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After claiming once again that the U.S. House of Representatives has “done its job” by passing legislation that they know doesn't have any chance of being passed in the Senate and refusing to compromise, Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor defended their union busting provision in the FAA bill that John wrote about here.

CAVUTO: And you were also against the provisions in there that would make it easier... for FAA workers to unionize. And that was a point of contention and one of the reasons the Senate said, we just can't take up this measure that objects to that. So where do we stand?

CANTOR: Well, you know, that disagreement is really under the underlying bill. This was the extension that that really is not a part of this discussion. The issue about organization for labor has to do with being fair to both sides. And if you're going to be fair to both sides, you ought to give both the employees as well as the employers an equal opportunity to make the case.

As Rep. Jim McGovern pointed out the other day, I wonder if Cantor would be willing to apply the same standards to themselves in the United States Congress that he thinks is “fair” for unions with the language in their bill, in a provision that he and Cavuto conveniently forgot to mention during this interview on Fox.

MCGOVERN: From Wisconsin to Ohio to Maine, we have seen how Republican politicians are attempting to destroy a century of hard-fought labor protections. This bill represents more of the same.

The bill would reverse a National Mediation Board rule that allows a majority of those voting in aviation and rail union elections to decide the outcome. Instead, Tea Party extremists want to count workers who chose not to vote as automatic “no’s” against the union.

I wonder if my friends on the other side of the aisle would be willing to use that same standard in congressional elections? I wonder if they’d agree that every registered voter who didn’t vote—for whatever reason—last November would automatically be counted as a “no” vote against them. I doubt it.

Yeah, so do I. What I found really astounding here though was the fact that Cantor seemed to have no problem whatsoever with the airlines pocketing the extra money that should be going to fund the FAA instead of lowering rates for their customers. Actually, I'm not surprised that he believes this. I'm just surprised that he had no problem saying it out loud.

CAVUTO: Is it legal for airlines to still be collecting these FAA fees, taxes, whatever we call them?

CANTOR: Well you know, it's not a question of legality. It's a question of the fact that the authority, FAA, is not functioning right now so they cannot levy the tax. And what airlines have done is have stepped in and said well we're not going to pay that money to the Federal government. We're going to keep it towards our own bottom line. And I guess that's what business does. And again I think it speaks to the fact that the Senate hasn't done it's job and it is costing the Federal government and the taxpayers money. The Senate ought to return to Washington, take up the bill and pass the House bill. We've done our work.

"I guess that's what business does"... are you kidding me? So Cantor admits that what's going on is “costing the taxpayers money”, but is okay with the airlines charging customers for a tax they're not paying to the government. They sure don't worry about anyone who is not one of their rich buddies when it comes to paying taxes, do they?

Thank you to Eric Dolan at Raw Story for bringing attention to this. 100 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire which I wrote about here, we're still seeing these abusive conditions in sweatshops around the world. We got rid of them here and just outsourced our slavery so we didn't have to look at it.

Young women continue to die locked in sweatshops, labor group warns:

As the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire approaches, the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights urged the United States to pass legislation to prevent multi-national corporations from violating internationally recognized worker rights standards, such as no child or forced labor, decent working conditions, freedom of association and the right to organize a union.

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire resulted in the death of 146 female workers, who were locked inside the factory by their managers, on March 25, 1911. The women worked 6 days a week, often 14 hours shifts, and earned the meager wage of 14 cents an hour. (The equivalent of $3.18 an hour in 2011, adjusted for inflation.)

After the death of workers in a Bangladesh sweatshop, the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights said now was the time to hold corporations accountable to respect labor laws and pass the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act.

The Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act was introduced by a bipartisan group of senators in 2007, but never made it out of House and Senate committees. The bill would have prohibited the import, export, and sale of goods made with sweatshop labor.

More there on how we failed to get any legislation through the Congress here in the US to put a stop to this, so go read the rest of the article. And as he referred to in his article, here's more from the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights.

Triangle Returns: Young Women Continue to Die Locked in Sweatshops:

Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights Releases Explosive New Video and Report for the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Triangle Returns on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noL8nFSzsDc

Triangle Returns - broadcast quality: http://www3.usw.org/download/triangle_race_to_the_bottom_r2.mov

Report: Triangle Returns: Young Women Continue to Die Locked in Sweatshops: http://www.nlcnet.org/admin/reports/files/Triangle-Returns.pdf

Supplemental footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJG_o94mWqA

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If you've got HBO, set your recording devices for this show if you're not going to be home Monday night. It premiers at 9pm eastern time March 21st. Laura Clawson did a very good write up on this at Daily KOS -- Triangle: Remembering the Fire:

This is the week of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle fire, and tomorrow (Monday) night at 9:00, HBO is airing a new documentary. Triangle: Remembering the Fire is relatively brief, but it adds a great deal to the sketch, on several levels.

The documentary first places the Triangle fire in context: Less than two years earlier, garment workers had gone on strike in the Uprising of 20,000, making outrageous demands like a 52-hour work week and overtime pay.

Meanwhile, the fiercely anti-union owners of the Triangle factory met with owners of the 20 largest factories to form a manufacturing association. Many of the strike leaders worked there, and the Triangle owners wanted to make sure other factory owners were committed to doing whatever it took—from using physical force (by hiring thugs to beat up strikers) to political pressure (which got the police on their side)—to not back down.

Soon after, police officers began arresting strikers, and judges fined them and sentenced some to labor camps. One judge, while sentencing a picketer for “incitement,” explained, “You are striking against God and Nature, whose law is that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. You are on strike against God!”

The Triangle company held out, the workers went back, and the safety concerns they raised went unaddressed. That New York's garment workers had been fighting for better treatment, and that many of the fire's deaths might have been prevented had they succeeded, is a central part of the context Triangle: Remembering the Fire provides.

That context of struggle is crucial to understanding the fire's aftermath, in which New York instituted a range of workplace protections. Frances Perkins would later famously call March 25, 1911 "the day the New Deal began."

Much more there on the documentary so go read the rest. I also wanted to share this with everyone here. I transcribed part of a book I bought some years back titled Labor's Untold Story, written by the United Radio, Electrical and Machine Workers of America back in 1955. It's out of print but you can still buy a copy at Amazon here.

We don't teach this history in our schools, so I'm glad to see HBO doing this sort of documentary. It's important that we understand what it took to get so many of the things we take for granted right now and now easily we could go back to these days if we don't understand that the ultra-rich basically consider most of us a commodity that's expendable. And before you read the excerpt from the book below, a warning that some of it is not safe for work due to a few curse words. It's pages 186-191 of the book and recounts the incident at Triangle and the other strikes and the lifestyles of the Robber Barons around the time of the fire at the Triangle factory.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The rich are using the same playbook now that they did back in the early 1900's. Control the press so you propagandize the public, go after public education, use religious leaders to help your cause and trash unions.

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Chris Matthews and Richard Trumka discussed the rescue of the Chilean mine workers and the need for better safety laws for miners around the world. As both of them noted the Republican Party has gotten so radical with their anti-regulation rhetoric that if they had their way, those miners would have all died.

MATTHEWS: Joining me now is an old pal of this show, the AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka.

I want to get to -- because this guy worked in a mine, half mile down. You know what it was like. By the way, let`s start with that, because this is very human interest.

TRUMKA: Sure.

MATTHEWS: We haven't talked about it tonight. But it is thrilling to watch those guys. You were there at the Chilean embassy.

TRUMKA: I was, when they were bringing the first miners out. And I can tell you, they were like other brothers and it was almost like I hit the lottery. There`s this feeling of elation because the earth nominally doesn't give up a live body after that being trapped underground that long. This one, when the first miner came out, it was like my brother or my uncle, my dad or anybody coming out. It was such a win for us.

But it brings up two other issues I think we have to look at because -- one, we are very, very elated that these miners are safe. Second of all, we have to thank the rescue workers that got them there. And third, it's the lack of health and safety in the mines of the world doesn't know boundaries.

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This story could have had a much worse outcome. Thankfully it looks like there's a good chance all of the miners will emerge safely after being trapped in the Chilean mine for some 69 days. It's too bad our media isn't taking this opportunity to talk about mining safety instead of just focusing on the fact that it was something akin to a miracle that these workers have survived this ordeal.

First Workers Emerge From Chilean Mine

Rescuers in Chile have freed the first of 33 workers who had been trapped more than half a kilometer underground for over two months.

Florencio Avalos, a 31-year-old miner, was brought to the surface shortly after midnight Wednesday in a metal capsule called Phoenix. Wearing dark sunglasses to protect his eyes from camera lights after 10 weeks of living in darkness, Avalos first embraced members of his family and then Chilean President Sebastian Pinera.

The metal capsule was then lowered back down, with a paramedic on board, to free the other miners one by one in an operation expected to last up to two days.

Another rescuer, Manuel Gonzalez, descended into the mine earlier Tuesday to assist the trapped workers. They will immediately be given medical attention when they reach the surface. [...]

Speaking at the rescue site, Chilean President Pinera said the mine, which has had a history of accidents, will be closed until the safety of those working there can be guaranteed.

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CNN aired a special this weekend Behind the scenes of 'Rescue: Saving the Gulf' which didn't particularly interest me since I thought it looked like a bit of PR for BP by the network. But as Laffy noted over at The Political Carnival, CNN may have just documented something they didn't mean to if they were trying to do either BP or the government any favors.

UPDATED: “CNN may not know what they have documented.” + VIDEO:

Hugh Kaufman just messaged me the following, along with a link to the video below:

CNN may not know what they have documented. Will anybody tell them? Will they figure it out? …

CNN documents, on this documentary airing tonight and tomorrow, that the “air smell’s [sic] bad” (it’s full of carcinogenic and other hazardous material in oil and dispersants). None of the cleanup workers are wearing respirators and nobody is testing the air.

Just like 911 WTC, these workers are gonna be in trouble 5, 10, and 20 years down the line.

Where is EPA and OSHA?

I thought the same thing when I was watching the special. Where are the respirators for these workers and for the CNN reporter for that matter? Gloves, hardhats, boots and safety vests don't cut it with protecting them from this toxic sludge. I posted Hugh Kaughman's interview on Democracy Now the other day talking about how toxic that crude and those dispersants are.

Here's CNN's feedback page if you'd like to contact them and ask them why their reporter wasn't wearing the proper protective gear to be around that mess they're cleaning up and why they didn't bother to ask why the workers weren't wearing the right gear in their special.

Transcript below the fold.

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Another day, another reason not to trust BP to handle anything properly in the response to this disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

GRIFFIN: For 26 years, Jean Pascal was a lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency, investigating and helping to prosecute some of the worst environmental polluters in the northwest, including oil companies in Alaska. The worst of the worst, she says, is British Petroleum.

You describe BP as a serial environmental criminal.

JEAN PASCAL, FORMER EPA LAWYER: I have.

GRIFFIN: You believe that?

PASCAL: I do.

GRIFFIN: BP has pled guilty to illegally discharging oil in Alaska and also faces a criminal complaint, alleging it violated clean air and water laws. Pascal retired earlier this year, so she is now free to speak out about a company she says repeatedly violates environmental laws.

PASCAL: From my perspective, BP has, for a long time, been a company that is interested in profits first and foremost. Safety and health and environment are subjugated to profit making. And I do not think that has changed.

GRIFFIN: In congressional hearings after the fatal explosion at BP's Texas refinery in 2005, lawmakers asked BP's then CEO, did workers warn about safety issues at the plant? He said they had not.

Then there were questions about whether they feared retaliation for speaking up.

Bottom line, after pressure from lawmakers, BP opened an independent ombudsman's office to manage and to hear the safety concerns of its workers. It's run by a former federal judge, just not here in Alaska.

It's a very small office, tucked away inside this office building here in Washington, D.C. But British Petroleum has been running this employee complaints program for several years.

The independent former judge who runs the unit refused to comment to CNN.

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Sen. Mary Landrieu even after all of the devastation in her state is calling for the moratorium on offshore drilling to be lifted. Landrieu is now calling for stronger regulation of the industry but says that stronger regulations won't make any difference if they're not enforced. Of course that's true but this is the same woman who back in November of 2009 was downplaying the impact of any spill in the Gulf during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing and lecturing the president of SkyTruth John Amos about the size of the oil spill in Australia.

During the hearing, Landrieu attacked the testimony of John Amos, president of SkyTruth, a group which monitors environmental conditions through satellite images, regarding the impact of the Australian spill. Though current estimates of the spill's magnitude range from 1.2 million to 9 million gallons, Landrieu insisted that it was 823,000 gallons.

"She was accusing SkyTruth of not being truthful," Amos tells HuffPost. "She took a photo [of the spill] produced by Sen. Menendez's staff, she pointed at it and said, 'The fact is, these things happen.' I was speechless."

At a hearing last month held by the same committee to discuss drilling, Landrieu repeated her line about the reflecting pool, adding:

I mean, just the gallons are so minuscule compared to the benefits of U.S. strength and security, the benefits of job creation and energy security. So while there are risks associated with everything, I think you understand that they are quite, quite minimal.

HuffPost asked Landrieu whether she still stands by her comments and whether she supports new safety regulations proposed by the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling, which are opposed by the oil industry, as first reported by HuffPost on Monday.

In response, the senator's office said she does support MMS's proposed safety rules and issued this statement:

Senator Landrieu has been very supportive of Secretary Salazar and believes that the MMS and the Coast Guard have generally been good stewards of human safety with respect to the oil and gas industry. The Senator has said repeatedly that what happened in the Gulf last week is a tragedy and should be fully investigated to find out what went wrong and how it can be prevented in the future.

But she also firmly believes that this accident should not be used as an excuse to abandon plans to make America more energy secure.

Consider the alternative: to stop all domestic offshore drilling. That would only export America's oil and gas production activities -- and the attendant jobs that go with it -- overseas to countries that have neither the will, nor the resources, to address the environmental impacts.

Even with the development of alternative energy sources, the United States will still need oil into the foreseeable future. With no offshore domestic production, that oil would be tankered from overseas into the United States. The one thing we do know is that such a policy would do nothing to protect our shores. In fact, the National Academies of Science has found that while drilling and extraction account for less than 1 percent of all the oil that enters the marine environment, tankering accounts for four times that much.

Over a month later and she hasn't changed her tune yet. She claims that we have some of the strictest regulations in the world, which we don't and that drilling can still be done safely and then says the regulations weren't being enforced in the next breath. Just shameless. I'm sure she'll do her best to make sure anything they do put in place doesn't have any teeth so she can blame the government for the oversight failures again when something else goes wrong.

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Ed Schultz talks to the President of the United Steelworkers Leo Gerard about his recent op-ed Wrongful Fatalities, Failed Worker Protections:

In both cases – the five fatalities in a Washington oil refinery April 2 and the 29 deaths in a West Virginia coal mine the following Monday – news reports described the explosions that killed workers as industrial “accidents.”

When an explosion occurs at a refinery or mine that has been repeatedly fined for heath and safety violations, one question that ought to be asked is just how unexpected was the event.

Answering this question is essential because: less time plus less money spent on safety measures equals more profit for owners. America must introduce new factors into that computation to protect the lives and limbs of workers who produce the energy on which this country depends. One factor is larger safety violation penalties – fines and shutdowns costly enough to outstrip profitability. And when corporations consider fines just another cost of doing business, another crucial factor is the ability to charge CEOs with criminal negligence when their corporations flagrantly violate safety regulations – an ability that other countries have written into law.

[...]

Woody Guthrie wrote the song, “The Dying Miner” after the Centralia explosion, including these lyrics:

"I can hear the moans and groans,

More than a hundred good men.

Just work and fight and try to see,

That this never happens again."

More than a half century later, the protections and enforcement for miners, steelworkers, refinery workers, paper workers and others remain inadequate. The proof is that the explosions and deaths continue to occur over and over again.

The slaughter must stop now. Workers go to jobs to earn their daily bread. They don’t go to die.

Read the entire article here.

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Ed Schultz gets as emotional as I've ever seen him about the death of the miners in the Massey Coal Mine Disaster and the need for something to be done to protect the safety of those workers and rails against anyone who is attacking labor unions and the Employee Free Choice Act. As Ed rightfully notes if the miners had been unionized they might have had a chance to do something to protect themselves from the hazardous conditions in the mines. Phil Smith of the United Mine Workers of America joined Ed to talk about the climate of fear and intimidation when it comes to organizing coal miners.