A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
Don Blankenship,who spent a year in jail because 29 miners died in his Upper Big Branch mine? What good is he doing? Well, Blankenship has announced that he’s running as a third-party candidate against against Senator Joe Manchin (D) in West Virginia’s Senate election this November. Analysts fear this will split the Republican vote in…
Courtesy of Politico: BALDWIN TAKES FRANKEN’S PLACE: Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) on Thursday became the new ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee’s Employment and Workplace Safety subcommittee. She was approved in a voice vote to replace former Sen. Al Franken, who resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.
On a straight party line vote, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee voted late yesterday to approve Scott Mugno’s nomination for Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. All the Republicans voted for; all the Democrats against. Mugno must be approved by the entire Senate, the vote unlikely to take place until January. Some…
OK, now that the dust has settled, what do we think about the performance of OSHA Assistant Secretary nominee Scott Mugno after listening to his testimony at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday (and Tweeting it)? You can watch the entire hearing for yourself here. What Others Are Saying Two days after the hearing, there hasn’t been…
I will be live-tweeting the Mugno confirmation hearing on Twitter (@jbarab) that has just begun. If you don’t follow me on Twitter, now’s the time to correct that oversight. Also on tap is the nominee for head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a couple of Education Department nominees. ***** For those of you…
Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta testified yesterday before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on the Department of Labor’s FY 2018 budget proposal. As expected, there were very few questions dealing with worker safety and health, and unfortunately none on the Susan Harwood Grant program which is slated for…
“Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” ― Joe Biden If a President or Congress want to dismantle worker protections or other government programs, they don’t have to repeal or change legislation; they can work their damage through the budget process. Slashthe budget of a…
“I was just following orders” has never seemed like a particularly convincing argument throughout history, but that seems to be the platform that Alex Acosta is campaigning on to be Donald J. Trump’s Secretary of Labor, according to Christopher Cook in The Nation. Cook notes that not only has Acosta not stirred the spirited opposition that…
Alexander Acosta, the President’s nominee for Secretary of Labor testified today before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee. If you’re interested, you can watch the entire hearing here, although that would be two and a half hours you will never get back. I’m going to review the parts of the hearing that addressed workplace…
The Senate just voted to repeal OSHA’s Volks rule making it impossible for OSHA to enforce its recordkeeping standard. Workers will pay the price. More injured. More sick. More dead. It was a straight party line vote. We put up a good fight. Good work everyone who worked to defeat this. Way to go Republicans.…