President Bush is famous for putting his foot in his mouth. In the midst of the Hurricane Katrina debacle he turned to the incompetent FEMA director and said: “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.” I didn’t think he could ever top that. But he did, just this week. With Labor Day on the horizon, he beamed at the television cameras and said: “Things are good for American workers.”

In my memory, I cannot think of a time when things were worse. And yet, when it comes to who this president has hurt the most, labor has to get in line — a long line.

By misleading our country into a disastrous war, ignoring global warming, ordering illegal wiretaps and quadrupling the national debt, President Bush has laid claim to the trophy labeled “Worst President Ever.” He has gone out of his way to punish the poor and the elderly with his attacks on Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security while rewarding the rich with tax breaks. Young people fare no better as college tuitions become unaffordable and they begin careers nearly bankrupted by their student loans. He would tear down the Constitutional wall separating church and state, simply to curry favor with the only people on this planet who don’t care about his failings — just that he is “born again.”

But despite the long line of beleaguered citizens who have suffered at the elitist policy whims of this administration, I still believe a good case can be made for putting labor unions at the very front of the line. No one has suffered more and their suffering harms the entire nation.

Here is where labor is this Labor Day:

We have a Labor Secretary who hates labor, that’s for starters. Elaine Chao is a favorite of President Bush and employers all across the nation. For the first time in our history, corporate bigwigs have run of the building while AFL-CIO President John Sweeney can’t even get a green card. When a business-funded con artist opened an anti-union Web site called “Union Facts,” Chao’s Labor Department advertised it on their Web site.

The National Labor Relations Board was created in 1935 to help workers organize unions. The current NLRB with Bush appointees now functions as a training center to create new obstacles for workers wanting to join unions — a far cry from what FDR had in mind.

What does it mean when workers can’t form unions? Wages fall. Working conditions become Dickensian, millions more have no health coverage. Labor unions made this a middle-class nation and the envy of the free world. That has always been our strength, with each generation of workers more productive and with the clout in bargaining to share in the prosperity they help create. In the process, they also built a stronger America.

That was then. This is now. Just before adjourning for its August vacation, the GOP-controlled Congress sandbagged the first increase in the minimum wage in a decade — and laughed about it. Meanwhile, an administration that is close friends of the rich and powerful does nothing to contain soaring gas prices or health care costs that have working families struggling to survive on stagnant wages.

And all our president can say this Labor Day is: “Things are good for American workers.”

Almost as good as “let ‘em eat cake.”

(Victor Kamber is a consultant to several labor unions and president of Carmen Group Communications, a Washington, D.C.-based communications firm. His political views are expressed regularly in his blog: Kamber’s Comments, accessible at www.victorkamber.com.)