Housekeepers at Hyatt Hotels will shine a spotlight tomorrow on what they say are unsafe and demeaning working conditions when they rally outside several Hyatt properties as part of International Women’s Day observances.

The United Steelworkers (USW) and the oil industry have reached a tentative three-year agreement covering 30,000 USW members at 168 production, refining, marketing, transportation, pipeline and petrochemical facilities nationwide, the union announced last night. The deal is subject to ratification by the membership.

When you’re working outside you certainly know when it’s hot. But do you know when it’s so hot that you need to start taking precautions to prevent heat related illnesses? Thousands of workers become ill from heat-related illnesses every year and in 2010, 30 workers died from heat stroke.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited 182 workplaces—two-thirds of them construction firms—in its year-old severe violator enforcement program (SVEP), according to BNA’s Daily Labor Report (DLR—subscription required).

How many times have we heard from big corporations and their political allies—usually well-financed by corporate campaign contributions—that the latest workplace safety, environmental or consumer protection regulation will kill jobs, ruin the economy and lead to the end of civilization as we know it?

In Michigan yesterday, workers not only honored those killed and injured on the job as part of  Workers Memorial Day ceremonies at the state Capitol in Lansing, they warned that plans to dismantle the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) and repeal the state’s workplace safety law would put workers at risk.

Today, in hundreds of ceremonies across the country, working families are honoring workers who died or were injured on the job in the past year. In a Workers Memorial Day proclamation, President Obama says the nation must:

recommit to keeping all workers safe and healthy [and] make sure the full force of the law is brought to bear in cases where workers are put in harm’s way.

Forty years after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act), “there is much more work to be done….The job safety laws must be strengthened,” finds the 2011 AFL-CIO annual job safety report “Death on the Job,” released this morning to commemorate Workers Memorial Day. (Click here for the full report.)

In hundreds of events around the nation on Workers Memorial Day, April 28, workers will gather together at worksites, city parks, houses of worship and local and state government offices to remember those who have lost their lives on the job and demand strong safety laws and tough enforcement of those laws.

As we approach Tuesday, April 5, the first anniversary of the deadly blast at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch (W.Va.) mine that killed 29 coal miners, the nation’s top mine safety official today called for tougher laws and bigger penalties for safety violators.