Last Wednesday, a fertilizer plant in Texas exploded, killing at least 14 people and leaving as many as 60 people missing. No one knows why the plant blew up. All eyes are on the U.S. Chemical Safety Board for answers, but answers may be a long time in coming. The CSB, a watchdog agency modelled on the Transportation Safety Board, is supposed to investigate chemical accidents and offer recommendations on how to prevent similar mishaps. However, according to the Center for Public Integrity, the board is still slogging through the investigations of much smaller disasters that happened years ago:

The number of board accident reports, case studies and safety bulletins has fallen precipitously since 2006, an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity found. Thirteen board investigations — one more than five years old — are incomplete.

As members of Congress raise questions, the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general is auditing the board’s investigative process.

The CSB pledged to send “a large investigative team” immediately after the Texas fertilizer explosion. While their prompt response is comendable, the board is notorious for pulling investigators off one probe and sending them to another before they’ve had a chance to finish their original inquiry. Prompt action on the disaster du jour may be pushing other investigations further behind. 

The CSB has been underfunded and understaffed since its launch in 1988. 

[Photo credit: Dead Air, Creative Commons.]

Between May 10 and May 17, the Workers, Unite! Film Festival will present an exciting program of documentary films about the global labor movement. The complete schedule is available for your reference. The main screening venue is Cinema Village at 22 E 12th St. in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

On May 15 at 8:30pm the festival will be screening Where Do You Stand?, a documentary by Alexandra Lescaze, Executive Director of the Sidney Hillman Foundation. 

While employers reap record profits from high productivity, the American worker is surveilled, underpaid, overworked, exhausted, demoralized, and disrespected:

WESTFIELD, Mass. — The envelope factory where Lisa Weber works is hot and noisy. A fan she brought from home helps her keep cool as she maneuvers around whirring equipment to make her quota: 750 envelopes an hour, up from 500 a few years ago.

There’s no resting: Between the video cameras and the constant threat of layoffs, Weber knows she must always be on her toes.

The drudgery of work at National Envelope Co. used to be relieved by small perks — an annual picnic, free hams and turkeys over the holidays — but those have long since been eliminated.

“It’s harder for me to want to get up and go to work than it used to be,” said Weber, 47, who started at the factory at 19. “It’s not something I would wish on anybody. I’m worn out. I get home and I can barely stand up.”

The relentless drive for efficiency at U.S. companies has created a new harshness in the workplace. In their zeal to make sure that not a minute of time is wasted, companies are imposing rigorous performance quotas, forcing many people to put in extra hours, paid or not. Video cameras and software keep tabs on worker performance, tracking their computer keystrokes and the time spent on each customer service call. [LA Times]

Semuels describes a two-tiered system where skilled workers can still command decent wages and a modicum of job security, but unskilled workers have become a disposable commodity in the eyes of employers. The labor market is so weak, bosses figure that if anyone complains about long hours or low pay, there are plenty of others who’d be happy to take the job. 

Semuels frames deteriorating working conditions as an issue of “global competitiveness,” she suggests that employers are forced to cut back because they face stiff competition from overseas. Increased competition from overseas and the temptations of outsourcing are part of the story, but declining union density also has a lot to do with the diminished fortunes of the American worker. 

[Photo credit: ElitePete, Creative Commons.]

Joe and Harry Gantz won the April Sidney Award for American Winter, a documentary that follows eight Portland, Oregon-area families struggling to survive the winter of 2011/2012 in the grip of the Great Recession.

At a time when 46.2 million Americans are living in poverty nationwide and the top one percent accumulate wealth at record-breaking rates, the filmmakers sought to cast a light on the fragility of the middle class and the threadbare state of our social safety net.

The families in American Winter cope with stagnant wages, the mortgage crisis, medical bills, death and disability. They suffer from budget cuts that have frayed the social safety net in the name of austerity.

American Winter follows hardworking families who, like so many Americans, are one crisis away from poverty. A woman struggles to raise her son alone after her husband’s sudden death; another loses her job because of her daughter’s chronic illness. A couple with young children must decide whether to pay their mortgage or keep their lights and heat on in the dead of winter.

“The film is heartbreakingly wonderful. Every American needs to see it,” said Hillman Executive Director Alexandra Lescaze.

Read my Backstory interview with Joe Gantz about the making of American Winter.

[Photo courtesy of American Winter.]