Workers Remember 9/11 Victims, First Responders
Read the AFL-CIO Executive Council statement honoring America’s 911 Heroes here.
Working people across the country today are participating in community service and remembrance events to honor those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the first responders who worked tirelessly to rescue the survivors.
These events, which cap a “summer of service” called for by President Obama, come just two days before the AFL-CIO begins its 26th constitutional convention in Pittsburgh, just 80 miles from Shanksville, where United Airlines flight 93 went down eight years ago.
From Anchorage, Alaska, to Peoria, Ill., to Nashville, Tenn., working people are organizing food drives, blood drives and other service events. AFL-CIO central labor councils have conducted more than 300 community-based service projects across the country throughout the summer. Local labor groups from across the country also have conducted activities to help the growing number of unemployed Americans in San Francisco, Dallas and dozens of other communities.
Ground Zero Workers Still Suffer from Lung Problems
 |
|
A new study finds nearly one-quarter of a sample of firefighters and other first responders and construction workers exposed to the toxic mix of chemicals and debris at Ground Zero during 9/11 rescue and recovery operations continue to suffer from persistent lung problems.
The continuing study by the Mount Sinai Medical Center’s medical monitoring program examined the workers between 2004 and 2007, repeating exams conducted between the middle of 2002 and 2004. Slightly more than 24 percent had abnormal lung function and limited lung capacity, compared with 28 percent in the first study.
BushWatch: 3.5 Days and Counting…
More than 20,000 AFL-CIO union volunteers are planning to heed President-elect Barack Obama’s call to pay tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.
In our retrospective of eight years of BushWatch this week, we’ve looked back at the outgoing president’s more egregious vetoes, executive orders and decisions on the economy, workplace safety, health care, workers’ rights and other issues. Click here, here, here and here for parts one through four.
Today we present a potpourri—a grab bag of sorts—of randomly bad actions highlighted on BushWatch:
- As part of a last-minute push to implement a slew of new federal regulations before leaving office, the Bush Labor Department issued new rules that make it more difficult for workers to use family and medical leave.
BushWatch: Job Safety and Health Took Big Hits
This is our second look back at eight years of BushWatch. Today we review an area where outgoing President George W. Bush’s actions have a daily, and maybe deadly, impact on men and women who go to work every day—job safety and health.
Whether it was via regulation, legislation, executive order, policy decision or inaction, Bush repeatedly carried out the wishes of Big Business—less enforcement, weaker safety laws, lighter penalties or no regulation at all.
If there was any doubt whom he served, Bush erased that when he ended decades of practice and refused to name union representatives to serve on job-safety study and advisory groups, which also include academic, professional and management representatives.
Here are just some of the lowlights. For the complete accounting, go to BushWatch and click on Health and Safety in the top box.
