.S. repair stations. The new rules, which were to be implemented April 6, would have strengthened the repair and maintenance regulations and requirements for overseas repairs stations to receive and maintain their FAA certification.

AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department statement
Teamsters statement

Bush administration officials are drafting legislation to make it harder for Medicare recipients to appeal the denial of benefits such as home health care and nursing home care. Under current law, beneficiaries who say they were unfairly denied coverage for theses services can take their cases to administrative law judges. In the past five years, about 53 percent of those appealing won their cases, according to The New York Times. But Bush administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services want other means to resolve the appeals—avenues that may unfairly tilt the scales against the people with disabilities and the elderly who qualify for Medicare. “The president’s proposals would compromise the independence of administrative law judges, who have protected beneficiaries in case after case, year after year,” Judith Stein, director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, told The New York Times March 16.

The New York Times

Armed with Fast Track trade promotion authority, the Bush administration is moving rapidly to rack up as many so-called free trade agreements as possible. The administration negotiated the first two agreements under Fast Track—deals with Chile and Singapore—in secret and said in February it is not releasing the details to the public until later this year. The deals will go to Congress later this year, and under Fast Track the lawmakers cannot amend the deals and can only approve or reject them as a whole. 

The Labor Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and Trade Policy report
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s statement

In his fiscal year 2004 budget request, President Bush is asking for $75 million for school voucher programs in several cities, including the District of Columbia. District Mayor Anthony Williams met in early February with top Bush administration education officials to express his opposition to vouchers, which siphon public funds away from public schools and toward private schools that are not accountable to parents, students or taxpayers. The proposed vouchers program would further drain funding from public education at the same time that Bush wants to virtually freeze federal funding to school programs suffering because of state and local governments’ budget crises. Bush’s proposed education “funding levels are unacceptably low,” says the Committee for Education Funding (CEF), a coalition of groups supporting public schools.

The Washington Post news story
AFT President Sandra Feldman’s statement on the Bush education budget and vouchers
CEF letter to Bush on the fiscal year 2004 budget

At the same time he is relying on American troops to fight a war in Iraq, President Bush is proposing to cut education funding for children in military families, according to news reports in late February. In his fiscal year 2004 budget request, Bush cuts federal impact aid funding—a federal program established in 1950 to compensate school districts for the property tax income they lose when tax-exempt property (such as military bases) are within their boundaries. Ending the $125 million program would affect 900,000 children, and officials of several school districts have said they would have to cut staff and defer needed building repairs. “I just can’t understand how, at a time when our military men and women are being deployed for a possible war with Iraq, this administration can turn its back on the children of our military personnel,” said John Forkenbrock, executive director of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools.
 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer news story and editorial
The Kansas City Star news story
Florida Today news story
Statement from the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools

The Bush administration began considering changes to the federal school lunch program in January that likely would result in fewer children having access to the meals. Officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture say there are children getting free or reduced-price meals whose families don’t really qualify for the program because they make too much money. But advocates for low-income families say the Bush administration is inflating the figures in order to justify cutting the number of children who can get the meals. The Bush administration is considering ways to verify some families’ income levels before allowing them to participate in the program—a tactic that likely would scare parents away from applying and lead to bureaucratic snafus, says the nonpartisan advocacy group Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).

The Associated Press news story
Analysis by FRAC
The Agriculture Department’s webpage on child nutrition programs

President Bush, on Jan. 31, proposed three new types of “savings” and “retirement” accounts that would benefit high-income families but could lead employers to eliminate workers’ current 401(k) plans. The new individual Lifetime Savings Accounts (LSAs) would allow families to set up accounts for each family member and contribute $7,500 a year per person. The contributions would not be tax deductible but funds could be withdrawn tax-free any time. Bush’s new Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) would allow contributions of $15,000 a year, plus an additional $15,000 for a spouse. A family of four taking advantage of both the new accounts would be able to shelter $60,000 a year and never pay taxes on earnings or withdrawals. The third new account, Employer Retirement Savings Accounts (ERSAs), are designed to look like current 401(k)s but reduce the “anti-discrimination” rules on retirement accounts, which are meant to prevent owners or higher-paid employees from taking full advantage of company retirement plans unless lower-paid workers participate in sufficient numbers. Employers and their highly paid colleagues could use Bush’s new accounts to shelter their resources and remove incentives to offer and participate in current 401(k) plans that must be available to all employees.

BusinessWeek

President Bush proposed a prescription drug plan March 4 that requires seniors to leave the doctors they know and trust and join private HMOs to get the full drug benefit. The Bush plan offers more generous drug benefits to people in private plans, giving much less assistance to those who decide to stay in the traditional Medicare program—only a drug discount card and undefined protection against “high out-of-pocket prescription drug expenses”—according to Bush’s speech announcing the plan. But after public outcry and heavy criticism, Bush backed away from mandatory enrollment in HMOs. The current proposal’s limited benefits for those who stay in Medicare was designed, critics say, to give the impression that seniors would have a “choice” to stay in Medicare if they wanted prescription drug coverage. The president’s proposed tax cuts for the wealthy also use up funds needed for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Republican members of the House Budget Committee considered a budget resolution on March 12 that leaves only $28 billion for such a benefit over 10 years or requires deep cuts in Medicare and other health care programs—while setting aside $726 billion for tax cuts for the wealthy.

The New York Times (subscription required)

Statement from AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Families USA
House Budget Committee/Democratic Caucus

President Bush’s fiscal year 2004 budget released Feb. 3 cuts funding for some poverty programs, relaxes federal rules that states must abide by for some and restricts eligibility for others. The Washington Post reported that some of the affected programs include housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, health insurance, Head Start and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). For example, the Bush budget proposes forcing parents receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families to work more hours (40) than already required (30), yet reduces or freezes funding for programs that would help them successfully join the workforce, including child care, transportation assistance and job training. In February, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its welfare reform bill; like Bush’s plan, it did not include enough child care funding for families entering the workforce. While proposing to eliminate taxes on corporate dividends, the Bush budget seeks to make it harder for families to qualify for the EITC, which provides a tax credit to working poor families, and to make it harder for children of low-income families to qualify for reduced-price or free school meals. It also would relax federal rules on Medicaid and allow states to drop many persons now covered or reduce the amount of aid provided and increase patients’ costs.

The Washington Post
Children’s Defense Fund statement on Bush welfare plan
The Denver Post editorial

President Bush proposed a fiscal year 2004 budget Feb. 3 loaded with tax breaks for the wealthy, but lacking real relief for working families, the unemployed and states, which are facing their worst economic crisis in a half century. Bush’s budget cuts spending on workplace safety, low-income housing and aid to rural schools. It does nothing to create new jobs, rebuild and modernize schools, improve the nation’s transportation and transit infrastructure, build and refurbish the nation’s drinking and wastewater systems or patch the holes in the nation’s homeland security framework. Bush’s budget offers no meaningful solutions to the nation’s health care crisis, nor does it provide any real help for seniors struggling to pay the soaring cost of prescription drugs. It does, however, create record deficits and provide huge tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers, especially through its elimination of taxes on corporate dividends and proposed creation of several tax-free savings accounts that will shelter income for the wealthy.

Ø  Read an analysis of Bush’s budget proposals, including sections about:

Ø  Tax cuts for the wealthy

Ø  Help for the jobless

Ø  Medicare prescription drugs

Ø  Shortchanged aid to the states

Ø  Worker safety and health

Ø  Education

 

Ø  Examine the AFL-CIO’s Agenda to Create Jobs and Lift the Economy

On Jan. 30, a Bush administration official terminated the collective bargaining rights of more than 1,300 workers at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). Following the lead of other Bush administration officials, James Clapper Jr., the agency’s director, invoked the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as the reason for curtailing workers’ rights. However, union leaders said the move comes just as NIMA workers—members of AFGE Local 1827 in St. Louis and Local 3407 in Bethesda, Md.—were pursuing concerns about safety, promotions and gender and racial bias in the agency. AFGE President Bobby Harnage Sr. said Clapper’s decision “falls in line with President Bush’s anti-union policy.” Harnage noted that Bush stripped workers in the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Attorney’s offices nationwide of their collective bargaining rights, as well as the union rights of newly federalized airport screeners. “The fight against terrorism, in which federal employees have always been on the frontlines of the homeland, is about preserving our freedoms—including our right to organize—not destroying them,” said Harnage.

President Bush proposed a plan Jan. 31 that would drastically overhaul the nation’s Medicaid program serving some 44 million poor families, children, persons with disabilities and elderly patients in nursing homes. The changes would give states the right to increase payments from patients, restrict certain medical services and benefits—such as visits to emergency rooms and hospitals—and move more people to managed care. States that choose to participate in the program would be given more federal funds, with few restrictions on how to use the money, than states that choose to operate a traditional Medicaid program. Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), ranking member of the health subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which handles Medicaid, said, “Instead of investing sufficiently to protect current Medicaid beneficiaries, [Bush] is ‘permitting’ states to kick some people off the rolls so others can come on. If that's not shortsighted, then shortsighted has no meaning.”
 

The Bush administration filed a brief Jan. 17 with the U.S. Supreme Court siding with a suit that challenges affirmative action policies of the University of Michigan that are designed to help shape a diverse student body. Along with grades and test scores, many universities consider an applicant’s race, national origin or gender among many factors in the admissions process, including geography, athletic ability, special talents and whether an applicant is a child of an alumnus. For example, Bush, an admitted “C” student, won admission to Yale University, where both his father and grandfather were graduates.

 

The Bush administration’s Department of Labor is expected to issue new rules in March that could eliminate overtime pay for many of the 80 million workers currently covered under the overtime pay rule of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which says workers are entitled to time-and-one-half pay for every hour worked above 40 hours in a week. According to news reports, the Bush administration is considering changes to several exemptions to the current rules, which may allow employers to exclude more workers from overtime. Currently, workers who are legitimately classified as executive, professional or administrative employees are exempt.
 

President Bush, in his State of the Union address Jan. 28, called for a plan to help seniors pay for costly prescription drugs. He offered no details. But that plan, according to a general outline released by the White House Jan. 24, would force Medicare beneficiaries into private health plans such as HMOs if they want to receive help paying for their prescription drugs. Currently, about 5 million of the 40 million Medicare beneficiaries take part in a private insurance experiment pilot called Medicare+Choice. But that program has dropped more than 2.4 million seniors from coverage since 1999 and many of those plans “don't serve rural communities or anywhere else if the profit margin is not high enough. Private plans have not been a good deal for the Medicare program,” said Ron Pollock, executive director for the health advocacy group Families USA.

In a Dec. 24 memo, the Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services ordered Medicare contractors to halt outreach and information activities that educate Medicare patients about their rights under the program. The contractors review and pay Medicare claims for the government and have operated beneficiary education and information programs through newsletters and visits to senior housing sites and centers, health fairs, hospitals and other venues. The outreach efforts included information on new Medicare benefits and how to appeal denied claims, obtain prescription drug discounts, select a nursing home, report Medicare fraud and fight hospital overcharges.

A federal commission is considering letting colleges and universities limit the number of scholarships they award to female athletes. The Secretary’s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, part of the Bush administration’s federal Education Department, is reviewing Title IX, the 30-year-old law that bans sex discrimination in college-level sports. The law is credited widely with increasing young women’s participation in sports. According to an investigation by The Washington Post, the proposal would allow schools to devote as little as 43 percent of their athletic scholarships to women—even though women make up 55 percent of students enrolled at four-year colleges. Currently, schools comply with Title IX if they ensure that the percentage of male and female athletes is about equal to the ratio of genders enrolled.

Officials in the Bush administration appointed an anti-gay extremist to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. According to news reports, Jerry Thacker described AIDS as the “gay plague” and referred to “the sin of homosexuality” as a “deathstyle.” On Jan. 23, just a few days before he was to be sworn in, Thacker withdrew from the council amid objections from members of Congress and civil rights advocates. Spurning the notion that the buck stops at the Oval Office desk, Bush aides pointed the finger at Tommy Thompson, Department of Health and Human Services secretary, for approving Thacker’s appointment. “Thacker was right to step aside and we hope that future administration appointments will reflect a commitment to epidemiology, not fringe ideology,” said Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign.

President Bush Jan. 7 nominated Mississippi federal Judge Charles Pickering and Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen as candidates for federal appeals court seats. Last year both were rejected by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee because of their troubling records on Americans’ rights. Along with Pickering and Owen, Bush nominated to various federal benches another 29 judges with extreme, ultraconservative records hostile to workers, civil rights and environmental and consumer protections.

In December, the Bush administration put in place an arguably illegal policy that would allow states to limit emergency care for Medicaid patients. The effect would have been to restrict medical treatment for the poor. After a storm of criticism—including threats from U.S. senators of both parties to block the policy—the administration reversed course Jan. 23 and decided not to go through with the change. Thomas Scully, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had said the limits were necessary to help states save money during their unprecedented fiscal crises. But instead of funneling more funds to states for Medicaid and other human needs, the Bush administration is advocating big tax breaks for the wealthy.

The Bush administration denied collective bargaining rights to newly federalized airport security screeners. Adm. James Loy, undersecretary of transportation for security, on Jan. 9 signed an order precluding workers' rights to bargain, saying that such rights were not compatible with the nation's war against terrorism and "collective bargaining conflicts with national security needs." AFGE activists had been helping screeners at LaGuardia Airport in New York City and at Baltimore/Washington Airport form a union. "The statement by Admiral Loy is akin to saying that being a union member gives aid and comfort to the enemy," said Sonny Hall, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department. "It is time for this administration to stop hiding behind the war on terrorism to mask a brazen assault on the basic rights of working men and women in this country," said Hall, who is also president of the Transport Workers. Arguing that Loy does not have the authority under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act to prohibit screeners from organizing, AFGE filed a lawsuit Jan. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge the decision.

Bush announced a plan in December to vaccinate health care workers and other first responders, such as firefighters and police officers, against smallpox. But while the plan protects drug companies that produce the vaccine from liability, it fails to protect workers from risks associated with the vaccine. The vaccine is risky for one in six Americans who are pregnant, suffer from eczema or other skin disorders or whose immune systems are suppressed because of such conditions as HIV, cancer or transplant treatments, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other recent studies show that one in three workers who get the vaccine will suffer side effects that will make them too sick to work for several days. The president's plan provides inadequate screening to determine who may be at risk and fails to protect against loss of income for those who become too ill to work or provide workers' compensation for those who become disabled from the vaccine.

On Dec. 23, the Bush administration proposed new financial reporting and disclosure requirements for national and local unions that create a huge tangle of red tape and estimated compliance costs of as much as $1 billion year. These regulations apply to small unions that often rely on part-time and voluntary staffing, as well as large unions. The requirements are far more stringent and sweeping than those on corporations. They are so burdensome "they will weaken unions as a force for workers' rights and economic fairness," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

The Bush administration nominated 32 persons to serve on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations (ACTPN) in December. But contrary to the law that created the committee in 1974, Bush did not include a single representative from labor, environmental or consumer groups among the nominees for the trade panel announced in December. ACTPN is the primary advisory committee on trade policy to the president. In the past, Republican and Democratic administrations have adhered to the law's requirement concerning appointees. The law explicitly states the membership of the committee shall include representatives of labor, environmental and consumer interests and that the committee membership shall be "broadly representative of the key sectors and groups of the economy, particularly with respect to those sectors and groups which are affected by trade." The Dec. 13 issue of Inside U.S. Trade (a weekly trade newsletter published by Inside Washington Publishers) reports that the nominees include "major Republican campaign donors, free trade theologians and a few people with close ties to [U.S. Trade Representative] Robert Zoellick." The AFL-CIO filed a lawsuit Dec. 20 demanding the Bush administration comply with legal requirements to include a broad group of advisors on the panel. Only thereafter did the administration move to appoint representatives of the labor movement to ACTPN.

The Bush administration announced Dec. 24 it no long would issue public reports on mass layoffs and plant closings. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly analysis details every layoff of more than 50 workers and the type of industry. The last report to be