President Kerry's Signature

If Kerry is elected, there will be much work for him to do that will take long negotiations with Congress. But there are a number of executive orders he can issue immediately upon taking his office. All they need is his signature. He can:

- Repeal Bush's executive order reducing overtime pay protections for up to 8 million American workers.

- Overturn Bush's anti-union executive order that "effectively bars project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects, even in situations where they have been regularly used since the 1940s."

- Revise Bush's excecutive order that "allows service contractors in federal buildings to layoff low-wage workers, who are mostly women, whenever there is a turnover of government contractors, which in effect erodes their job security."

- Reinstate "labor-management cooperation systems that serve the federal government and hundreds of thousands of federal workers" and that had "resulted in numerous productivity gains and cost-savings measures benefiting all taxpayers." When Bush repealed this, he was opposed by some in his own party.

- Terminate the requirement demanding government contractors effectively discouraging union membership (even though union jobs have higher wages/benefits), while discouraging contractors from telling workers about their union rights.

- Revoke the Bush executive order that restricts public access to historical records. This Bush order was opposed by some Republicans.

- Reform the Bush order that "requires federal agencies to give special consideration to energy interests in devising new regulation." This order "mirrored a draft proposal submitted by the American Petroleum Institute" (the oil industry's lobbying group), actually "borrowing words almost verbatim for a key section."

- Repeal the Bush order "that broadens the authority of agencies to withhold information from the public." The Bush order, signed in May of 2002, for instance "gave the EPA Administrator authority to designate documents 'Secret' or 'Confidential,' two of the three highest possible security classifications." It also allows the Administrator "to delegate classification authority to senior EPA officials." Once classified, a person can gain access to information only when an agency head or their designee reviews the request, the person signs a non-disclosure agreement, and the person can establish a "need-to-know" to the satisfaction of agency officials.