Labor Rights “Fake Silk” unravels a sordid history involving a deadly chemical, suicides and even Nazi slave labor”
February 12, 2017 The Pump Handle 1Comment

A recently published book– “Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon” by occupational health physician Paul Blanc – is an historical investigation of the use of carbon disulfide throughout the world to make products. The book describes how the making of rayon led to suicides and caused neurologic deaths of workers exposed to the toxic chemical… and it “names names” of those involved … during two World Wars. We have all heard about lead and asbestos and the legacy of death they created… but none of us has heard this meticulously researched investigative story before.

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Government Kleen Energy disaster anniversary, new worker safety bill introduced
February 8, 2017 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 1Comment

Seven years ago this week, six workers were killed in a massive explosion at the site construction site for the Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown, CT. Congressman Joe Courtney (D-CT), along with Democratic colleagues from the House Education and the Workforce Committee, marked the occasion by introducing the Protecting America’s Workers Act.

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California A strategic response to Trump’s “ripping off the Band-Aid” to workers’ health and safety: Defense of the status quo ante is not enough
February 8, 2017 Garrett Brown

The Trump Administration is gearing up to make Federal OSHA as under-resourced and ineffective as it can. Our strategic response has to be more than simply defending the status quo ante; we have to rebuild the social movement that was powerful enough 50 years ago to force another right-wing Republican president, Richard Nixon, to support and sign the OSH Act in the first place.

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Government Work for an agency? Have something to leak?
February 8, 2017 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 1Comment

Some federal employees are witnessing changes under the Trump Administration that they know are a really bad idea or could be illegal. NPR reporter Howard Berkes has set up two secure and encrypted means for agency employees to communicate with him.

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Department of Labor Occupational Health News Roundup
February 7, 2017 Kim Krisberg

Obama-era labor veterans worry about the future of worker protections; a draft Trump executive order would allow employers to discriminate based on their religious beliefs; coal miner rulings offer a look at the legal philosophy of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee; and Iowa Republicans move to gut union rights.

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