House Republicans have blocked efforts to maintain strong workplace health safety rules for workers at the nation’s nuclear weapons facilities. Republicans leaders rejected even a vote on an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that would have preserved the current standards.They are pushing an extreme proposal to deregulate worker safety and allow employer self–regulation and self-oversight.

Last October, the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, Calif., fired two sisters with 30 years of combined experience after they objected to the posting of demeaning pictures of housekeepers in bikinis on a company bulletin board. Yesterday, Hyatt workers, clergy, and local elected officials delivered nearly 100,000 petition signatures from around the world to the hotel’s general manager condemning the hotel’s dismissal of sisters Martha and Lorena Reyes and calling for their reinstatement with full back pay.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has told Hyatt Hotels what the hotel chain’s housekeepers have been telling it for years—“Hyatt Hurts.” OSHA issued a formal Hazard Alert letter telling Hyatt that its housekeepers face ergonomic risks every day on the job. The letter outlines steps Hyatt can take to reduce housekeeper injuries.

In hundreds of Workers Memorial Day ceremonies across the country, working families are honoring workers who have died or been hurt on the job and carrying on the fight for safe workplaces. (Click here to find an event near you.) David Michaels, director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), says: 

Making a living shouldn’t include dying.

Hans Petersen said goodbye to his roommate and left for work to install solar panels. Hans didn’t return from work that day. He died on the job when he stepped backward off an apartment building roof and fell 45 feet.

OHB’s California Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program created a four-minute “digital story” to explain the tragic events that led to Petersen’s fatal fall and what could have been done to prevent it.

Today in a Senate hearing room usually filled with sharp-suited lobbyists and other Capitol Hill insiders, more than two dozen family survivors of workers killed on the job took the front row seats. They stood and faced the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and held photographs for lawmakers to see--images of their fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters.

March 25 is the 101st anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City, which killed 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women. Many of them jumped to their deaths from the 10-story factory to escape the fire because they were locked inside. While the Triangle fire is a prominent part of labor history, not just for its tragedy but as the impetus for new labor laws and workplace safety reforms, there is no permanent memorial.

Want more proof what side most Republican lawmakers stand on when it comes to workplace safety? When it comes to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) budget, they seem to be saying that it’s more important to let employers voluntarily police themselves and enforce workplace safety standards than it is to give workers protection when they blow the whistle on unsafe practices.

Housekeepers at Hyatt Hotels shined a spotlight on what they say are unsafe and demeaning working conditions when they held rallies outside Hyatt properties—including this "Dirty Laundry Fashion Show" in Hawaii—as part of International Women’s Day observances. The video is fun.

While the Obama administration has worked closely with unions and other job safety advocates to overcome the eight years of neglect and inaction by the Bush administration on vital workplace safety issues, the AFL-CIO Executive Council says, “There still is much work to be done.” At its annual winter meeting in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., the council also condemned New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) Tier-6 pension proposal.