This week, the Chemical Safety Board, the main agency tasked with investigating and creating recommendations to prevent accidents are chemicals, said that law enforcement was hindering its ability to investigate the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion. From the Dallas Morning News:
Earlier this week, CSB went public with its complaints that law enforcement agencies in West had removed evidence and altered the scene during their criminal probe. CSB wrote in a congressional letter that its staff was unable to independently collect physical evidence or conduct testing — escalating a jurisdictional battle that resonated back in Washington.
… Officials for the State Fire Marshal’s Office and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives denied this week that they froze out CSB, saying they “attempted to fully cooperate.”
A new investigation by the Center for Public Integrity shows that the chemical industry is dramatically underreporting accidents. From the Center for Public Integrity and NPR:
[A June 2012 petrochemical leak at an Exxon complex] in Baton Rouge is one thread of a larger story about the often toxic, sometimes hidden releases emanating from oil refineries, chemical plants and other industrial facilities along the chemical corridor of Louisiana and Texas. Those unplanned emissions — known in regulatory parlance as “upsets” — are occurring more often than industry admits or government knows, according to more than 50 interviews with regulators, activists, plant representatives, workers and residents, and an analysis of tens of thousands of records by the Center for Public Integrity.
For many communities, these upsets have evolved into an invisible menace: They disrupt lives, yet offenders are rarely punished. In Texas, where activists have clamored for relief, state officials say enforcement efforts helped reduce incidents by 6 percent in the most recent year of reporting; Louisiana officials cite a 41 percent decrease since 2008.
Yet those numbers tell only part of the story. The mass of pollution emitted in Texas, the nation’s refinery hub, hit a five-year peak in 2011, the center found — so even as the number of reported events dipped, the amount of pollution increased. And, experts say upset releases are consistently underreported. For communities straddling industry fence lines, worry and fear remain in the air.
Palestinian workers employed in Israel are now being charged a “security fee.” From Haaretz:
The municipality of the West Bank settlement of Betar Ilit has begun to charge a special security fee from contractors that employ Palestinians in the city, but some of the contractors are passing on the costs to the workers themselves.
For years the municipality has been charging contractors a fee to employ Palestinians, arguing that it needs to beef-up security due to concerns that the workers would engage in terrorist activity or commit other crimes. In December, after employers complained that these fees were illegal, the local council passed a bylaw imposing a NIS 314 monthly fee for each laborer. Some of the contractors said that they would pass at least part of these costs onto the workers. The owner of a large supermarket chain told his workers that he would deduct a third of the fee from their wages.
Al Jazeera reports that the thousands of foreign workers who staged an unprecedented strike in Dubai may now face deportation. From Al Jazeera via Portside:
Backed by security forces, bosses at Arabtec — a massive construction firm with interests across the oil-rich Gulf states — ended a strike on Monday, but the fallout continues as more workers are receiving deportation orders.
“Between 20-25 people just got the [deportation] letter now,” Ashraf, a scaffolding installer at Arabtec, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday after receiving a phone call from a co-worker. “When we got the news of the [first] deportations [on Monday] everyone came down shouting. When the police came, we just went back to our rooms. People were trying to be part of the group without coming to the front,” he said.
Unions and strikes are illegal in Dubai and across the Gulf and rather than demonstrating or holding placards, a few thousand workers simply stayed in their accommodations last weekend and didn’t show up for work. The strike ended after management refused to accept demands for increased wages from people earning about $200 a month to complete mega-projects in 40 degree Celsius heat.
Earlier this month in Washington state, the picket line formed in the water. From Labor Notes:
A flotilla of nine fishing boats — their passengers wielding picket signs instead of fishing poles — blocked the grain ship Mary H from docking in Kalama, Washington, May 7.
At the same time, a community picket onshore turned workers away from the grain terminal. The action by longshore workers and supporters was part of the escalating conflict between the region’s grain shippers and the West Coast longshore union, ILWU.
The Mary H was carrying grain loaded by scabs in nearby Vancouver, Washington, where members of ILWU Local 4 have been locked out by their employer, United Grain, since late February. Three days before the protest, a second company, Columbia Grain, had locked out Portland grain workers, members of ILWU Local 8.
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