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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The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday summarizing the recent firestorm surrounding OSHA chief Edwin G. Foulke, former unionbuster and the do-nothing protector of your health and safety. The article also addressed some fast-flying rumors of Edwin’s potential premature departure from OSHA:

Mr. Foulke, appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate, has headed OSHA, part of the Labor Department, since 2006. OSHA denied a recent report in a trade publication that Mr. Foulke plans to leave the agency before Mr. Bush leaves office. Mr. Foulke wasn’t available for comment.

The biggest criticism of OSHA under Mr. Foulke centers on the agency’s preference for seeking voluntary compliance from employers on safety goals rather than establishing new mandatory regulations. “OSHA’s No. 1 responsibility is to set rules and enforce them. OSHA has not lived up to this promise,” said Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat.

When asked about these serious charges, Elaine’s mouthpiece acted like a broken record, trotting out a tired defense and playing the victim:

“Election-year partisan attacks go with the territory,” said Labor Department spokesman David James. “Worker-fatality, injury and illness rates are at record lows under this administration’s leadership.”

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Appalled by reports of widespread injuries and neglect in the poultry industry, members of a Senate subcommittee yesterday cited OSHA’s repeated failures in protecting workers and preventing on-the-job injuries.

Subcommittee Chair Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) pointed out what we already know - under Elaine’s watch, the Labor Department has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to worker safety:

“I am very concerned because the evidence shows that in the last seven years, OSHA has been dangerously ineffective.”

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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.

Since we started our campaign, a number of Elaine’s employees have come forward to tell us just how miserable worker morale is within the agency under the reign of Elaine. Some employees are even afraid to do their jobs out of fear of punishment - the following story makes it easy to see why.

Over a year ago, the Labor Department suspended an OSHA employee, Ira Wainless, because he issued a report cautioning auto mechanics on the dangers exposure to brake pads can cause. A November 20, 2006 article in the Baltimore Sun notes:

It took six years to get federal worker safety officials to issue warnings to auto mechanics that the brakes they’re working on could contain lethal asbestos fibers. But it took only three weeks after the warnings were posted before a former top federal official with ties to the auto industry reportedly pushed to have them removed.

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