Just last week, six workers died from an explosion at the Tesoro Refinery in Anacortes, WA. In February, five workers died from an explosion in a rush to build a power plant in Middlebury, Connecticut. The terrible truth is that lack of worker safety was a huge problem long before 25 mine workers died in a tragic mine explosion on Monday in West Virginia.
On average, sixteen American workers die every single day at work. "These incidents are not "accidents nor acts of God,"' says SEIU President Andy Stern. Rather, Stern says,
"These are preventable human tragedies. Facing the worst recession in decades, workers often face enormous pressures to 'run coal' and increase production to record-setting levels, while companies ignore basic safety precautions. These tragedies occur because workers have too little power to stop them, and corporations face little or no threat of punishment for their negligence."
American workers should not have to face unacceptable hazards at work, and we must make fight toward increasing protections to keep them safe on the job. To that end, SEIU is joining with the Obama Administration and Congressional leaders in calling for the passage of the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA). This law will
- modernize the 40-year-old OSHA Act to improve workers' ability to combat deadly working conditions,
- extend OSHA protections to millions of uncovered public sector workers for the first time and
- provide Labor Secretary Solis with the powers needed to make sure that companies that violate the law will (in the words of the new head of OSHA) face "swift, certain and meaningful penalties."
* Read SEIU President Andy Stern's full statement today on West Virginia mine workers tragedy here.
