Workers Memorial Day In Los Angeles

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



Today is Workers Memorial Day, the day we remember those who have died on the job. They come from all walks of life, merely trying to get ahead and create a better world for themselves and their families. And yet, each year, thousands of people die from unsafe working conditions or hazardous duty; 16 deaths per day, in fact.



Over the weekend I attended a Workers Memorial Day event in Los Angeles, at the UCLA Labor Center near MacArthur Park. I saw the makeshift memorial to some of the 404 workers who died at their place of employment in California in 2008, adorned with pictures, flowers, and also the tools of work - cleaning supplies, a computer mouse, fruits and vegetables, a surgical mask, and paint rollers. I read about Damien Whipple, 24, who fell off a train into the tracks while working to switch out rail cars. I read about Abdon Felix, 42, who collapsed in 108 degree heat while loading grapes at Sunview Farms in Delano. I read about Carlos Rivera, a 73 year-old dockworker at the Port of Long Beach who was struck by a forklift carrying rolls of sheet metal.

Every year, worker rights and safety advocates, unionists, clergy, and the families of the victims gather in Los Angeles, to honor these workers and bring awareness of the real problem of worker fatalities. They hold a mock funeral procession around the area, to make everyone in the community aware of the issue, and to demonstrate solidarity with the cause. Leaders read names of 40 of the 404 who died, and after every name, the crowd assembled replied "Presente!" in a show of unity.

Representative Laura Richardson (D-CA) of nearby Long Beach spoke at the event. She's a former member of the Machinist's Union, and she talked about her employment history. "I worked at 'The Bomb Shelter,' a restaurant area, when I went to UCLA. I cleaned the toilets and the tables, and I never recall anyone offering me any gloves," Richardson said. "I worked at UPS, and no one offered me steel-toed shoes." She painted a picture of workers often taken advantage of on the job, of a lack of protective gear and supplies, a lack of training, a lack of empathy by forcing workers to show up even when sick or injured, upon threat of termination.

"That's why I support HR 2067, the Protecting America's Workers Act," Richardson announced to the crowd. "Even though our laws in California are better than most, they're not good enough, and the federal laws haven't been improved in 40 years."

In fact, Workers Memorial Day Coincides with the anniversary of the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and Richardson is correct - many of those statutes have not been updated for a changing workplace since their passage. "It's not good enough to put a poster on the wall," Richardson said, "we need supervisors following the law, and if they aren't they should be penalized."

We're seeing with the recent high-profile cases of worker deaths, like with the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion, that employers have grown savvy at beating the system and circumventing regulations. That's why they need to be strengthened and given the teeth needed to truly provide for a safe workplace.



And if anything, the recession has deepened that need. We've seen corporate productivity rise as their workforce gets reduced. Basically, most companies are producing more with less. The staffs have increased stress and that can lead to more accidents. Some advocates for hotel workers told me that hotel staff has been slashed across the board even as amenities increase and the workload rises. This can easily lead to preventable accidents.

In a proclamation today on the 40th anniversary of OSHA, President Obama recognized the need for constant vigilance in protecting America's workers:

Although these large-scale tragedies are appalling, most workplace deaths result from tragedies that claim one life at a time through preventable incidents or disabling disease. Every day, 14 workers are killed in on-the-job incidents, while thousands die each year of work-related disease, and millions are injured or contract an illness. Most die far from the spotlight, unrecognized and unnoticed by all but their families, friends, and co-workers -- but they are not forgotten.

The legal right to a safe workplace was won only after countless lives had been lost over decades in workplaces across America, and after a long and bitter fight waged by workers, unions, and public health advocates. Much remains to be done, and my Administration is dedicated to renewing our Nation's commitment to achieve safe working conditions for all American workers.

Providing safer work environments will take the concerted action of government, businesses, employer associations, unions, community organizations, the scientific and public health communities, and individuals. Today, as we mourn those lost mere weeks ago in the Upper Big Branch Mine and other recent disasters, so do we honor all the men and women who have died on the job. In their memory, we rededicate ourselves to preventing such tragedies, and to securing a safer workplace for every American.

Now OSHA merely needs the proper tools to succeed in their mission. And the Protecting America's Workers Act can provide it.

The Energy Plant Explosion You DIDN'T Hear About

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



The disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine in Coalmont, West Virginia has justifiably brought a lot of attention to the issue of worker safety and the need for strong regulation to protect America's workers. But as Chris Bowers points out, this is the kind of story you can write every day in America. Worker safety didn't become a problem because of one mine explosion in West Virginia. Indeed, 16 American workers die every single day, on average, at the workplace, and the federal agencies tasked with making sure that doesn't happen need more resources and more tools to combat such tragedies.

Why, just days before the Massey Energy mine accident, another energy plant saw a deadly workplace disaster:

The death toll from Friday’s fire at Tesoro’s Anacortes refinery in Washington state grew to five, according to news reports.

Three refinery workers were earlier reported to have died following the fire, and a fourth and fifth died of their injuries after being taken to a hospital in Seattle, according to news media reports.

Two other injured workers remained in critical condition at the Seattle hospital.

Sources indicated to Reuters that the fire was caused by a failed heat exchanger, which alternately heats and cools hydrocarbons at the plant. Workers were replacing a separate heat exchanger when this one failed, causing an explosion.

The Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency which oversees refineries like this, was already investigating a flash fire at a separate Tesoro refinery in Utah from last October, as well as multiple other fires across the country. A similar blast killed 15 workers at a BP refinery in Texas in 2005. This is becoming an epidemic.

CSB (Chemical Safety Board) Chairman and CEO John Bresland said, “The CSB has 18 ongoing investigations. Of those, seven of these accidents occurred at refineries across the country. This is a significant and disturbing trend that the refining industry needs to address immediately.”

And yet, the Chemical Safety Board cannot issue citations or fines, only safety recommendations. They can request that a refinery shut down because of safety concerns, but they cannot mandate it.

This is just an example of where government lacks the tools and resources necessary to keep American workers safe at their jobs. There are worker's memorials all over the country which are a living reminder that we have not succeeded in creating safe and secure workplaces. Every April, Worker's Memorial Day serves to deliver that reminder.

That's where the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA) comes in. The Obama Administration under the leadership of Hilda Solis is actually doing a great job of restoring the gutted agencies under the Labor Department's purview, which have been ravaged by 30 years of deregulation and industry capture. But the regulations themselves need to be beefed up, in addition to having better regulators and better tactics. David Michaels and Jordan Barab are leading the Occupational Health and Safety Administration into a new era. They actually slapped the largest fine in history on BP for their failure to fix safety violations even AFTER their 2005 refinery explosion. OSHA is reconfiguring their inspections to target severe violators.

All of this is good. But now they need to be given the ability to succeed. PAWA would do that, by extending OSHA coverage to 8 million more workers, by updating civil and criminal penalties for violations, and by providing an effective deterrent to employers to maintain unsafe workplaces.

We need to eliminate the kinds of headlines we see in West Virginia or Washington or Texas. We need employers to live up to their responsibilities. We need to protect America's workers.

Deaths In The Fields: Why State Agencies Need Help Protecting America's Workers

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



It's hard to find a tougher job in America than harvesting in the fields. Throughout California, known as the nation's salad bowl, farmworkers, frequently migrants with little knowledge of their rights as workers or even the English language, toil in triple-digit heat, often without shade or water breaks. Needless to say, this dangerous work has resulted in serious injury and even deaths.

Jose Rosario Valencia started feeling nauseated just after 9 a.m. on July 17. His heart rate sped up and his knees buckled.

Valencia was scared. He'd heard of other farmworkers dying of heat stroke in the fields.

"I thought about my family and how they would suffer," said Valencia, 46, who moves irrigation pipes in the onion fields.

Even though California passed a groundbreaking law in 2005 to protect farmworkers from heat illness and death, there have been as many as 10 heat-related fatalities in the years since. Among the victims in 2008 were a pregnant teenager who died when her body temperature climbed to 108 degrees after working in a Lodi vineyard and a 37-year-old man who suffered heat stroke after loading table grapes near Bakersfield. The state has confirmed heat as the cause of six of the deaths and said it may have been a factor in the others.

Farmworkers get paid by the piece, based on how much they load, and their employers set quotas that they are expected to cover. They have every incentive to avoid breaks and work as hard as possible; in some cases, the water is simply out there for display. As a result, farmworkers skip bathroom breaks. They skip water breaks. They stay out in the fields under 100-degree heat with the fear that they would be fired if they did not. And as a result, workers die.

The most celebrated case in recent years was that of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17 year-old farmworker who died of heat strike in the fields in the summer of 2008. She was pregnant at the time.

Maria collapsed while working for Merced Farm Labor in a vineyard owned by West Coast Grape Farming outside of Stockton, CA. Maria worked for nine hours in temperatures that reached 101 degrees. There was no water nearby. There was no shade.

After about 2 hours of delays, Maria was finally taken to a clinic. Her temperature upon arrival was 108.4 degrees. Maria's heart stopped six times in the next two days before she passed away. Doctors said if emergency medical help had been summoned or she had been taken to the hospital sooner, she might have survived.

In 2009, Cal-OSHA, the state occupational safety board, delivered regulations to combat heat-stress related injuries and deaths. The employers first tried to amend the regulations, trying to classify the vines in the vineyard as "shade." But they failed, as Cal-OSHA refused to rewrite the laws.

However, lobbying for changes in the law is only one way that employers evade oversight. Under the Schwarzenegger Administration and during the historic budget crisis in the state, funding for Cal-OSHA has shrunk. Only two HUNDRED inspectors monitor all the worksites in the nation's most populous state, including the 35,000 farms. There are more fish and game wardens in California than worksite inspectors.

And if an employer is cited, they can use a favorable appeals process to reduce the fines or dismiss the violations, something which has been done repeatedly in recent years. All violations can be appealed to a judge, appointed by the appeals board. Then the appeals board can vacate the judge's ruling. This offers many opportunities to game the system.

The head of the state Senate's Labor Committee accused a workplace safety board Wednesday of being biased toward employers and ignoring a law that requires fines for failing to report on-the-job injuries.

After a hearing, Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said he might introduce legislation that could lead to criminal charges against board members if they continue to disregard the law that calls for a $5,000 fine for employers' failing to report accidents in a timely manner.

The hearing came after a Times investigation last fall that found that the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health appeals board repeatedly dismissed and reduced the penalties levied by division inspectors, even in situations in which workers had died or were seriously injured.

One recent case was dismissed based on a spelling typo in one document. And this is more about ideology than budget problems: for example, Cal-OSHA received stimulus money to hire more inspectors, but has so far declined to do so.

Despite all of these obstacles, the new emphasis on worker safety by Cal-OSHA in the last growing season did pay some dividends. Last year, more vigorous training and enforcement efforts did serve to reduce heat-related illnesses and deaths. But already Cal-OSHA is talking about backing off, content that the media storm over the plight of the farmworkers has largely ended.

Rising compliance and awareness, Welsh said, may allow his agency to relax its inspection efforts in 2010.

"The 3,400 inspections we did last year was a little more than we can sustain," he said.

This is why we need HR 2067, the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA). A fully resourced OSHA could fill in the gaps where the state-level agencies often fail. They could deliver larger penalties without the byzantine appeals process at agencies like Cal-OSHA. They could provide the ability for families to seek justice from employers through the courts. Simply put they could restore the promise of a safe and health workplace for everybody in America.

Even in the fields.

More Health Reform Needed - In America's Workplaces

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



Last week, the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing on HR 2067, the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA). This bill would strengthen and modernize OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and give them the tools to actually carry out their mission of ensuring a safe workplace for all Americans.

We tend to think of health care as simply a matter of insurance and doctors and pills. But workplace safety plays just as vital a role. Most of us spend a majority of our waking hours at our workplaces. We often carry out dangerous tasks at worksites which are not fully screened by regulators. We are offered little training or safety equipment to carry out these tasks. And a lot of us die - 16 deaths per day, in fact, over 5,000 deaths a year due to workplace accidents, and many more - over 50,000 - from occupational disease.

Many of these deaths are preventable, and simply due to OSHA not having the resources or the tools to carry out its mandate. PAWA would change that. It would extend OSHA coverage to state, local and federal government workers, as well as airline and railroad employees, which (incredibly) do not currently get OSHA protections - well over 8 million workers. It actually raises civil penalties for worksite violations, for the first time in two decades, so that fines for keeping a hazardous workplace is not the cost of doing business. Any violation involving a worker death would be susceptible to a mandatory minimum penalty. And PAWA would provide accountability, by allowing prosecutions against employers who allow worker injuries and deaths willfully (employees and their families would have means to hold employers accountable as well). This would represent the first update of the Occupational Safety and Health Law since its enactment in 1970.

A report last week suggested that workplace injuries have declined, despite no changes to the law. Certainly the Chamber of Commerce has been throwing these statistics around. But these numbers from the Labor Department are often preliminary, involve changes to reporting standards, and never count the 50,000-plus deaths due to occupational diseases and toxic exposure. Indeed, the Chamber works hard to create reporting rules beneficial to their businesses, which mitigate reporting statistics. There's also conflicting data, like the jump in workplace suicides. Meager successes - if they exist - do not eliminate the need for continued action.

The regulatory reform at OSHA over the past several years, prior to the Obama Administration, is legendary, and admirably summed up by this report from the Center for Progressive Reform. The current leadership of OSHA - Assistant Secretary David Michaels and Deputy Assistant Secretary Jordan Barab - have been handed a dysfunctional agency without the means to cover every worksite in America, nor the enforcement capabilities to force compliance. An excerpt:

Observing OSHA in its struggle to implement and enforce the OSH Act is a study of regulatory dysfunction. OSHA and its state partners employ fewer than 2,100 inspectors to keep tabs on more than 8 million U.S. workplaces. OSHA must meet so many analytical requirements that it takes more than a decade to implement a single new standard. By one
count, OSHA is subject to 18 different statutory, court-created, and administrative limits on its rulemaking process [...]

If conducted properly, a compliance assessment at a very large worksite might take 2,000 employee-hours. The accompanying legal proceedings can drag on for months or years. In Fiscal Year 2010, OSHA will spend about $227 million on federal enforcement programs, but will only have the capacity to inspect 40,000 of the nation’s more than 8 million workplaces.

Proactive rulemaking to manage emerging hazards, such as lung disease linked to diacetyl, and other flavoring chemicals used in the popcorn industry, can also be a huge resource drain. Every type of OSHA employee – economists, engineers, occupational health specialists, lawyers – is involved in the development of new health and safety standards. Coordinating their work is difficult and costly.

Yet, OSHA operates on a shoestring budget. OSHA’s budget climbed steadily in the 1970s, funding the agency’s growing capacity to develop new rules and enforce the OSH Act, which in turn triggered a backlash from the business community. Under the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, OSHA’s budget was first cut and then held roughly even with inflation. The Clinton administration gave OSHA a boost, and the agency’s budget reached an historic high in 2001. But that was the same year that the agency published its ill-fated ergonomics standard, and, like OSHA’s aggressive enforcement in the late 1970s, the ergonomics standard elicited a backlash in the business community and a subsequent whittling-away of the agency’s budget under George W. Bush.

The whole report is worth reading. You could tell this story in virtually every regulatory agency in America. The Reagan revolution ushered out real enforcement of industry and ushered in industry capture or resource starvation. This has continued largely unchecked until today. PAWA would change that, on a variety of levels.

And this isn't an abstract problem. There are real consequences to inattention to our workplaces. To take just one example: in July 2009, a temporary worker in Camden, NJ named Vincent Smith died from falling into a vat of chocolate. He was untrained, without job security as a temp and making the minimum wage. And it turned out that the food processing plant didn't have a license to make chocolate. They operated for six or seven years without scrutiny from federal or even local inspectors, and workers had no whistleblower protections to call OSHA and report the violations. In an effort to save money, Hershey sub-contracted out their chocolate processing to plants like this, and that savings comes at the expense of worker safety.

Local inspectors took out their wrath on the processing plant, fining them a whopping.... $1,152. Eventually, federal authorities investigated the plant, and they did come up with a fine for the multiple safety violations and the death of Vincent Smith - $39,000. This is considered a major fine for OSHA, and yet it's a mere pittance of the profits for a company operating illegally without a license for 6 years.

Smith's family has filed a personal injury lawsuit. But we cannot rely on the courts, absent regulators, to prevent the next death, or provide the deterrent needed to get employers to provide a safe workplace. We need the Protecting America's Workers Act.

The Story Of American Workplaces

(This post is part of Brave New Films' 16 Deaths Per Day campaign, for which I am a blogger fellow.)

Steven Greenhouse reports in the New York Times that employers are routinely underreporting illnesses and injuries to their workers.

The report, by the G.A.O., the auditing arm of Congress, said many employers did not report workplace injuries and illnesses for fear of increasing their workers’ compensation costs or hurting their chances of winning contracts.

The report also said workers did not report job-related injuries because they feared being fired or disciplined and worried that their co-workers might lose rewards, like bonuses or steak dinners, as part of safety-based incentive programs.

“The widespread underreporting so clearly documented in this report is undermining the health and safety of American workers,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “If we don’t know the full extent of the workplace hazards workers face, we cannot fully address these risks.”

Mr. Harkin was one of the Congressional leaders who requested the report.

It's hard to even determine the problems with workplace safety when employers are systematically undermining the data. And it's impossible for industry to take credit for declines in workplace injuries and even fatalities if the official data cannot be trusted (that decline can also be attributed to the overall decline in the workforce due to the recession, too, as well as the decline in staffing at the agencies that keep the records). In fact, the GAO report concluded that OSHA may have failed to account for "up to two-thirds of all workplace injuries and illnesses."

See, OSHA relies on data from employers for a bulk of its surveying about workplace safety. That's right, the foxes write up the reports about the henhouse. When you start talking to people other than the site managers, some interesting statistics crop up:

The accountability office also found that more than a third of the occupational health practitioners it surveyed said that employers or workers had pressured them to provide insufficient medical treatment to hide or play down work-related injuries or illnesses.

The safety and health administration requires employers with more than 10 workers to record every work-related injury or illness that results in lost work time or medical treatment other than first aid. Some occupational health practitioners say that to avoid recording an injury, some employers will try to limit treatment for a serious injury to just first aid.

In other cases, the practitioners said, employers might seek alternative diagnoses if the initial diagnosis would result in a recordable injury or illness.

They want to avoid OSHA site inspections, which they know the agency is only equipped to perform on the most egregious violators. If you stay out of sight, you'll be out of OSHA's mind, in all likelihood.

When you read the independent reports, outside of OSHA, you begin to get the true picture of what American workplaces look like. In the low-wage market, there are all kinds of systematic violations, forcing employees to work longer hours for less pay - and these violations extend to health and safety. This stress and strain may account for the shocking rise in workplace suicides over the last year.

“This report confirms that when it comes to the documenting of workplace injuries, we can’t just take employers at their word,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. “The system, to this point, has been all too easy to game.”

Which is why we need real changes to the system like the Protect America's Workers Act.

The Serious Side Of Chocolate

(This post is part of Brave New Foundation's 16 Deaths Per Day campaign, where I am a blogger fellow.)

Back in July, a temp worker died from falling into a vat of chocolate. He had been on the job two weeks.

A temp worker at a Camden chocolate processing plant died this morning after he fell into an eight-foot vat that was mixing and melting chocolate to be used in Hershey's candy.

Vincent Smith II, 29, of Camden, was standing atop a platform and tossing blocks of solid, raw chocolate into the tank, Jason Laughlin, spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, said.

The tank was heated at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and paddles inside stirred the chocolate as it was thrown in.

When Smith fell around 10:30 a.m., one of his three coworkers on the platform immediately rushed to turn the machine off and the two others tried to pull him out.

But Smith had been struck by one of the paddles, suffering fatal injuries. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and Camden firefighters pulled his chocolate-covered body out of the tank.

A few local newscasts in the Philadelphia area had some fun with this story, barely suppressing giggles and making predictable puns as they gave it a brief mention.

But they never followed up on the story. In fact, the owners of the plant, Lyons & Sons, never had a license to make chocolate (yes that's a Fox news link):

Officials say a cocoa processing center in New Jersey was operating illegally when a worker fell into a vat of melting chocolate and died.

Camden cited Lyons & Sons Inc. for not having a business license after Vincent Smith II died Wednesday.

Authorities say the 29-year-old was hit by a mixing paddle.

Company spokesman Kevin Feeley says that it's a misunderstanding and that Camden officials knew the firm was operating in the former Campbell Soup plant.

I'm sure the company spokesman would call it a misunderstanding.

The lack of a license - after "six or seven" years of operation, according to the initial story - may explain why Lyons & Sons didn't have any prior OSHA violations. Hard to investigate businesses when they aren't carrying licenses and the city inspectors don't know of their plant's existence, making them unable to refer problems to OSHA. In fact, the plant was never zoned for melting chocolate, but cocoa-bean storage. And Lyons & Sons actually was contracted through a company called Cocoa Services (presumably so one could blame the oversights on the other). And John Lyons was listed as the President of both businesses.

Ultimately, one business is really culpable here. Hershey doesn't make their own chocolate anymore. They sub-contract it out to companies like Lyons & Sons to cut costs. Included in those cost savings are worker benefits - and worker safety.

Nancy Cleeland wrote about Smith's story in October for The American Prospect.

Safety is of particular concern in food-processing plants, which often feature slick floors, powerful machinery, and raised platforms. Any one of those features can be deadly. Falls are the second leading cause of death on the job in the U.S., after highway accidents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even as the overall occupational death rate has dropped, the toll from falls has been steadily rising for 15 years -- with 847 reported fatalities in 2007.

"In many of these plants you have bits of food flying everywhere, and it gets on the floor," says Jackie Nowell, occupational safety and health director of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), which represents workers in beef- and poultry-processing plants, among others. "That makes it very dangerous. Employers struggle with this issue all the time. And it's a very big concern for workers."

Worries about safety have driven many organizing campaigns and contract negotiations in food processing. Unions representing workers in the industry invest in health and safety research and advocacy and include safety language in contracts. "There's a great history of it," Nowell says. "I've got old contracts from the '40s that talk about safety committees. It was important that there be a system that workers could go through. They learned to look for hazards and felt comfortable reporting them."

But without job security or the support of a union, temp workers are seldom forthcoming with their concerns, she adds. And when accidents do happen, the victim's interests sometimes languish as blame is passed around. "There has to be a better definition of who's the employer," Nowell says. "There has to be a closing of the loop."

Understand the circumstances surrounding Smith's death. He lived in Camden, one of the most economically depressed cities in America. He had been looking for a job for months and was praying for one, according to family. So when the opportunity to work at the chocolate factory came around, he took it. He was getting just over the minimum wage, with no benefits, sick days, or even the promise of a future job, as a temporary employee. And worker safety was far less stringent on a non-union plant of contractors like Lyons & Sons.

In this case, OSHA is investigating, and Lyons & Sons have shut the illegal production facility down. But how many other factories are out there, beyond the reach of OSHA, operating in violation of current law, and unwilling to do anything about it because the risks from federal regulators are so minimal?

That's why we need the Protect America's Workers Act to give workers like Vincent Smith more protections. Death by chocolate may sound funny, but it's no laughing matter.

16 Deaths Per Day

(Disclosure: I am a blogger fellow with Brave New Films, the creator of this video and the 16 Deaths Per Day campaign)



Every day in America, 16 people die at work from employer negligence.

That's the backdrop to 16 Deaths Per Day, a new video and website from the advocacy group Brave New Films, seeking to highlight the often-neglected issue of worker safety.

The video makes the point that employers who provide an unsafe work environment are almost never prosecuted in the event of a death of an employee. Even if they were, the crime of contributing to an employee's death is only a misdemeanor, with a maximum prison sentence of six months and a maximum fine of $70,000. Under the Bush Administration, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) hardly ever referred cases to the Justice Department for prosecution, lowered fines for noncompliance so that they represented a minor cost of doing business, and underfunded the agency so it could never inspect worksites across America for unsafe conditions. In addition, OSHA protections currently do not apply to all public employees at the state or federal level.

The video takes a look at the stories of several workers. Travis Koehler-Fergen, an employee at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas, and Tina Hall, from Toyo Automotive Parts USA, both died at their workplaces in accidents. The Orleans was found by OSHA to have broken the law, but were never referred for prosecution. 16 safety violations were found at the Toyo plant prior to the accident that killed Tina Hall, but the highest fine ever levied on the company was $7,000.

Members of Congress, including Lynn Woolsey and the late Ted Kennedy, introduced a bill this April called the Protecting America's Workers Act, which would tighten up worker safety laws, and give OSHA the ability to impose legitimate fines on noncompliant work sites, making the law adequate to deal with serious violators. Among other things, the bill would:

• Expand workplace protections to state, county, municipal, and federal employees who are not currently covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act
• Increase financial penalties for those who kill or endanger workers
• Strengthen criminal penalties to make felony charges available for willful negligence causing death or serious injury
• Expand OSHA coverage to millions of other employees who fall through the cracks (like airline and railroad workers)
• Provide protection for whistleblowers
• Give employees the right to refuse hazardous work that may kill them
• Improve the rights of workers and families, requiring OSHA to investigate all cases of death
• Prohibit employers from discouraging reporting of injury or illness

16 Deaths Per Day has a petition for members of the relevant House and Senate committees, urging them to pass this bill. There's a Facebook page as well.

Card Check Vanishes

Conservative Democrats pulled out the card check provisions from the Employee Free Choice Act, leaving in place a weakened bill that is still being negotiated.

The so-called card-check provision — which senators decided to scrap to help secure a filibuster-proof 60 votes — would have required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards saying they wanted a union. Currently, employers can insist on a secret-ballot election, a higher hurdle for unions.

In its place, several Senate and labor officials said, the revised bill would require shorter unionization campaigns and faster elections.

While disappointed with the failure of card check, union leaders argued this would still be an important victory because it would give companies less time to press workers to vote against unionizing [...]

Though some details remain to be worked out, under the expected revisions, union elections would have to be held within five or 10 days after 30 percent of workers signed cards favoring having a union. Currently, the campaigns often run two months.

To further address labor’s concerns that the election process is tilted in favor of employers, key senators are considering several measures. One would require employers to give union organizers access to company property. Another would bar employers from requiring workers to attend anti-union sessions that labor supporters deride as “captive audience meetings.”

These provisions will only work if there are stiff, measurable penalties for breaking the law. Right now those penalties are weak and unenforced, and even if they're hit with fines employers consider it the cost of doing business. If those fines are high enough to discourage intimidation and harrassment, on both sides by the way, then we might be able to have a level playing field with snap elections and binding arbitration if the election is successful, so that the employer can just refuse to sign a contract forever. I'm upset about the loss of card check, but without the anti-intimidation provisions it really won't matter. Right now the union election system is broken - the "secret ballot" language might have beaten card check, so "right to vote" language needs to ensure a level playing field. If that happens, this bill would expand union membership in America and protect worker's right to unionize.

...Andy Stern responds by vowing that there will be a vote on majority signup, whether in the bill or by amendment. And there should be. Labor needs to know who their friends are in Congress before they spend a kajillion dollars on them getting them elected.

Employee Free Choice - Card Check = FTW?

A leading Senator signaled yesterday that the Employee Free Choice Act may go through a revision that would remove the controversial "card check" provision and retain the rest of the bill.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, who sponsored legislation to make it easier for workers to join unions, said the main provision of the proposal may have to be dropped to get the votes to pass it.

There isn’t enough support for a provision called card-check that would allow workers to bypass an election and form a union when a majority of them sign cards requesting one, Harkin said Monday in an interview.

“Compromises are going to be made,” said Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. “It probably won’t be card-check because too many people are opposed to it now.”

There are three elements to the Employee Free Choice Act. One, majority sign-up, has been turned into the entire bill. But there are new rules in the legislation about the timing and process of union elections, as well as stricter penalties for those who break the rules, particularly employers who intimidate their workers into voting against joining a union, or fire union organizers. T.A. Frank wrote about the importance of these measures a few months ago.

If a company illegally undermines a union campaign by threatening to fire workers, or by spying on them, or by promising to shut down the facility, the most serious penalty it can expect to face is being ordered to post notices in the workplace promising not to engage in such activities in the future. If a company illegally fires a worker, and the worker can somehow prove his or her case, the penalty is a requirement to reinstate the employee with back pay—minus whatever the employee has earned elsewhere in the meantime. And if a company negotiates in bad faith, it can perhaps expect an order from the NLRB to start negotiating in good faith. Such punishments are the equivalent of punishing shoplifters by asking them to put the merchandise back.

This is what lawmakers have sought to remedy in devising the Employee Free Choice Act. For all the controversy, EFCA is a surprisingly modest bill, with provisions aimed at strengthening existing labor laws rather than altering them substantively. Under EFCA, if Rite Aid had been found guilty of making illegal threats or of spying or of intimidation, it could have faced a monetary penalty—up to $20,000 per incident in cases of repeated violations. If Rite Aid had been found to have illegally fired a union supporter, it would have been required to pay not just the back wages, but three times the back wages. And if contract negotiations were being conducted without results, either party could seek federal mediation after ninety days. If, after thirty additional days, negotiations were still stalled, then an arbiter would be able to impose a contract settlement that would last two years. This would prevent employers (or employees) from running out the clock with bad-faith talks [...]

The question, then, is how much of a fight the card check provision merits. And the answer is probably a little, but not a lot. What most undermines the secret-ballot process is that employers can violate the law in numerous ways without consequences. Under EFCA, however, every illegal action has the potential to be costly, so firings, spying, threats, or other forms of intimidation would be less likely. Also, there is an alternative way to preserve the secret ballot while guarding against company malfeasance: expedited elections. Under current law, months can go by between when NLRB announces the results of a card check vote and when a secret-ballot election is held. If, however, this campaign window were reduced to just a few days, employers would have less opportunity to intimidate union supporters into changing their minds.

My personal view is that the majority sign-up portion of the bill is inoffensive and makes sense - a recent study out of Illinois found no instances of union coercion in their state's majority sign-up law, compared to many thousands of instances of employer violations nationally under current law. Majority sign-up is a sensible application of the will of workers to organize. But Frank makes a compelling case that the other elements of the bill would aid union organizing efforts as well, and at this point, that's far better than no bill at all.

...Arlen Specter is now promising a compromise on Employee Free Choice that looks suspiciously like Harkin's proposal.

The Senate’s newest Democrat expressed optimism today that he could possibly work out a compromise this year with the primary sponsor of legislation easing union organizing rules.

“We’re going to work on it,” Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter told reporters a week after leaving the Republican Party for the Democratic side of the aisle.

Specter announced earlier this year that he would vote against cloture on the so-called union card check bill (S 560) in its current form. He said today his views on the legislation remain unchanged but that he’s willing to work to find common ground with its sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

“I’m opposed to giving up the secret ballot or to mandatory arbitration as they are set forth in the bill,” he said. “But I do believe that labor law reform is past overdue.”

In other words, he wants card check without card check. And that might be okay, for the reasons I set out. But my kabuki antennae are at full blast. Specter comes up with an already-set "compromise," the unions grudgingly agree, they back Specter, and everyone praises everyone for finding the wise middle ground.

Wahhhhhh!!!!

Arnold Schwarzenegger will turn this car around right now!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday he will refuse to sign any bills that reach his desk until the Legislature sends him a budget agreement.

"At this point, nothing in this building is more important than a responsible budget to fix our broken budget system," he said at a hastily called afternoon press conference. "So until the Legislature passes a budget that I can sign, I will not sign any bills that reach my desk."

Schwarzenegger acknowledged that his decision "means some good bills will fail." But he said with a cash crisis looming, the late budget takes on even greater urgency.

He's signaling here that his little state employee wage cut gambit didn't work. It didn't produce the kind of compromise he wanted and it sent him tumbling in the polls as he attempted to cynically hold innocent bystanders hostage in an unrelated fight. So he had to cut off all bills instead. Maybe now, he thinks, the legislators will take notice.

But let's understand what he's doing here. Yesterday, as a culmination of four years of work, Alan Lowenthal's bill to clean up the ports of Oakland, LA and Long Beach passed the State Senate. Eliminating the toxic pollution at the ports would save 3,700 lives annually according to the California Air Resources Board. The bill would enact a $30 container fee on every import, using that money ($300 million annually) for investment in reducing pollution and improving freight rail. It's a milestone bill that is sorely needed to improve the air quality of these communities.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Arnold's latest stunt will actually kill thousands of people from reversible diseases.

There's a bill pending in the Senate Appropriations Committee authored by Fiona Ma (AB 2716) which would deliver guaranteed paid sick days to all California workers. This bill has the support of 73% of the public and would make the state the first in the nation to provide this to their residents. Arnold would rather stamp his feet and issue ultimatums than improve the lives of Californians and do the bidding of the overwhelming majority of the public.

On health care, while we cannot expect a comprehensive plan to come out of this legislative session, there is a deal coming together that would improve health care for those who have insurance by mandating some strict rules for the industry:

In the final weeks of the legislative session, they are negotiating measures that would limit insurer profits on individual plans, require plans to provide a minimum set of benefits and restrict insurers' ability to cancel policies retroactively [...]

Three million Californians buy health insurance on their own rather than through employers. Insurers keep premiums low -- and profits high, their critics say -- on some individual policies by limiting the services they cover. Such plans may exclude prescription drugs and maternity services, for example; others may cover only hospital visits.

Many of the policies have big deductibles and require patients to pay large portions of their expenses, costing them much more than coverage obtained at workplaces.

The game-playing by Arnold on the budget means that, in all likelihood, these rules will not go into effect, and individual consumers of health insurance (like me) will remain incredibly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the insurance industry, which has shown already a penchant to deny coverage and jack up premiums. That too will put the lives of Californians at risk.

There's a human cost to the bullshit that Terminator Boy isn't accounting for. His head is in the clouds, and he thinks he can bully the legislature liked he bullied people in scripted movies for decades. But the recklessness will cost money, pain, suffering, and even lives.

May Day Happenings

Tomorrow is May Day, and the combination of anniversaries - the traditional holiday for workers (that started in the United States, it is most certainly NOT a Communist holiday), a day of action in the Latino community, and the 5th anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" - means that there are goings-on all over the state tomorrow.

• Latino groups will stage a May Day rally for immigrant rights tomorrow in downtown Los Angeles. You may remember that last year's event in Macarthur Park ended in chaos with tear gas and brutality marring a peaceful protest. The cops have actually been practicing and preparing so that there are no such incidents this year. Organizers expect anywhere between 25,000-100,000.

• There's at least one budget cut/fee increase protest being planned at Cal-State Northridge, organized by students. It should start around 12:00 on the bookstore lawn. I believe this is part of a continuing action by students to raise awareness about the crime Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to commit on public education this fiscal year. There's more at The Alliance for the CSU.

• On the anniversary of "Mission Accomplished," True Majority and CREDO Mobile are teaming up to deliver the Responsible Plan to End The War in Iraq to incumbent House members, and urge them to sign on to the bills in the plan that have already been proposed. The House leadership is planning on cravenly offering more money in the war supplemental than even George Bush asked for, funding it through 2009 without any checks or conditions. This is dead wrong, and there are steps Congress can take right now to rein in military contractors, aid in the humanitarian crisis, and increase regional diplomatic efforts, instead of allowing Bush to muddle through and pass off the disaster to his successor. You can find one of the 210 events in your area by clicking this link.

• The west coast chapters of the International Longshoreman Worker's Union (ILWU) is planning on shutting down all west coast ports on May Day to protest the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Information on Bay Area events is here. There's also information at this blog. This is the biggest general strike I can remember, and coming from longshoremen it can hardly be considered the work of dirty hippies. This is a very important event.

• And in what may in the final analysis be the most revolutionary event, word has it that Tesla Motors will open their very first store tomorrow in West LA, on Santa Monica Boulevard just east of the 405 Freeway, which paradoxically is one of the most congested spots in the city. Tesla has created an electric vehicle that runs like a sports car, and in future years their sedan model will be relatively affordable while getting the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon. As this event is the closest to me, I might actually get to this one. :)

CA Legislature Sells Out On Worker Protection

Democrats in the California State Assembly gave the finger to labor and will allow a massive expansion on Indian gaming in the state:

A group of powerful Southern California Indian tribes have reached a tentative accord with Assembly Democrats that could clear the way for ratification of multibillion-dollar gambling compacts that have been stalled since August.

If pending compacts receive final approval, Sycuan would be among the state's Indian casinos allowed to greatly expand their operations. The five tribes that are involved are among the nation's wealthiest.

The compromises on issues such as casino operating standards and workers' compensation are outlined in a five-page “memorandum of agreement” signed June 21 by Danny Tucker, chairman of the Sycuan band of El Cajon.

That document and a similar one signed by Pechanga Chairman Mark Macarro appear to be awaiting the signature of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been in Europe since Saturday. Schwarzenegger was scheduled to return to the Capitol today.

As juls notes, while the casinos won't be able to rip off the state and their customers due to meaningful oversight into operating standards, employees will still be getting the shaft. At issue is the fact that tribal lands are sovereign, and exempt from US labor laws. Under the compacts, the Legislature could have brought the tribes into compliance on those issues. But they punted:

They have fixed the accounting issues, but failed to ensure that workers rights are protected. The deal does require tribes to help the state ensure that employees do pay alimony and pay for workers comp insurance. These changes are essentially side agreement, and only four out of five tribes have agreed to the accounting provisions. They are on the fast track in the legislature and it all could be passed today.

The Compacts will not protect workers from being threatened or punished if they try and organize. Check cards will not be allowed for union organizing. Both of these were in the 2004 Compacts, but the governor failed to include them in this round and the Democrats declined to insist they be in their for passage. Needless to say, UNITE-HERE is upset.

I figure at least one Assembly Democrat will vote against these: Laura Richardson, who will still be in the Assembly until August, and who had half a million dollars thrown at her by Indian tribes to try and elect her opponent in the CA-37 race Tuesday.

This is really disappointing, but not unexpected. We have a Democratic Legislature that isn't really willing to stand up for worker's rights. This is despite the fact that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez came out of the labor movement. So now we get these huge casinos (a tax on the poor in their own right) with scant labor protections. That wouldn't fly in Las Vegas and it shouldn't be allowed here.

Slaying The Beast

Well, the Republicans killed the immigration bill dead. I fail to see how it helps them strategically, but their brown-hating base was whipped up in a fervor so there was little they could do. Meanwhile, I wasn't particularly fond of a lot of aspects of the bill, and am not particularly sad to see it go. In 2009, there will be a better opportunity with more and better Democrats to get a better bill. If I were running the Democratic Party I would put forward a bill demanding stronger workplace enforcement, including felony jail time for businessmen who knowingly hire and exploit undocumented workers. If we cannot bring these hardworking people out of the shadows, we should at a minimum protect them from this kind of exploitation. And I believe populist Republicans can agree to that; we've seen "enforce the laws on the books" in their rhetoric. The other effect this will have is to further widen the rift between the corporate Cons who want cheap labor and the anti-immigrant base.

Ultimately, doing nothing is irresponsible, and "sealing the border" is a stupid bumper sticker that is irrelevant to the problem (a majority of "illegal aliens" overstay tourist visas). So if you are really committed to this issue, you will jail anyone who hires someone in the country illegally. That includes the guy mowing your lawn and putting up your drywall. Somehow, I think we'll find a lot of brown-hating hypocrites that way. Let's play hardball.

Sellout on Trade?

What a busy day. Gonzales testifies all day in the House, a series of Iraq votes and now this very scary prospect of a "deal" on trade agreements which at first glance does not seem friendly to progressives and populists.

The Bush administration and the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, breaking a partisan impasse that had dragged on for months, were expected to reach agreement late Thursday on the rights of workers overseas to join labor unions. Both sides predicted that the agreement would clear the way for U.S. congressional approval of several pending trade agreements.

Democrats said the accord would be a major victory in their campaign to ensure that trade deals provided for the rights of workers to organize and that trading partner countries banned child labor and slave labor [...]

Trade specialists say that approval of these deals, with labor guarantees, could provide a template for future trade accords winning approval in Congress, where sentiment against trade deals in general is high. Many Democrats elected as part of the party's sweep last autumn ran by promising to block future trade deals.

Despite the endorsement of Rangel and Pelosi, many Democrats say that half or more of the Democrats in Congress may vote against the deal. But the agreement is expected to pass with strong backing among Republicans, whose leaders will urge them to vote with President George W. Bush on the matter.

The Bush administration hopes that this agreement paves the way for a much broader deal to extend Bush's authority to negotiate future trade accords and get a quick up-or-down vote on them.

That authority, known as "fast track" trade negotiating authority, expires June 30.

A very large portion of the Democratic rank and file in the Congress, particularly a number of so-called "moderates," ran on a progressive populist trade policy that demands that American jobs aren't shipped overseas to the lowest bidder. This is an issue where an old-school fair-trader from a textile family and Lou Dobbs are in absolute agreement. Unless you have global labor, human rights and environmental standards, you cannot give multinational corporations this kind of power. And by the way, with "fast track," essentially a line-item veto for trade, the President can strip out all of the agreements made in this "deal" anyway. The fact that no details have been released, the fact that the business-friendly New Democrat Coalition was instrumental in the deal, the fact that the most slavish corporatists love the deal, all of this is extremely troubling. The trade policy of this country has destroyed the middle class and threatened our economic security.

The good news is that the fair trade Democrats are unhappy with the process, and appear to be willing to fight for it. I think that populist Democratic Senators like Jon Tester, Jim Webb and Sherrod Brown should simply put a Senatorial hold on any legislation of this kind until the Democratic leadership listens to the majority of their membership on this.

Stay tuned.