President

Maine AFL-CIO

    This year started with a terrible tragedy in West Virginia at the Sago mine. At 6:30 a.m. there was an explosion and 13 miners were trapped. There followed a series of mistakes and delays and attempted rescue efforts. Forty-one hours later one man was found alive in critical condition and 12 of the miners were found dead.
     In Bangladesh, in February this year, 54 workers were killed and over 100 seriously injured when a textile factory burned. Many of those killed or badly injured were prevented from escaping because factory guards had locked the main entrance and other gates to prevent theft.

A Death Trap
    The four-story factory was a death trap.  The fire began around 7 p.m. when a first floor boiler exploded. Large quantities of chemicals and stacks of yarn on the floor fuelled the fire.
    With many of the gates locked and the tiny stairwell jammed with people and factory goods, workers jumped out of windows in an attempt to escape the fumes and fire—in some cases to their deaths.
    The image of burning workers jumping out of the windows of locked factories cannot help (particularly for those of us in the labor movement) but make us recall the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City in March 95 years ago.
    In this tragedy 146 workers burned to death and suffocated – mostly women, mostly young, they were locked inside – trapped in the burning factory. Many leaped to their death from ninth floor windows.

Tragedies Related
     It may seem that these shocking mass worker deaths are unrelated involving different times, different occupations, different locations. But this is not so.
    They all involve indifference - government indifference, employer indifference and, to a large extent, public indifference.
    The Sago Mine had been cited for hundreds of federal safety violations since it opened in 1999. Among the infractions were at least 16 related to failures to prevent or adequately monitor the buildup of explosive gas.

Insignificant Fines
     The Sago Mine received 276 violations just in 2004 and 2005. The average fine levied against the company was only $247 – for the employers merely a minor expense of doing business.
    In 2005 the Bush Administration cut funding for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the Republican House later cut an additional $2.8 million for a total of $10 million and the loss of 146 full time positions.
    In the Bangladesh factory fire most of the workers burned to death were teenage girls, some as young as 12, 13 and 14 years old. The day after the fire the president of the nation’s manufacturer’s association brushed it off with the comment, “An accident is always an accident.”

No Concern for Workers
     After the Sago Mine tragedy Bruce Watzman representing the National Mining Association was interviewed on CNN commented that many of the violations at the mine were “not significant.” However, the record shows that many of the violations were for things such as failure to control methane and dust accumulation, failure to shore up shafts against collapse and deficient emergency planning.
    As they have with virtually every area of government, the Bush Administration has built another stonewall of secrecy around the Sago Mine investigation.
    Two years ago, without public comment or input, MSHA secretly changed its long-standing policy of routinely releasing MSHA inspectors’ notes, and information from noise and dust surveys made at mine operations.

Appalling Conditions
     In Bangladesh there are more than 3,600 garment factories with appalling safety conditions. They are over crowded, lack fire extinguishers and owners commonly lock fire exits and use them for storage. Factories lack smoke or fire detectors and emergency lights. They lack water to put out fires and are notorious for faulty electric wiring.
    The government has no intention of creating or enforcing any safety rules.
    In Bangladesh as in the United States there is a lack of serious commitment to worker safety. Some may say, “Forget Bangladesh. If you are going to worry, worry about American workers.”
    But in this country, even here in Maine, we have lost thousands of garment/textile jobs to foreign sweatshops that routinely violate every type of law whether it is worker safety, pollution, hours, or child labor.

Huge Job Loss
    A study by the American Textile Institute indicates that by the end of this year total U.S. textile job losses could reach 630,000 with more than 1,300 American textile plants closing.
    We live now in a world where laws are dictated by the forces of corporate globalization. In the corporate “race to the bottom” money moves freely worldwide but workers do not. We must be concerned not only to protect and enhance the lives of American workers but also we must oppose sweatshop conditions, unsafe jobs and the exploitation of workers where ever they exist.

    Worker safety is and should be an international concern.

Memorial Day

    On April 28 unions of the AFL-CIO observe Workers Memorial Day to remember those who have died or have been injured on the job. Now this has become an international day of observance.
    The first Workers Memorial Day was observed in 1989. April 28 was chosen as the date for Workers' Memorial Day because on this day in 1971 the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was enacted. This legislation has literally saved lives by creating a federal agency that mandates safe and hazard-free workplaces.
    Decades of struggle by workers and their unions have resulted in significant improvements in working conditions. But the toll of workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths remains enormous. Every American should be able to go to work and come home safe, sound and healthy at the end of the day.

Millions Die

    According to the International Labor Organization, every year, around the world, more than two million workers die because of their jobs.

    We must continue to press for protections against well-known hazards. Each year in the United States more than 5,000 workers are killed at work, 50,000 die from occupational diseases, and millions more are injured. Due to under reporting these totals are understated by more than 50 percent.

    Liberty Mutual Insurance puts the direct cost of occupational illness and injury, in the United States alone, at more than $1 billion a week.
    In Maine over a ten year period an average of 24 workers a year were killed on the job.
     But these severe problems do not mean that nothing has been done and nothing more can be done. The record shows we can win this battle.
    Successful worker action resulted in passage of the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, the establishment of the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act as well as hundreds of job safety and health initiatives, from cotton dust laws to needle-stick regulations. The result: Since 1970, the nation’s workplace fatality rate has dropped more than 70 percent, from 18 deaths per 100,000 workers to 4.3 deaths per 100,000 in 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the National Safety Council (NSC). In 1970, 13,800 workers died on the job, compared with 5,900 in 2001, not including the 2,886 workers who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
    Fewer workers also are getting hurt and sick, with the injury and illness rate falling from 11 per 100 workers in 1973 to 5.7 per 100 in 2001, a 48 percent decrease.
   
What Needs To Be Done

     Very simply, workers need more job safety and health protection. The Bush Administration’s lack of regulation and increased focus on helping employers, not workers, and their attempts to make compliance with the safety laws voluntary come at the expense of worker safety and health.
    Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has introduced and continues to fight for  the Protecting America's Workers Act which would expand the Occupational Safety and Health Act's coverage to 8.4 million of public- and private-sector workers not covered by the act.

    In addition to increasing the number of protected workers, the bill makes important improvements in existing regulations by:
• Providing meaningful penalties to violators,
• Protecting the public's right to know,
• Protecting whistleblowers,
• And requiring employers to provide personal protective safety equipment. This bill is a step in the right direction for the millions of American workers who are injured – or even killed – on the job annually.
    If we work this coming November to replace the anti-worker, anti-labor members of Congress and work in 2008 to put in the White House an administration that cares about worker safety, we can pass this law and we can also replace the corporate flunkies and anti-labor lobbyists Bush has installed in the Labor Department and elsewhere in government. The challenge is there. We must rise to meet that challenge.