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Tell Congress What Gulf Families REALLY Need
Tell Congress: Katrina Survivors Need Help, Not the Bush Administration's Unjust Priorities
The Bush administration methodically and callously is using Hurricane Katrina to deliver windfall profits to contractors and unscrupulous employers while pushing a radical right-wing agenda it can’t get adopted any other way.
From gutting wage protections for construction workers who will rebuild the battered Gulf Coast to handing no-bid contracts to politically connected companies, the administration is exacerbating rather than easing economic hardship among devastated working families.
Congress must act now to create a relief program to aid rather than punish hurricane survivors and reverse the damage the Bush administration’s unjust priorities already have done. Please send the following message to your U.S. senators and representative and urge them to act now.
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Restore Davis-Bacon Wage Protection and Help Hurricane Katrina Survivors
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
I urge you to adopt a comprehensive relief program in response to Hurricane Katrina that will help rather than punish hurricane survivors.
The first step should be to restore Davis-Bacon wage protection for construction workers who will rebuild the Gulf Coast--protection that President Bush took away by executive order. Lowering wages for people already in severe economic distress is an outrage and must be reversed. It's also reaching for a false economy: Studies show work performed under Davis-Bacon is of better quality and is done with fewer injuries. Davis-Bacon wages attract a more productive workforce; as a result, Davis-Bacon wages do not add to the overall costs of federal construction work.
In addition, Congress must:
* Improve access to and benefit levels of the Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) program. Benefits should be available for 52 weeks at the level of the national average Unemployment Insurance benefit, for example.
* Safeguard workers by identifying biological and chemical hazards for relief and recovery workers and protecting workers from them.
* Provide health care to survivors through Medicaid and relieve affected states of new Medicaid burdens; restore funds lost through budget cuts in Medicaid and other programs that should aid hurricane survivors.
* Help students, schools and teachers by providing funds needed to reopen and rebuild area schools--and reject attempts to push through voucher programs that would drain essential funds from public schools.
* Provide comprehensive re-employment services to displaced workers--not privatized, "you're on your own" accounts.
* And increase federal financial assistance to states and communities that have opened their doors to Katrina survivors.
In this time of human catastrophe, I urge you to reject unjust priorities and do what is right and what is needed for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
Sincerely,
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