Three months ago today in West, Texas, 30 tons of highly explosive ammonia nitrate—stored in wooden sheds without sprinkler systems and near other combustible material—caught fire, exploded and killed 14 people including 10 firefighters. The blast leveled the West Fertilizer Co., plant and demolished a good portion of the surrounding town.Yet ammonia nitrate is still regulated by the same “patchwork” of state and federal standards with “many holes."

Ammonia nitrate, used in manufacturing fertilizer, is a dangerous and highly combustible explosive, as shown by the April explosion that killed 14 people, including 10 firefighters, and leveled the West Fertilizer Co. plant in the town of West, Texas.

But the rules that govern its use and storage—30 tons of it were at West Fertilizer—fall under “a patchwork of U.S. safety standards and guidance—a patchwork that has many large holes,” Rafael Moure-Eraso, chair of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), told a Senate hearing Thursday.  

A little more than a day before the nation’s highway and transit projects would lose funding—threatening nearly 2 million jobs—and student loan interest rates were set to double, Congress acted.

The House (373-52) and Senate (74-19) this afternoon passed the two-year, $120 million Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012 that will protect more than 2 million jobs and expand a loan guarantee program that could create an additional 1 million jobs (mostly in the construction sector). The bill also keeps interest rates for college students on subsidized Stafford Loans at 3.4 percent. They were set to double on July 1 to 6.8 percent.

The Republican shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can still be resolved before Congress returns to work in September and all it would take, says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, is for Congress to:

Come back to Washington. Leave your vacations, just for a couple hours. Come back, Congress. Help your friends and neighbors get back to work.

Support continues to pour in for the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) proposed rule designed to ensure a fair process for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union. Congressional leaders and civil rights and faith groups have joined working people and workers’ rights advocates in voicing their support for Tuesday’s proposed election rule changes from the NLRB.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says that a new transportation and jobs infrastructure plan “will help revive manufacturing. It means jobs.”

The America Fast Forward initiative has bipartisan and labor/management support. At the Capitol Hill press conference announcing the new initiative today, Trumka joined U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Ariz.