We have lots of Elaine news from the last week, so kick back and check out what we have on our shady, shifty, shoddy Secretary of Labor.

Shady Appointees: Elaine lets appointee hide behind diplomatic immunity. Last month, Elaine met with the NAFTA council—the body that could waive diplomatic immunity for lobbyist and former official Mark Knouse. Knouse is the one whose numerous questionable expenses—nearly $10,000 in travel expenditures and about $1 million in shady contracts and vendor payments—forced him to resign. So did Elaine bring this to the NAFTA council? You guess.

Shoddy work: House votes to force Elaine to act. In April, we reported on a House hearing held because Elaine’s OSHA has failed to create comprehensive combustible dust regulations. Last week the House of Representatives got fed up, and voted to require OSHA to write safety standards for combustible dust in workplaces.

Federal regulators would have to come up with new ways to prevent combustible dust explosions in factories under legislation passed by the House… The bill now goes to the Senate, but the White House already has said President Bush would veto it. Despite worker deaths, Congressional votes, Elaine and her buddy President Bush still don’t seem to think combustible dust is a problem.

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We’ve spent quite some time detailing Elaine’s refusal to protect workers from combustible dust, particularly OSHA’s negligence in issuing an emergency standard after the wave of recent refinery explosions throughout the United States.

Witnessing the Labor Department’s continued stonewalling on worker safety, a Kentucky miner is now suing MSHA to tighten the limit on coal miners’ exposure to coal dust that causes the fatal black lung disease.

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Ex-unionbuster and current OSHA Director Edwin Foulke, Jr. testified before congress last week, revealing once again the Labor Department’s laissez faire attitude toward occupational safety and health at our nation’s industrial facilities.

As the Bloomberg’s Cindy Skrzycki reported on Tuesday:

“I see such an incredible lack of urgency on the part of your agency to protect workers that it is astounding,” Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who heads the House Education and Labor Committee, told OSHA director Edwin Foulke Jr.

“We believe the agency has taken strong measures to prevent combustible dust hazards,” Foulke responded. Since the explosion in Georgia, the agency has created a Web page to make it easier to find guidance material on combustible dust, he told the committee.

Strong measures? Surely those measures don’t include OSHA’s failure to issue a single standard on combustible dust, as urged by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board in 2006. And last time I checked, most workers don’t have time in between shifts to study the guidance material online, the only apparent action taken by Foulke following the Georgia refinery explosion that killed 13 people.

Making matters worse, Foulke only seemed “a little bit disappointed” when another Imperial Sugar Company refinery, this time in Louisiana, closed down following an OSHA inspection that found potentially combustible dust. (Check out Change to Win’s mockup of a Homeland Security-style combustible dust advisory level chart about Foulke’s “disappointment.”)

You would think OSHA’s director might show a little more outrage since the same company still hasn’t cleaned up its act, literally. What will it take for Edwin and Elaine to do their jobs on combustible dust?

How many workers have to be killed before Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao does her job?

Across the country, factory fires and explosions caused by “combustible dust” are claiming lives. Last month alone more than a dozen workers died, and still Elaine’s department is stalling on regulations to protect workers.

Concerned lawmakers sent Elaine an official letter urging her to take immediate steps to prevent these fires and explosions. Elaine didn’t even respond.

So Congress held a hearing today on a bill that would force Elaine to act. You can learn more about H.R. 5522 at Open Congress. It’s absurd that it has come to this, but we need your help.

Tell your representative to support this bill. We’ll send a copy of your letter to Elaine Chao to make sure she gets the message, too.

»  Take action now!

Thanks for sending this to us, reader. We are told this is a copy of OSHA’s PowerPoint training on combustible dust, conducted on Monday. We haven’t had time yet to cull though the 85 slides, but wanted to share it with you all. Today is the day that OSHA head Edwin G. Foulke testifies to Congress about combustible dust fires and explosions. We’re looking forward to hearing Foulke’s ideas on how to beef up combustible dust safety. Writing regulations would be a nice start, if two years belated.

Since it’s a huge PowerPoint, we’ll put it below the fold.  Click “Read more” to see the PowerPoint.

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Elaine’s Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, Edwin Foulke, Jr., traveled on Monday to Georgia examining the Imperial Sugar Co. refinery where an explosion recently killed twelve workers.

As the local Savannah press noted:

Mr. Fouke says OSHA is anxious to set a standard for businesses that deal with combustible dust but he says those standards can not be set until the investigation in Port Wentworth wraps up. A task that could take up to 6 months.

Employees working in dangerous conditions don’t have 6 months to wait for OSHA to get its act together. In fact, unions representing refinery workers, along with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, have been asking OSHA to set a combustible dust standard for quite some time, only to be ignored by Elaine and Foulke.

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Last week we discussed the tragic news that yet another burn victim from the Imperial Sugar Co.’s refinery explosion died, raising the fatality count to twelve. Elaine’s unwillingness to issue a temporary standard on combustible dust, which was responsible for igniting the explosion, has forced lawmakers on Capitol Hill to do her job.

U.S. Representative George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, sent a letter to Elaine last week urging her to take immediate steps to prevent explosions like the one that killed the twelve workers at Imperial Sugar Co. The letter went unanswered.

As the nation’s combustible dust continues to pile up and with Elaine missing in action, Miller, along with Representative John Barrow (D-GA), who represents the district where the refinery explosion took place, introduced legislation forcing OSHA to issue rules regulating combustible dusts that can explode and kill workers.

“It’s unfortunate that it takes the Congress of the United States to tell OSHA how to do its job. The agency has known about these dangers for a long time and should have acted years ago to prevent explosions like this one. Workers cannot be asked to wait any longer for these basic protections,” said Miller.

We couldn’t agree more.

Ugh.

A burn victim from the Imperial Sugar Co. refinery explosion and fire died Tuesday evening at in Augusta, raising the total number of fatalities to 12.

Eleven burn victims from the sugar refinery in Port Wentworth remained listed in critical condition Tuesday, and one was listed in serious condition.

Eight bodies initially were pulled from the refinery wreckage, and four burn victims subsequently have succumbed to their injuries in Augusta.

Hey Elaine, do you have any idea when you’ll get around to writing those combustible dust regulations you were supposed to do two years ago? People are dying in the mean time.

In the wake of the recent explosion at the Imperial Sugar Co. refinery in Georgia, Tom Barton of the Savannah Morning News has done a great job pointing out how although the CEO of Imperial Sugar argues his company is committed to safety:

You can’t say the same thing about the Labor Department and OSHA. They’ve been asleep at the switch - perhaps fatally so.

The kind of explosion at the Imperial Sugar Co. refinery is preventable; but there have already been 11 fires or explosions so far this year at workplaces that generate combustible dust. (And in an unfortunate update, now 11 workers died in that explosion, up from 8 last week, with 14 still in the hospital.)

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We recently discussed the tragic deaths caused by the explosion at the Imperial Sugar Co. refinery in Georgia, where 8 workers perished due to the negligence of others. Tragedies like this and others are caused by combustible dust floating around that can easily ignite unless necessary precautions are taken. Elaine Chao neglected to issue rules regarding combustible dust in 2006 though asked to do so.

As this problem worsens, organizations representing workers who are adversely affected by combustible dust have petitioned Elaine to take action by issuing an emergency standard regulating exposure to combustible dust.

In their letter to Elaine, the unions explain the dire need for these regulations:

Workers who are employed in facilities where uncontrolled combustible dust emissions are present face “grave danger” of experiencing fatalities or serious injuries as a result of dust explosions and resultant fires.

An onset of explosions in recent weeks has spread investigators thin all around the country. It’s not just that there are more explosions; it’s that there aren’t enough inspections to prevent them.

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