It's not only Michael Jackson that can dance backwards. (Photo: typoyock on flickr)

As the Occupy Wall Street movement spread across the nation last week, politicians in D.C. flipped the bird at protesters – including those camping in Washington’s McPherson Square.

Here’s how: While occupiers sought political focus on the unemployment, impoverishment and foreclosures suffered by the nation’s non-rich 99 percent, politicians considered three major pieces of legislation and passed only the one that will help the wealthiest 1 percent and hurt the remaining 99 percent.

Senate Republicans murdered-by-filibuster the American Jobs Act, which would surtax the 1 percent to provide jobs for the 99 percent. The Senate did pass the currency manipulation bill, but House GOP leaders refused to schedule a vote on the measure that would protect jobs for the 99 percent by punishing countries that undervalue their currencies to artificially lower prices on their exports.

By contrast, both houses of Congress adopted the so-called Free Trade Agreements with Panama, Colombia and Korea, which will, just like their predecessor NAFTA, destroy jobs held by the 99 percent.

It’s incredible. Inexplicable. Inexcusable. In a country where joblessness is a painful 9.1 percent. Where one in five children lives in poverty. Where foreclosures rose again last month. Where a whole movement is growing to protest the appeasement of the rich at the cost of the middle class. In that place, Congress chose to walk backwards. It didn’t take two steps forward – which it could have by passing the currency bill and jobs act. No. It just took a giant step backward by embracing job-killing trade agreements.

It all forces the 99 percent to demand even more loudly: Where’s the jobs? Read the rest of this entry →

Efforts by those who never want to hear someone say, “Bye-bye American manufacturing,” converged coincidentally to make June Buy American month.

First, at the forceful urging of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the Smithsonian on June 8 opened an all-American-made gift shop in the National Museum of American History. Three days later, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio introduced legislation requiring federal agencies to buy only 100 percent American-made flags.

Then, at the Netroots Nation 2011 conference in Minneapolis, Minn. this week, the AFL-CIO will serve American union-made beer, including Schell’s, brewed in Minnesota by members of my union, the United Steelworkers (USW). The Alliance for American Manufacturing will host at Netroots an American-made fashion show at which it will serve USW-member made Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain bars. And the BlueGreen Alliance is distributing to Netroots attendees mercury-free, USW-made, energy-efficient, non-curly cue Oshram Sylvania halogen light bulbs.

All these events occurring before mid-June are significant in an era of stubborn 9.1 percent unemployment, a time when 14 million unemployed Americans are searching for jobs. It’s significant because buying American-made products is buying American jobs. And buying American union-made products is buying good, middle class American jobs.

Eight million American manufacturing workers have lost their jobs over the past 30 years as multi-national corporations off-shored factories. But America still manufactures and the prices of American-manufactured goods, including those made by union workers, are competitive with foreign-made products.

Choosing an American-made product, or North American-made to include my home country of Canada where hundreds of thousands of USW members live and work, means supporting North American workers and the North American work ethic. It means buying products manufactured by willing adults in reasonable conditions, not by children laboring Dickensian hours in dangerous factories. It means reasonable assurance that the manufacturer abided by environmental laws prohibiting the poisoning of the air, ground and water by toxic substances like mercury and lead.

The Smithsonian experience provides the perfect example of how buying American-made products purchases American jobs.

Late last year, Sen. Sanders went to the history museum shop to buy Christmas gifts and discovered the presidential busts there were made in China. He was incensed that an American taxpayer-supported history museum was selling American history memorabilia not made in America. He complained.

While the Smithsonian reviewed the situation, CBS news determined exactly how policies like the museum’s injure the American economy. CBS reporters found a Connecticut woman who had to lay off three workers when the museum stopped selling her hand-crafted, American-made jewelry and replaced them with foreign-made substitutes. Before the change, Merrie Buchsbaum’s “Americana Collection” was among the museum shop’s best sellers. Apparently tourists did not find the prices for her America-made souvenirs to be excessive.

When the museum cut her off, Buchsbaum’s sales declined 20 percent, forcing her to furlough her entire staff. Three jobs is the difference between buying American and buying foreign for just one small supplier of one small gift shop.

The Smithsonian changed its policy, converting the gift shop to an all-American operation with 300 American-made souvenirs. Now it’s called the American History Price of Freedom gift shop.

That price of freedom, the Smithsonian said, is higher in some cases when the souvenir is American-made. For example, the custom, hand-crafted American-made mugs it now sells cost $20 instead of the average $12 price for a foreign-made mug in other museum shops. But U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, who is preparing legislation tying the sale of American-made souvenirs to future federal funding for the museums, believes Americans will pay a buck or two more “to have their lapel American flag pin say ‘Made in the U.S.A.’”

American products don’t always cost more, however, even when they’re union-made. ABC news investigative reporters discovered that when they removed foreign-made goods from a Dallas family’s home earlier this year and replaced them with American-made products.

In addition, included in the price of North American-made products is the cost of protecting the environment and treating workers with dignity. It’s the price of morality. The United States and Canada, for example, forbid child labor and institutionalized the 40-hour work week. Both countries enforce environmental protection laws forbidding the devastating pollution countenanced by China and some third-world nations.

For example, the New York Times this week revealed that millions of Chinese children suffer from brain and nerve-damaging lead poisoning from unregulated, polluting factories, many of which produce batteries or smelt metal. The Times reported that the Chinese government in some cases conspired with the polluting companies to cover up the problem, denied testing to nearby sick residents and withheld tests results.

The lead poisoning raises the question of what China is doing about even-more-dangerous mercury, which is used by Chinese companies to make those twisty, energy-efficient light bulbs.

In America, Steelworkers are fabricating energy-efficient Sylvania halogen bulbs that look exactly like traditional light bulbs and contain absolutely no mercury. That’s American innovation, American compliance with moral environmental rules and American union labor creating a superior product.

Who knew, though? All anyone hears anymore is that American manufacturing is dead. American doesn’t make anything anymore. That is just not true. Here are some USW-made, terrific North American products:

Jacobson hats
Cutco Cutlery
Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts
Wendell August Forge pewter gifts
Breyers Ice Cream
Cascades paper towels and tissue
Viva and Bounty paper towels
Depend undergarments and Poise pads
Charmin and Angel Soft bath tissue
Puffs facial tissue
Georgia-Pacific Dixie Cups and plates
Cenveo envelopes
Leader Paper Products envelopes and business cards
All-Clad metal cookware
Regal Ware cookware
Speed Queen washers and dryers
Alberto Culver hair care products
Carrier home heating systems
Enderes forged hand tools
Channellock tools
Ideal Roofing steel shingles
Blanco Canada kitchen sinks
Nestle Purina cat litter
Distinctive Design furniture
Barrymore furniture
Star Bedding, Sealy, Spring Air, Springwall, King Koil and Simmons mattresses
Anchor Hocking glass tableware
General Storage containers
World Kitchen Pyrex glassware
A.O. Smith residential water tanks
Gentek Building Products including windows, doors and vinyl siding
American Standard bathroom fixtures
Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil
Fabri-Kal plastic ware
Speakman shower heads
3M O-cell-O sponges
Crown Metal Packaging for food and beverages
Federal White Cement
Shade-O-Matic and Eclipse venetian blinds, shutters and window covers
Valspar pigment for Valspar paints
Lavelle Industries rubber and plastic plumbing components
Harley-Davidson motorcycle parts and accessories
PFERD Milwaukee Brush metal brushes
Alto-Shaam, Inc. ovens and warmers
Shur-Line paint rollers
Goodyear, Bridgestone/Firestone, BFGoodrich, Titan and Yokohama tires.

The tires require caution. Many of those companies have foreign factories that export tires to North America. So the buyer must look for these codes to get American made tires: BE and BF for BFGoodrich, YE, 4D and E3 for Bridgestone/Firestone, UP and UT for Cooper, MD, MJ, MC, and MK for Goodyear and CC for Yokohama. These letters follow the letters DOT on each tire’s code.

In the case of the other products listed, some also operate foreign factories, so it’s always good to look for the Made in America label.

Buy American. Buy American jobs.

Buy American by sabeth718

Efforts by those who never want to hear someone say, “Bye-bye American manufacturing,” converged coincidentally to make June Buy American month.

First, at the forceful urging of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the Smithsonian on June 8 opened an all-American-made gift shop in the National Museum of American History. Three days later, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio introduced legislation requiring federal agencies to buy only 100 percent American-made flags.

Then, at the Netroots Nation 2011 conference in Minneapolis, Minn. this week, the AFL-CIO will serve American union-made beer, including Schell’s, brewed in Minnesota by members of my union, the United Steelworkers (USW). The Alliance for American Manufacturing will host at Netroots an American-made fashion show at which it will serve USW-member made Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain bars. And the BlueGreen Alliance is distributing to Netroots attendees mercury-free, USW-made, energy-efficient, non-curly cue Oshram Sylvania halogen light bulbs.

All these events occurring before mid-June are significant in an era of stubborn 9.1 percent unemployment, a time when 14 million unemployed Americans are searching for jobs. It’s significant because buying American-made products is buying American jobs. And buying American union-made products is buying good, middle class American jobs.

Eight million American manufacturing workers have lost their jobs over the past 30 years as multi-national corporations off-shored factories. But America still manufactures and the prices of American-manufactured goods, including those made by union workers, are competitive with foreign-made products.
Read the rest of this entry →

The nation’s greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on workers. There’s no trickle down. It’s the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class for decades.

When reckless Wall Street banksters get taxpayer-funded bailouts, billionaires get tax breaks and gigantic corporations like GE and Bank of America pay absolutely no federal income taxes, they’re getting for free the very public services that enable them to make massive profits in this country – the courts, the roads, the trade regulators, the patent enforcement.

The middle class doesn’t get those big time special deals and loopholes. Workers pay their taxes. As a result, it’s workers footing the bill for the government services that enrich the rich. Greedy corporations, their CEOs and the right-wing politicians they buy with tens of millions in campaign cash are freeloaders.

It’s time workers stood up to the freeloaders. Join Monday’s We Are One rallies. These demonstrations across the country by religious groups, social justice organizations and labor unions will illustrate that the middle class is mad as hell and not going to take trickster economics anymore.

It’s time for greedy corporations and the insatiable rich to pay their fair share. It’s time to stop cuts to the government programs most treasured by and vital to the middle class and the vulnerable in this country – education, public transportation, Social Security. It’s time to stop right-wing attempts to terminate democratic rights like collective bargaining and voting without harassment. It’s time for the middle class to stop paying for everything and for the insatiable rich and greedy corporations to start sharing the sacrifice required to recover from the economic crisis caused by reckless gambling by Wall Street bankster corporations.

March for your rights Monday. March for the middle class facing record rates of foreclosure, unemployment, child poverty, and loss of opportunity as country club conservatives cut off college loans and Head Start. March for the right of college students to register and vote in the towns where they study. March for the right of workers to band together, elect representatives and bargain with employers for better pay and working conditions. March for the right of the people to insist that corporations pay at least the same rate of taxes as workers do. March to end tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent who have now acquired more wealth than all the workers in the bottom 90 percent.

Greedy corporations, the insatiable wealthy and their purchased politicians have for three decades skewed public policy to enrich themselves while pushing down wages and benefits for the middle class.

From 1947 to 1975, a time of strong unionization in the workforce, real wages of average workers increased with productivity. The 75 percent rise in productivity and the nearly matching rise in wages gave the United States the largest, most vibrant middle class in the history of the world.
Read the rest of this entry →

Real men, real human beings, with feelings and families, fought and died at Gettysburg to preserve the Union, to ensure, as their president, Abraham Lincoln, would say later, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Perversely, afterwards, non-humans commandeered the constitutional amendment intended to protect the rights of former slaves. Corporations wrested from the U.S. Supreme Court a decision based on the 14^th Amendment asserting that corporations are people with rights to be upheld by the government – but with no counterbalancing human responsibilities to the republic. No duty to fight or die in war, for example. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court expanded those rights – ruling that corporations have a First Amendment free speech right to surreptitiously spend unlimited money on political campaigns.

Today, Lincoln would have to say America’s got a government of the people by the corporations, for the corporations.

The proposed trade agreement with South Korea illustrates corporate control of government for profit. It’s the same with efforts to revive the moribund trade schemes former President George W. Bush also negotiated with Panama and Colombia, the world’s most dangerous country by far for trade unionists, with 2,700 assassinated with impunity in the past two decades, 38 slain so far this year.

Nobody likes these trade deals – except corporations. They’re all modeled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), both of which killed American jobs while giving corporations new authority to sue governments (read: taxpayers) for regulations – like environmental standards – that corporations contend interfere with their right to make money.  . . . Read the rest of this entry →

Republican fund-raisers are treating Americans like little children, as if the GOP knows best and must shelter the youngsters from the truth.

It’s like when a kindergartner asks his father if mommy is coming home soon, and the widower replies that she’s on a long business trip. The parent is attempting to shield the child from the cruel truth, afraid the little one can’t handle it.

That’s what Republican campaign fund-raising groups are doing by concealing their donors from the public. The GOP does not trust Americans to handle the information. Republican operatives want to shield voters from knowing who is actually paying for GOP attack ads. The GOP fears the consequences if Americans know the truth – exactly which giant corporations and Wall Street banksters are funding vicious screeds against Democrats because those covert donors believe Republicans will deliver for big business.

The secret GOP benefactors are right about one thing: A Republican majority will work for the rich. In a study of income growth post WWII, Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels determined that earnings rose faster at all income levels under Democratic administrations, but especially for the middle class and the poor. Under Republican presidents, the wealthiest benefited the most, increasing income inequality.

After the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down decades of precedent in January in its Citizens United ruling, defining corporations as “persons” and permitting them to pour unlimited cash into political advertising, Democrats offered legislation to temper that newly-granted corporate power. Called the DISCLOSE Act – for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections — it would have required revelation of corporate donations.

Republicans wanted concealment of their corporate sources, however, and scuttled the DISCLOSE Act. This freed private political fund-raising groups to take as much money as they can from corporations while providing a cloak of anonymity.

The Republican and Democratic parties still must disclose donors, and unions like the United Steelworkers (USW), which get their political action committee contributions from American members, must provide detailed information on how much they spend, which candidates they support, and the names of people who supply in-kind services as well as the value of the services.

The story of health insurers’ disclosed contributions to political parties reveals why Republicans prefer to keep Americans in the dark about gifts to GOP private fund-raising groups.

Public reports show that last year, the health insurance industry split its donations between the two parties, but this year, after passage of health insurance reform, the contributions are running three to one for Republicans. The insurance corporations have made their demands clear to Republican beneficiaries. They want Republicans to retain in the law the financial windfalls for insurance corporations – that would be mandates that uninsured Americans get coverage and fines for those who don’t. And they want Republicans to delete aspects that will cost insurance companies – that would be benefits for Americans like requirements that insurers cover sick children and injunctions against dropping policy holders when they get sick.

Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna Corp., one of the nation’s largest health insurance corporations, told Noam N. Levey of the Chicago Tribune:

“The industry would love to have a Republican Congress. They were very, very successful during the years of Republican domination in Washington.”

Voters need to know that insurance corporations overwhelmingly favor Republicans and what the industry expects to get from the GOP. But Americans will not know how much money insurers and other corporations give to shadowy Republican fund-raising groups and what those donors demand.

A New York Times investigation provided some insight into one GOP shadow group, the American Future Fund. It has spent $6 million so far on ads attacking Democrats in 13 states. The Times discovered that Bruce Rastetter, CEO of Hawkeye Energy Holdings, one of the nation’s largest corn-based ethanol companies, provided the seed money for American Future Fund. The Times determined that American Future Fund money is funding ads to defeat Democrats who sit on legislative committees that directly affect the ethanol industry and agricultural subsidies.

Two other secretive Republican groups, American Crossroads GPS and the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce, plan to spend $145 million to crush Democrats while concealing their funding sources from Americans.

American Crossroads GPS, brainchild of Republican operative Karl Rove, plans to spend $70 million. Mel Sembler, a shopping mall magnate, told the New York Times that wealthy donors have given the GPS group six and seven-figure checks, and Republicans said one donor, who they refused to name, gave several million dollars. Sembler told the Times why clandestine giving is so attractive to corporations:

“They want to be able to be helpful but not be seen by the public as taking sides.”

What they don’t want to be seen doing is lining their pockets by buying Republican politicians. Neither do the Republican beneficiaries.

Like GPS, the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an elephant-sized player in the secretive Republican support game. It has spent $25 million on more than 8,000 ads slamming Democrats and backing corporate Republican candidates. It plans to spend $50 million more.

Oddly, the commerce group calls itself the U.S. Chamber while admitting foreign firms and soliciting funds from corporations in places like Bahrain, India and Singapore whose interests may conflict with those of American companies and American citizens. An investigation by Think Progress, a project of the non-partisan Center for American Progress Action Fund, revealed that the so-called U.S. Chamber has accepted at least $885,000 from 84 foreign firms, money that it placed in the same account from which it draws funds to sponsor ads attacking Democratic candidates.

The so-called U.S. Chamber denied that it illegally co-mingles money it gets from foreign corporations with funds it uses to attack Democrats. When Think Progress and others asked the so-called U.S. Chamber to divulge the account’s firewall to the public, the so-called U.S. Chamber responded by repeating its assurance that it does nothing wrong and asserting, “We are not obligated to discuss our internal procedures.”

Basically, the so-called U.S. Chamber is saying, “trust us,” to the American public. On the other hand, the “U.S. Chamber” and groups like American Crossroads GPS don’t trust the American public to know their donor lists. What they don’t trust is that Americans will do what the GOP wants on Nov. 2 if Republicans’ corporate donors are exposed.

The USW challenges the “U.S. Chamber” and GOP funding groups like American Crossroads GPS to show their trust in the American people by disclosing their donors.

Long-suffering victim is hardly the American image. Paul Revere, Mother Jones, John Glenn, Martin Luther King Jr. — those are American icons. Bold, wry, justice-seeking.

So how is it that America finds herself in the position of schoolyard patsy, woe-is-me casualty of China’s illegal trade practices that are destroying U.S. renewable energy manufacturing and foreclosing an energy-independent future?

Come on, America. Show some of that confident pioneer spirit. Stand up for yourself. Tell China that America isn’t going to hand over its lunch money anymore; international trade law will be enforced now.

That’s the demand the United Steelworkers (USW) union made this week when it filed a 5,800-page suit detailing how China violates a wide variety of World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations.

The case, now in the hands of the U.S. Trade Representative, shows how China uses illegal land grants, prohibited low-interest loans and other outlawed measures to pump up its renewable energy industries and facilitate export of those products at artificially low prices to places like the United States and Europe.

The U.S. aids renewable energy industries, like solar cell and wind turbine manufacturers, but no where near the extent that China does. And the American aid lawfully goes to renewable manufacturers that produce for domestic consumption. China, by contrast, illegally subsidizes industries that export, a strategy that kills off competition.  . . . Read the rest of this entry →

Don Blankenship, the man ultimately in charge of Massey Energy’s West Virginia mine where 29 workers died in an explosion April 5, assured financial analysts last week that safety is paramount in his operation.

Massey, the country’s fourth largest mining company, issued a statement that same day asserting that a review of conditions in the Upper Big Branch mine uncovered no problems shortly before the blast that killed more workers than any other mine disaster in nearly four decades.

All that could only mean one thing, right? Massey did nothing wrong and bears no responsibility. So clearly the disaster was an act of God or an omission by workers. God killed them. Or they killed themselves. Blankenship suggested that in earlier interviews and repeated it to stock analysts last week:

"Obviously, I don’t want to speculate, but either something went wrong from a natural/unnatural manner that was not foreseeable by us or human beings or somebody made a mistake or something."

That contention – that God’s hand or worker blunder caused a disaster – is a bogus employer excuse that managers frequently dredge up. The supervisor of the Westray Mine in Canada, where 26 workers died in an explosion in 1992, did the same thing. A government-commissioned report on that catastrophe recounts that manager, Gerald Phillips, “blatently blamed the miners for the explosion.” It’s a refrain that might be repeated in the aftermath of the Tesoro refinery blast on April 2 that killed seven workers and the explosion on the Transocean Ltd. oil offshore oil drilling platform on April 20 that killed 11 workers.

It’s a lie. And when workers die, it’s a damned lie. Employers are responsible for maintaining safe working environments. Yet, across this country, 14 workers are killed on the job every day. The American people and their government must hold employers accountable. Or the workplace killing will never stop.

Employers routinely attempt to dodge culpability. Blankenship spouted the “I-am-not-responsible” talking points in his telephone call with financial analysts. He swore to them with reassuring double negatives:

“It’s not due to us not being focused on safety, not having a strong safety culture, not putting safety first. Some of the implications have been that we don’t focus on safety or we put dollars in front of safety, and nothing could be further from the truth.”

Blankenship has also said incidents are “unfortunately an inevitable part of the mining process,” suggesting they just happen like hurricanes or tornados; no one can control them.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore oil rigs like the one that exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico this month, blames workers as well. MMS is writing rules requiring rig operators to prevent human error. This follows an MMS report on the 41 deaths and 302 injuries on oil rigs between 2001 and 2007 that said:

“It appears that equipment failure is rarely the primary cause of the incident or accident.”

This is the same MMS whose inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, said suffered from a pervasive “culture of ethical failure.” In three reports to Congress in 2008, Devaney portrayed MMS as, the New York Times said, “a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.”

It is not surprising that MMS blames workers when, the New York Times noted, eight MMS officials accepted expensive gifts from energy companies. These exceeded values set in federal ethical regulations. And several MMS officials, the Times said:

“Frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

Regulators for mines and refineries take an entirely different view from MMS. Kevin Stricklin, the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s administrator for Coal Mine Safety and Health, said while at Upper Big Branch:

"All explosions are preventable. It’s just making sure you have things in place to keep one from occurring.”

That is management’s responsibility.

Similarly, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration does not blame workers for explosions at refineries. To prevent catastrophes, OSHA requires refineries to implement a system called process safety, which is a mixture of engineering and management focused on prevention. After a 2005 blast at the BP refinery in Texas City, Texas that killed 15 workers and injured 170, OSHA launched a two-year program to emphasize process safety at refineries.

Afterward, OSHA director of enforcement Richard Fairfax reported:

“We are pretty shocked and dismayed by what we found.”

OSHA’s review of 14 refineries in the first year found 1,517 violations, including 1,489 for process safety.

While MMS contends “human error,” caused incidents on oil rigs, inspections by MMS and the Coast Guard over the past three years of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico found problems such as repair crews working without proper permitting in hazardous areas, inoperable gas detectors and faulty firefighting equipment. These examples of management recklessness are listed in a Houston Chronicle story by Lise Olsen titled, “Blood a part of oil’s price.”

Similarly, former United Mine Workers union President John L. Lewis said coal was washed in the tears of widows. In West Virginia where there are two dozen new coal widows, Blankenship repeatedly has said Upper Big Branch was as safe as other mines and that citations for violations are just a routine part of the mining business.

A review by Ellen Smith, owner of Mine Safety and Health News, showed, however, that Upper Big Branch had a violation rate 30 percent higher than the average underground bituminous coal mine. In addition, a Massey subsidiary, Aracoma, pleaded guilty to criminal charges of willful violation of mandatory safety standards in the 2006 deaths of two miners.

President Obama had this to say about culpability:

“This tragedy was triggered by a failure at the Upper Big Branch Mine, a failure first and foremost of management, but also a failure of oversight and a failure of laws so riddled will loopholes that they allow unsafe conditions to continue. Owners responsible for conditions in the Upper Big Branch Mine should be held accountable for decisions they made and preventive measures they failed to take. And I’ve asked [Labor] Secretary [Hilda] Solis to work with the Justice Department to ensure that every tool in the federal government is available in this investigation.”

Even in the 1800s, managers tried to evade blame by placing it on God and workers. Mine inspector Thomas K. Adams noted that blame shifting in an article published in 1900 by the journal Mine and Minerals:

“During such distressing events [as mine disasters] we have, as usual, a plenteous crop of apologists and general utility men who appear . . . Those men are very resourceful in offering all kinds of excuses for those who are possibly responsible for such calamities. They will tell us about the subtle agencies in operation in nature’s storehouse, the mysteries which wiser men than Solomon cannot unravel and that those mine explosions are the unavoidable and natural accompaniments which gives harmony to the coal-mining industry.”

Adams went on:

“Such rot has no weight with intelligent mining men, of course, but dupes there be everywhere.”

Today is Workers Memorial Day, an occasion to mourn those killed in the workplace, to condemn the lying about culpability and to demand corporate accountability.

In both cases – the five fatalities in a Washington oil refinery April 2 and the 29 deaths in a West Virginia coal mine the following Monday – news reports described the explosions that killed workers as industrial “accidents.”

When an explosion occurs at a refinery or mine that has been repeatedly fined for heath and safety violations, one question that ought to be asked is just how unexpected was the event.

Answering this question is essential because: less time plus less money spent on safety measures equals more profit for owners. America must introduce new factors into that computation to protect the lives and limbs of workers who produce the energy on which this country depends. One factor is larger safety violation penalties – fines and shutdowns costly enough to outstrip profitability. And when corporations consider fines just another cost of doing business, another crucial factor is the ability to charge CEOs with criminal negligence when their corporations flagrantly violate safety regulations – an ability that other countries have written into law.

As it stands now, corporations have discovered that they can continue profiting even after unconscionable disasters. Take BP for example. In 2005, a massive blast at the BP Texas City refinery killed 15 and injured 180. Business Week noted that BP continued to turn a profit every year after the Texas catastrophe, even though it paid more than $2 billion for legal costs and fines and for remediation programs at its U.S. refineries.

Regulatory agencies have repeatedly cited and fined both Tesoro, which operates the Anacortes, Wash. refinery where an explosion killed five workers and severely burned two last week, and Massey Energy Co., which owns the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W.Va., where 29 miners are dead.

Since 2005, regulators cited Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine 1,342 times for safety infractions and charged Massey $1.89 million in fines, $1.3 million of which Massey is contesting. Of the violations, 86 were for failing to obey a ventilation plan to control explosive methane gas and coal dust. These are the very factors suspected in Monday’s deadly blast. Regulators issued 12 of those citations in the past month, and miners told the New York Times that dangerous gas accumulation forced evacuations of the mine several times in recent weeks. Regulators found two violations on Monday, before the explosion.

In January, agencies imposed the largest fines in the mine’s history for two violations, including one case in which a mine foreman admitted he’d known of a ventilation problem for three weeks. In 2008, Massey paid what federal prosecutors said was the largest settlement in the history of the coal industry — $4.2 million in criminal fines and civil penalties — after a subsidiary pleaded guilty to criminal mine safety violations for a January, 2006 fire that killed two workers in Massey’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine. In addition those deaths at a Massey mine and the 29 killed Monday at Upper Big Branch, three other miners died at the Upper Big Branch mine since 1998.

The Charleston Gazette reported:

“In seven of the last 10 years, the mine has recorded a non-fatal injury rate worse than the national average for similar operations, according to MSHA statistics.”

Serious safety concerns prompted federal investigators to temporarily halt work in portions of the Upper Big Branch mine more than 60 times since the start of 2009, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported after reviewing U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration records.

Safety was such a crisis at the Upper Big Branch mine that MSHA sent Massey a letter on Dec. 6, 2007 warning that its serious violations over the previous two years were so far above average that the mine could be designated as a pattern violator and subjected to stricter federal oversight, the New York Times reported. The letter noted that in 2006 and 2007 MSHA had found nearly twice the national average of serious violations at the mine. Within three months, the mine reduced the number by a third, escaping the extra scrutiny. Still, the total remained above the national average.

The citations and fines do not seem to faze Massey CEO Don Blankenship. He told a radio station:

“Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process.”

He also previously told Forbes:

“We don’t pay much attention to the violation count.”

Despite the deaths, all of the violations and the fines, the Massey Energy web site defends the company safety record, contending that 2009 was the 17th year out of 20 that the company scored above the industry average for safety — this assertion although the number of safety violations in 2009 doubled from the previous year, totaled 458 and included 50 citations for breaches Massey, the nation’s fourth largest coal company, knew existed but failed to correct.

Just like Massey, Tesoro claims that its safety record has improved – despite citations and fines and five deaths. In the company fact sheet, Tesoro said its recordable injury rates have declined by 30 percent over three years.

The Washington state Department of Labor and Industry fined Tesoro $85,700 a year ago for 17 serious health and safety violations. These are violations with the potential to cause serious injury or death. In addition, the department found 150 safety deficiencies at the Anacortes, Wash., refinery. Tesoro appealed and got all but three of the most serious violations thrown out and the fine reduced to $12,500. The settlement required Tesoro to hire a safety consultant to examine the refinery. That consultant began work at the plant last month.

Immediately after the five refinery workers died, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association jumped to defend refining safety. Before funerals were held and with two workers still hospitalized with life-threatening burns, the Petroleum Institute complained that the industry wasn’t getting credit for health and safety improvements. And the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association contended that the industry has lower injury rates than manufacturing generally.

The problem with their numbers is that they mingle deaths with OSHA counts of slips and falls – taking the focus off incidents like the fire ball that killed the five Tesoro workers, or the blast that killed 15 at Texas City, or the explosion at another refinery in Anacortes in 1998 that killed six workers.

Also, they don’t want to count injuries to or deaths of subcontractors who refineries often hire to perform dangerous maintenance work. At Tesoro, a contractor was crushed to death in 2002 and three contract workers were hospitalized in 2006 for exposure to naphtha.

In addition, the OSHA numbers used by the refining industry associations exclude explosions and fires at refineries that had the potential to maim and kill both workers and community members but, instead, miraculously resulted only in “close calls.”

OSHA Assistant Secretary David Michaels contradicted the refining industry association safety assertions, saying: “The petroleum industry has a long way to go before we can feel comfortable that workers there are adequately protected.”

Similarly, Daniel Horowitz, a Chemical Safety Board spokesman, told the Seattle Times, a disproportionate number of incidents occurred at the 150 refineries in the U.S., compared with infractions at tens of thousands of chemical plants handling other hazardous materials. Of the 18 cases the Chemical Safety Board is investigating, seven involve oil refineries.

Republicans and Tea Partiers are running around like Chicken Little screaming that government is too big. Thirty workers killed in explosions in four days is what happens when government is too small, when right-wing strategists like Grover Norquist have gotten their way and shrunk regulatory agencies to a size where they can be drowned in a bathtub.

Like the Wall Street CEOs who recklessly speculated with America’s economy for their personal profit, industrial CEOs have carelessly gambled with worker’s lives for personal gain. The “free market” doesn’t control that immoral behavior. Government must do it. And when it does, it must have the power to impose fines or workplace shut downs that will damage the bottom lines of CEOs who care about nothing else. And it must have the power to criminally charge and potentially imprison CEOs, treating them the same as drunk drivers who risk other peoples’ lives.

In 1946, a group of miners from Illinois wrote their governor seeking his help in enforcing regulations against dangerous coal dust accumulation in a Centralia Coal Co. mine. They wrote:

"In fact, Governor Green, this is a plea to you, to please save our lives.”

The Centralia Coal Co., despite being cited for violations, didn’t acknowledge a problem. On March 25, 1947, a coal dust explosion killed 111 Centralia miners, including three of the four who sent the letter.

Woody Guthrie wrote the song, “The Dying Miner” after the Centralia explosion, including these lyrics:

"I can hear the moans and groans,
More than a hundred good men.
Just work and fight and try to see,
That this never happens again."

More than a half century later, the protections and enforcement for miners, steelworkers, refinery workers, paper workers and others remain inadequate. The proof is that the explosions and deaths continue to occur over and over again.

The slaughter must stop now. Workers go to jobs to earn their daily bread. They don’t go to die.

In both cases – the five fatalities in a Washington oil refinery last Friday and the 25 deaths (and four still missing as of writing) in a West Virginia coal mine the following Monday – news reports described the explosions that killed workers as industrial “accidents.”

When an explosion occurs at a refinery or mine that has been repeatedly fined for heath and safety violations, one question that ought to be asked is just how unexpected was the event.

Answering this question is essential because: less time plus less money spent on safety measures equals more profit for owners. America must introduce new factors into that computation to protect the lives and limbs of workers who produce the energy on which this country depends. One factor is larger safety violation penalties – fines and shutdowns costly enough to outstrip profitability. And when corporations consider fines just another cost of doing business, another crucial factor is the ability to charge CEOs with criminal negligence when their corporations flagrantly violate safety regulations – an ability that other countries have written into law.

As it stands now, corporations have discovered that they can continue profiting even after unconscionable disasters. Take BP for example. In 2005, a massive blast at the BP Texas City refinery killed 15 and injured 180. Business Week noted that BP continued to turn a profit every year after the Texas catastrophe, even though it paid more than $2 billion for legal costs and fines and for remediation programs at its U.S. refineries.

Regulatory agencies have repeatedly cited and fined both Tesoro, which operates the Anacortes, Wash. refinery where an explosion killed five workers and severely burned two last week, and Massey Energy Co., which owns the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W.Va., where 25 miners are dead and four missing.

Since 2005, regulators cited Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine 1,342 times for safety infractions and charged Massey $1.89 million in fines, $1.3 million of which Massey is contesting. Of the violations, 86 were for failing to obey a ventilation plan to control explosive methane gas and coal dust. These are the very factors suspected in Monday’s deadly blast. Regulators issued 12 of those citations in the past month, and miners told the New York Times that dangerous gas accumulation forced evacuations of the mine several times in recent weeks. Regulators found two violations on Monday, before the explosion.

In January, agencies imposed the largest fines in the mine’s history for two violations, including one case in which a mine foreman admitted he’d known of a ventilation problem for three weeks. In 2008, Massey paid what federal prosecutors said was the largest settlement in the history of the coal industry — $4.2 million in criminal fines and civil penalties — after a subsidiary pleaded guilty to criminal mine safety violations for a January, 2006 fire that killed two workers in Massey’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine. In addition those deaths at a Massey mine and the 25 killed Monday at Upper Big Branch, three other miners died at the Upper Big Branch mine since 1998.

The Charleston Gazette reported:

“In seven of the last 10 years, the mine has recorded a non-fatal injury rate worse than the national average for similar operations, according to MSHA statistics.”

Serious safety concerns prompted federal investigators to temporarily halt work in portions of the Upper Big Branch mine more than 60 times since the start of 2009, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported after reviewing U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration records.

Safety was such a crisis at the Upper Big Branch mine that MSHA sent Massey a letter on Dec. 6, 2007 warning that its serious violations over the previous two years were so far above average that the mine could be designated as a pattern violator and subjected to stricter federal oversight, the New York Times reported. The letter noted that in 2006 and 2007 MSHA had found nearly twice the national average of serious violations at the mine. Within three months, the mine reduced the number by a third, escaping the extra scrutiny. Still, the total remained above the national average.

The citations and fines do not seem to faze Massey CEO Don Blankenship. He told a radio station:

“Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process.”

He also previously told Forbes:

“We don’t pay much attention to the violation count.”

Despite the deaths, all of the violations and the fines, the Massey Energy web site defends the company safety record, contending that 2009 was the 17th year out of 20 that the company scored above the industry average for safety — this assertion although the number of safety violations in 2009 doubled from the previous year, totaled 458 and included 50 citations for breaches Massey, the nation’s fourth largest coal company, knew existed but failed to correct.

Just like Massey, Tesoro claims that its safety record has improved – despite citations and fines and five deaths Friday. In the company fact sheet, Tesoro said its recordable injury rates have declined by 30 percent over three years.

The Washington state Department of Labor and Industry fined Tesoro $85,700 a year ago for 17 serious health and safety violations. These are violations with the potential to cause serious injury or death. In addition, the department found 150 safety deficiencies at the Anacortes, Wash., refinery. Tesoro appealed and got all but three of the most serious violations thrown out and the fine reduced to $12,500. The settlement required Tesoro to hire a safety consultant to examine the refinery. That consultant began work at the plant last month.

Immediately after the five refinery workers died, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association jumped to defend refining safety. Before funerals were held and with two workers still hospitalized with life-threatening burns, the Petroleum Institute complained that the industry wasn’t getting credit for health and safety improvements. And the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association contended that the industry has lower injury rates than manufacturing generally.

The problem with their numbers is that they mingle deaths with OSHA counts of slips and falls – taking the focus off incidents like the fire ball that killed the five Tesoro workers, or the blast that killed 15 at Texas City, or the explosion at another refinery in Anacortes in 1998 that killed six workers.

Also, they don’t want to count injuries to or deaths of subcontractors who refineries often hire to perform dangerous maintenance work. At Tesoro, a contractor was crushed to death in 2002 and three contract workers were hospitalized in 2006 for exposure to naphtha.

In addition, the OSHA numbers used by the refining industry associations exclude explosions and fires at refineries that had the potential to maim and kill both workers and community members but, instead, miraculously resulted only in “close calls.”

OSHA Assistant Secretary David Michaels contradicted the refining industry association safety assertions, saying: “The petroleum industry has a long way to go before we can feel comfortable that workers there are adequately protected.”

Similarly, Daniel Horowitz, a Chemical Safety Board spokesman, told the Seattle Times, a disproportionate number of incidents occurred at the 150 refineries in the U.S., compared with infractions at tens of thousands of chemical plants handling other hazardous materials. Of the 18 cases the Chemical Safety Board is investigating, seven involve oil refineries.

Republicans and Tea Partiers are running around like Chicken Little screaming that government is too big. Thirty workers killed in explosions in four days is what happens when government is too small, when right-wing strategists like Grover Norquist have gotten their way and shrunk regulatory agencies to a size where they can be drowned in a bathtub.

Like the Wall Street CEOs who recklessly speculated with America’s economy for their personal profit, industrial CEOs have carelessly gambled with worker’s lives for personal gain. The “free market” doesn’t control that immoral behavior. Government must do it. And when it does, it must have the power to impose fines or workplace shut downs that will damage the bottom lines of CEOs who care about nothing else. And it must have the power to criminally charge and potentially imprison CEOs, treating them the same as drunk drivers who risk other peoples’ lives.

In 1946, a group of miners from Illinois wrote their governor seeking his help in enforcing regulations against dangerous coal dust accumulation in a Centralia Coal Co. mine. They wrote:

"In fact, Governor Green, this is a plea to you, to please save our lives.”

The Centralia Coal Co., despite being cited for violations, didn’t acknowledge a problem. On March 25, 1947, a coal dust explosion killed 111 Centralia miners, including three of the four who sent the letter.

Woody Guthrie wrote the song, “The Dying Miner” after the Centralia explosion, including these lyrics:

"I can hear the moans and groans,
More than a hundred good men.
Just work and fight and try to see,
That this never happens again."

More than a half century later, the protections and enforcement for miners, steelworkers, refinery workers, paper workers and others remain inadequate. The proof is that the explosions and deaths continue to occur over and over again.

The slaughter must stop now. Workers go to jobs to earn their daily bread. They don’t go to die.