OSHA’s suggested remedies are “so embarrassingly obvious they went without saying… until now,” to quote a Chicago Tribune business columnist.   Fitted sheets.  Mops with properly sized or adjustable handles.   Lightweight stepladders.  Rolling carts that actually roll.   Most of what Hyatt housekeepers need to do their jobs safely could be purchased at the local Kmart.   Except, of course, for respect for the dignity of their work.

Workers everywhere need to support the Hyatt housekeepers … and learn from their struggle.   Workplace hazards are not confined to smoke-filled factories or high-rise construction projects.

Ordinary lifting, scrubbing, bed-making and laundry hauling can be hazardous to your health – especially when we’re forced to work too long, too fast and without proper equipment.   Repetitive-motion injuries are real injuries which deserve real care and compensation.

CALL EE&A IMMEDIATELY TO LEARN HOW TO DEFEND YOUR RIGHTS! 312-226-2650

A PROCLAMATION

For centuries, American workers have called upon boundless drive and initiative to raise our cities, manufacture our goods, and build an economy that remains the engine and the envy of the world. Generations put their lives on the line to pursue prosperity, braving the hazards of the factory floor and the heat of the fields without protective equipment or the right to a safe workplace. Through the unbending conviction of workers, labor unions, and public health advocates, we secured that basic right over 40 years ago, helping protect Americans from death or injury. Yet, despite the progress we have made, it remains a deplorable fact that an average of 12 individuals die on the job every day. On Workers Memorial Day, we honor all who have perished, and we recommit to ensuring no worker ever has to choose between life and a paycheck.

Every year, more than 3 million Americans are injured on the job. Some will never fully recover; some will never come home at all. Tragically, many incidents occur due to preventable hazards that cast our Nation’s most vulnerable workers into harm’s way — in the mine shaft, on the construction site, or at the factory. This is unacceptable, and as we reflect on the terrible burden these workers and their families have borne, we must do more to fulfill the promise of a safe workplace for all.

My Administration remains committed to realizing that vision. The Department of Labor and agencies across the Federal Government are striving to defend workers’ rights, hold employers accountable, and empower Americans across our country with the tools they need to stay safe on the job. We are pursuing enhanced whistleblower protections that will reinforce every worker’s right to raise their voice without fear of retaliation. Over 2 years after the explosion at Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, we continue to advance and enforce new standards and programs that will help ensure that tragedy was the last of its kind. And, through a variety of public-private partnerships, we are collaborating with businesses, employees, trade associations, and labor organizations to eliminate workplace hazards and strengthen our competitiveness in the global economy.

When the Congress passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 and the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, our Nation took great strides toward safe and healthful working conditions for all. Yet, when millions of Americans suffer workplace-related injury or illness every year, and thousands lose their lives, we know we cannot give up the fight.

Today, we reflect on their sacrifice, and we rededicate ourselves to protecting the health, safety, and dignity of every worker.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 28, 2012, as Workers Memorial Day. I call upon all Americans to participate in ceremonies and activities in memory of those killed or injured due to unsafe working conditions.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

BARACK OBAMA

Weblink: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/27/presidential-proclamation-workers-memorial-day-2012

1.  Routinely disciplining every employee who has an accident

2.   Charging the injured employee with violating a minor safety rule, or failing to follow exact company procedures for reporting an    accident

3.  Handing out individual or department bonuses for remaining “accident-free”, thereby discouraging workers from reporting their injuries.

Sound familiar?  Injured workers in Illinois face all of these tactics on a daily basis.  Remember: any one of these policies can be considered unlawful “retaliation” against an injured worker.   Reporting a workplace injury right away – and consulting an experienced attorney – are the first steps towards defending your rights.

We saw this recently in Illinois with workers’ compensation reform, with Model legislation introduced by Sen. McCarter (R-CAT). Well, we weren’t alone. North Carolina’s recent “deforms” are hurting workers as well. Virginia, Kansas, Wyoming, and Missouri have also seen their workers’ comp laws come under attack from ALEC and others on the right.

And, even with the terribly destructive changes in Illinois’ law last year, the Chamber of Commerce will not relent until they have destroyed everything in an effort to keep every last penny they can. In an article in the Pekin Times recently planted by the local Chamber of Commerce, you get a sense of the astro-turf movement taking place at the highest corporate levels in this country. The boys at the top draft the letter, and the minions at the bottom plant it in their local papers and hope it takes root with folks looking for someone to blame for their lot.

And that was just workers’ compensation.

ALEC does not confine its efforts so narrowly. They are attempting to re-shape America into a plutocracy and are doing so under the guise of freedom. The progressive group Color of Change is calling ALEC on it and getting some support from their sponsors (now former) Coca-Cola, Pepsi, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. These groups have pulled their support from ALEC as ALEC’s legislation supported racist Voter ID laws and other measures to disenfranchise voters, leading to laws like Florida’s “shoot first” law that led to the death of Trayvon Martin.

Until people start dying a lot of folks never wake up. Perhaps, we could try something new and make an America that is good for everyone, not just the richest amongst us who continue to try to buy legislators and legislation to their individual benefit.

It starts by participating. We have an election in 2012 that will determine quite a lot. Stop sitting on the sidelines. Get in the game.

The mayor’s office indicated that the improvements in Building a New Chicago will include:

• Renovation, repair, or rebuilding of more than 100 CTA stations
• The creation of the first 16 miles of Bus Rapid Transit Route on Jeffrey Boulevard, with future routes being developed for the Central Loop.
• A $1.4 billion investment in O’Hare airport over the next three years, creating 5,900 jobs, including opening two new runways by 2015.
• A five-year, $290 million capital plan for the City’s parks  that will include the acquisition of 180 new acres of parklands, and the building of 20 new playgrounds and 12 new parks.
• The 2014 completion of the Bloomingdale trail.
• The completion of two new boathouses this year on the Chicago River, with two new boathouses next year.
• The replacement of 900 miles of century-old water pipe, the repair of 750 miles of sewer line, and the reconstruction of 160,000 catch-basins.
• The reform of the Aldermanic Menu, and tax increment financing, so that these tools better match the city’s infrastructure needs.
• A $660 million investment in Chicago Public Schools, and a $479 million investment in the City Colleges of Chicago, to create modern educational environments that will propel our students into the jobs of tomorrow.
• “Retrofit Chicago,” a $225 million dollar effort to retrofit City buildings, reducing their energy consumption by 25 percent and creating 900 jobs in the next three years, the first project funded by the Chicago Infrastructure Trust.

All to the good if we can create and attract good-paying jobs and build a city for the next century.

Two years later, the nonunion workers at Upper Big Branch and the United Mine Workers have the same message:   Workers’ rights to report unsafe conditions need to be protected by law.  Companies need to be held accountable with tougher penalties.  Otherwise, disasters like this will happen again and again.

One safety device that could prevent a lot of grief?  A union contract.   Not surprisingly, union mines are safer than nonunion operations like Upper Big Branch, where workers who spoke up risked their jobs. Until workers’ can safely exercise their rights to organize, we will continue to have tragedies like Upper Big Branch.

When it happens again, the Politicians will trot out offering platitudes to the victims’ families, those responsible may pay a few fines but will continue to flaunt safety laws, and workers’ and their families will continue to take it on the chin.

Welcome to the American Hellscape of worker’s rights.

While CEO’s “only” received a 2 percent raise from 2010 (when they received a 27% pay bump from 2009), when you are talking millions, percentages aren’t the number you look at….it’s the commas…like the two commas in $9,600,000.00.

While Americans struggle to find work and have their unemployment benefits terminated…CEOs just put bigger numbers in front of their second comma.

And now the CEO’s are trying to put one of their own in the White House, because $9.6 million just isnt enough. They want more, they wants yours. So, they want Mitty.

Mitt Romney pays 14% in income tax and is building a new mansion in California that has elevators for his cars. Are you kidding me? Elevators. For his cars.

As disgusted as this makes me, the fact that Americans who make less than $20,000,000 a year will vote for this individual in droves, while he will only represent the 2 comma’d amongst us, is beyond sick. Perhaps the national conversation will shift given the “99%/Occupy” movement. However, the astro-turf movements orchestrated by the Koch’s, Dick Armey’s Freedom Works, and their ilk to crush health care legislation, worker safety laws, food safety laws and every other regulation that protects people from their insatiable greed seems to be winning the day.

Hopefully I’m wrong. In the meanwhile, I’ll take the stairs.

One hundred forty-six workers perished in the fire or jumped to their deaths from the ninth-floor garment sweatshop, where the stairwell doors were kept locked by management to prevent theft.   Most were Italian and Jewish immigrant women workers, many still in their teens.   Many were union pioneers who fought to build the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).   Their deaths led to a massive public outcry, and the passage of the first workers compensation laws.

Watch “Triangle Fire” Tuesday night, or catch it online.  Tell your coworkers.  Tell your kids.

Click here to learn more about the Triangle fire and its place in labor history.

• President Larry Hanley of the Amalgamated Transit Union.   The ATU has been campaigning for “green jobs” in public transit and for holding Wall Street speculators accountable for the economic crisis.

• Labor activists from Wisconsin fighting to recall Gov. Scott Walker and keep their unions alive under the boot of his new anti-labor laws.

• Workers from Republic Windows and Doors, who recently occupied their plant for the second time in three years to stop layoffs.

Click here to register, or donate to help younger and more flat-broke activists attend.

In Joliet, women members of Warehouse Workers for Justice held a hearing to speak out about sexual harassment and assault – including a young woman who was fired and prosecuted for “filing a false police report” after reporting a sexual assault by her supervisor.

Hyatt Hotel workers around the country protested brutal speed-up and other hazardous working conditions.   In Chicago, they were joined by medical students and doctors from Rush and UIC.

And women janitors from SEIU Local 1 rallied at the Board of Trade to protest the low wages paid by CME Group, which received millions in tax breaks after threatening to move the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to Indiana.   Union contracts for 4,000 downtown janitors expire April 8^th.