. 1. Medical Savings Accounts—The Health Coverage and Affordability Act (S. 1028) makes it easier for workers to carry their health insurance from job to job (portability) and harder for insurance companies to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. But it does not address the need for broader health care reform. The AFL-CIO opposed the Medical Savings Account provision in S. 1028. MSAs would be used primarily by the wealthy and healthy, leaving a sicker and poorer population to be covered by other insurance mechanisms--creating a tax benefit for the wealthy and driving up health care costs for working families. An amendment to strike the provision was passed April 18 by a 52-46 vote. Y=R, N=W (DEM: 47-0; REP: 5-46) . 2. Davis-Bacon—The Republican leadership attack on working families took aim at construction workers’ paychecks and the Davis-Bacon Act. The act ensures that workers on federal construction projects receive the local prevailing wage. This prevents contractors from slashing wages in order to win federal contracts with low-ball bids. Many lawmakers have called for the act's repeal. An amendment was offered to the FY 1997 Budget Resolution to express the sense of the Senate that the Davis-Bacon Act should not be repealed. Anti-worker senators made a motion to table, or kill, the amendment, but that motion failed May 22 by a 41-59 vote. Y=W, N=R (DEM: 1-46; REP: 40-13) . 3. Minimum Wage—The value of the minimum wage had fallen to a 40-year low in 1996, yet Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kans.) refused for months to bring a minimum wage bill boosting the wage from $4.25 to $5.15 to the floor. A massive AFL-CIO-led grassroots campaign mobilized public opinion and forced the Republican leadership to allow a vote on the measure. But in one last attempt to scuttle the bill and appease their big business backers, Republican leaders offered an amendment that would have gutted the pay raise by delaying the increase for six months, creating a subminimum wage for new hires and denying the pay hike to some 10 million workers in smaller businesses. That amendment failed July 9 by a 46-52 vote. Y=W, N=R (DEM: 0-47: REP: 46-5) . 4. National Right to Work Law—When Republicans took control of the Senate in the 104th Congress, Sen. Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kans.) promised the extremist National Right to Work Committee a vote on legislation establishing a federal right-to-work (for less) law. The bill would have repealed the section of the National Labor Relations Act that allows states to determine their own laws on union security agreements and replaced it with a federal mandate banning such agreements. Proponents failed to mention that none of the 21 states with right-to-work laws ranks above the national average in pay. The AFL-CIO and affiliated unions brought more than 1,000 workers to the Capitol steps and the Senate hallways, and staged a call-in campaign that produced tens of thousands of angry calls. That pressure helped defeat the motion July 10 by a 31-68 vote. Y=W, N=R (DEM: 0-47; REP: 31-21) . 5. TEAM Act—The TEAM Act, strongly backed by big business, is a head-on assault on workers' rights. It would deny the right of workers to pick their own representatives for employee/employer committees, many of which deal with workplace issues such as wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment. In effect, it could lead to the creation of "company unions." The bill's backers claimed it was needed because current law forbids such committees. But some 30,000 employers have established worker/management teams and the National Labor Relations Board rarely objects. The bill passed the Senate July 10 by a 53-46 vote. Y=W, N=R (DEM: 2-45; REP: 51-1) . 6. Welfare Reform—The AFL-CIO supports moving people from welfare to work, but the welfare reform (H.R. 3734) considered in 1996 does not do that. The bill’s cuts in food stamp and assistance to legal immigrants were projected to push 1 million children of working parents into poverty and deprive hard-working families help in times of need. It also creates the potential for large-scale job displacement in the public and private sectors. The "workfare" provisions could penalize low-wage unskilled workers by forcing them to compete for jobs with welfare recipients earning subminimum wages. The conference report on the bill passed the Senate August 1 by a 78-21 vote. Y=W, N=R (DEM: 25-21; REP: 53-0) . 7. Federal Express—Federal Express, a notoriously anti-union corporation, was the beneficiary of some back door politicking in 1996. When the FAA reauthorization bill (H.R. 3539) was reported from a House-Senate conference, it contained a provision to cover Federal Express under the rules of the Railway Labor Act, which requires system-wide organizing, rather than the National Labor Relations Act, which allows organizing on a site-by-site basis. Neither the House- nor Senate-passed bills had contained the Federal Express provision and congressional conference rules normally don’t allow the addition of new provisions, but GOP maneuvering circumvented the rules. A filibuster against the bill because of this provision was defeated when the Senate voted 66-31 for a cloture motion that ends a filibuster on Nov. 3. Y=W, N=R (DEM: 17-29; REP: 49-2).