Mr. Martimiano Torres, 37, was finishing up his 12-hour shift at about 5:30 am at the  Hallett Materials aggregate operation on Oct 1, 2008, when his pick-up truck curved off the road into a dredge pond. He drowned. The surface mine is located in Porter, Texas, outside of Houston, and owned by the multi-national corporation CRH.   MSHA released […]
What do the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Migrant Clinicians Network, Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, and 65 other organizations have in common? They’ve all endorsed the “Protecting Workers on the Job Agenda”, a collaborative product of the American Public Health Association’s Occupational Health and Safety Section and the National Council for Occupational Safety and […]
by Carole Bass (posted with permission from the On-Line Journalism Project, New Haven (CT) Independent) Black lung disease used to be nearly as common as dirty fingernails among American coal miners. Roughly a third of them got the fatal illness. Starting in the 1970s, a federal law slashed that rate by 90 percent. But now […]
Like her boss President G.W. Bush, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao is offering her version of Labor Department history over the last 8 years. She posts prominently on the Department’s homepage her “accomplishing milestones for American workers” including the claim: “the current workplace injury and illness rate is at its lowest level in history having dropped 21% since 2002.” I […]
Updated below ( 12/24/2008 ) Here are just some of the reports coming out of Harriman, Tennessee: “Millions of yards of ashy sludge broke through a dike at the TVA’s (Tennessee Valley Authority) Kingston coal-fired plant, covering hundreds of acres, knocking one home off its foundation, and putting environmentalists on edge about toxic chemicals that […]
The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) is thrilled by President-elect Obama’s selection of Cong. Hilda Solis to serve as Secretary of Labor. “Rep. Solis has been a leader in fighting for healthier communities, a cleaner environment, and economic justice for the most vulnerable in society. We believe that she will have […]
The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward amazes me with his tenacious attention to worker safety, his watchdog instincts, and his exceptional commitment to follow-up.  One of Ward’s practices that I especially appreciate is his detailed reporting of worker fatalities in West Virginia. Take for example, the death in March 2008 of Ricky Collins Sr., 44, a truck driver for […]
From the President who brought you “Clean Skies (cough)” and “Healthy Forests (not)” comes a slashing of the “Buffer Zone” rule which is supposed to prohibit mining companies from dumping waste rock—created by mountaintop removal to extract coal—within 100 feet of streams. As we all know from 3rd grade science class, these small streams flow into larger streams, […]
Labor Secretary Chao issued her semi-annual regulatory today, listing allegedly the Department’s “regulations that have been selected for review or development during the coming year.” It all might seem kind of pointless (given that she won’t have a say after Jan 20) but the document is in fact enlightening for what it doesn’t mention. There’s no peep about […]
An underground coal miner who works in eastern Kentucky took the next step in his legal battle to force the Secretary of Labor to reduce respirable dust levels in our nation’s coal mines. It started in March 2008 when Scott Howard of Lechter County, KY filed a lawsuit in federal court (Howard v. Chao) against the Secretary of Labor and the Mine Safety […]