A safe job is a fundamental workers' right. It doesn't matter whether you work in a coal mine, a classroom, a construction site, a hospital or a garment factory in Bangladesh or China, every worker should be able to go to their job and return home safely at the end of the day. 

Sixteen years ago, federal workplace safety officials began developing a rule to control and limit workers’ exposure to silica dust. Some 2 million workers are exposed to this deadly dust each year and, according to public health experts, more than 7,000 workers develop silicosis and 200 die each year as a result of this disabling lung disease.

Today, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) finally issued a proposed rule. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the new rule was welcome but called the proposed standard “long overdue” and noted that the rule is still only a proposal.

Retail giant Walmart reached an agreement with the Labor Department to make improvements at nearly 4,700 Walmart and Sam's Club locations after an Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspection at a Rochester, N.Y., store in 2011 found numerous safety violations, USA Today reports. The company also will pay $190,000 in fines. Similar violations were found between 2008 and 2010 at stores in nine states.

AFL-CIO Health and Safety Director Peg Seminario told a Senate committee on Thursday that the current system for developing and issuing worker and workplace safety rules is:

A broken and dysfunctional system, which is failing to protect workers and costing workers’ lives.

President Obama today ordered federal agencies to develop new rules to address the handling and storage of industrial chemicals such as the ammonia nitrate fertilizer that caught fire and exploded in West, Texas, killing 15 and leveling large portions of the town in April. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the executive order was:

Urgently needed to improve chemical safety and security throughout the country...and provides the direction and road map to address chemical hazards.

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.  

For the second time in the past few days, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has launched an investigation into a chemical plant explosion in Louisiana. On Thursday, a plant in Geismar, La., exploded, killing one person and injuring 73. On Friday, a blast in Donaldsonville, La., killed one person and injured seven. The plant that exploded on Thursday hadn't been inspected by OSHA in 20 years. It is not yet known when the last inspection was done at the Donaldsonville plant.

According to an analysis by Think Progress, the Geismar, La., petrochemical plant that exploded on Thursday has not been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since 1993. The blast at the Williams Companies Inc.'s olefins plant killed one person and injured 73. 

Update: After a second factory explosion in Louisiana Friday evening, OSHA has announced it will investigate the cause of the blast that killed one person and injured seven. More details can be found on the Washington Post. 

Today, 150 people will likely be killed on the job or die from job-related illnesses and disease. That deadly toll will continue tomorrow and the next day and the next until the nation “renews the commitment to protect workers from injury, disease and death,” and makes it a high priority, says the 2013 edition of the AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.