Workers’ Memorial Day

By Laura Gordon

For ten years, workers and unions have been fighting for an ergonomics standard to prevent crippling repetitive strain and back injuries.

The emphasis for Workers’ Memorial Day, April 28, is to support OSHA’s proposed ergonomics standard that was issued in November of 1999. The proposed standard is designed to reduce ergonomic hazards and prevent back injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other musculoskeletal disorders. Ergonomic hazards have been the nation’s biggest job safety problem for far too long, crippling and injuring more than 600,000 workers each year. Unfortunately, the business community and their lackeys in Congress have been fighting to stop the standard for years. Last year, a bill, HR987, to block the standard narrowly passed the House. Opponents are pushing hard to pass similar legislation, S1070, in the Senate.

Here in North Carolina, organized labor and the North Carolina Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NCOSH) along with the Department of Labor, proposed a state ergonomics standard last July and then held hearings around the state to gather public opinion about the standard. Prospects for the state standard seemed very promising – until the proposed rule met the Rules Review Commission, which has the power to turn down regulations created by state agencies. The Committee demanded that the Department of Labor make specific changes which essentially gutted the enforceability of the standard – but even with the changes, the Rules Commission voted against the Department of Labor even having the jurisdiction to make such a rule. State Labor Commissioner Harry Payne has now challenged the constitutionality of the Rules Commission.

Having a safe and healthy work environment is the right of every working person. But as we have seen over the course of history, making a profit has been more important than providing working people with decent working conditions. It is up to organized labor and our allies to fight for a safe and healthy workplace for all working people.

This Friday, April 28, please take a moment to reflect on how many of our brothers and sisters have been injured or killed while on the job and help us to fight for better working conditions for all.

Laura Gordon is President of the Western North Carolina Central Labor Council.

Dozens arrested in bloody Argentine protest

By Gilbert Le Gras

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Apr. 19-- Truncheon-wielding police arrested dozens of demonstrators in front of Argentina's Congress early on Wednesday after a union protest against a new labor bill turned violent.
Television images showed five police officers clubbing one protester who lay sprawled on the sidewalk with blood pouring from his head. Radio reports said 43 people were arrested.

Another television station showed a police officer pulling a knife from one protester who had been wrestled to the ground and then slashing him across the back with it.

A police spokesman was not immediately available for comment on the incidents.

``This was a savage act of repression. They were beating young people who had nothing to do with the demonstration,'' said Juan Manuel Palacios, a spokesman of Argentina's main labor body, the General Worker's Confederation (CGT), which organized the early morning protest.

The center-left Alliance government of South America's second-largest nation sent proposals to Congress in February to reduce the cost of hiring and firing, ditch outdated contracts and reduce unions' influence on wage negotiations to wrestle decade-old double-digit unemployment.

Unemployment peaked at 18.4 percent in the mid-1990s and now stands at 13.8 percent. Employers are often reluctant to take on full-time staff because of high severance packages required by law.

Source: Reuters