Labor Shows Increase in Deaths on the Job

There's been swift movement in Congress to gut regulatory measures for businesses and corporations throughout much of the United States as proponents of anti-regulatory measures site regulations as an impediment to job growth during the Recession. However, sometimes, as a new AFL-CIO report has found, many times regulations are there to protect the workers from abuses.

Every day in 2010, 13 workers were killed on the job and nearly 50,000 were killed by job-related diseases, an alarming uptick in totals from 2009. That's according to the AFL-CIO.

The largest U.S. federation of labor unions, AFL-CIO, released a report Wednesday that shows from 2009 to 2010, 3.1% more workers were killed on the job, totaling 4,690. The long-term trends are decreasing, but with the current state of the economy and so many Americans unemployed, analysts think the number of deaths would have been even higher.

The study lashes out at regulatory measures that have stalled in Congress, mostly from a cohesive Republican House that views regulations as impediments to job creation and growth. The AFL-CIO supports President Obama's initiatives to strengthen workers' laws, but cites an intractable Office of Management and Budget, the agency which oversees rulemaking as leaving new laws in "purgatory". "The job safety laws need to be strengthened," the report concludes. "The nation must renew the committment to protect workers from injury, disease and death and make this a high priority."

The report certainly does not seem without merit. In 2010, the U.S. witnessed 29 miners killed by an explosion in a Massey Energy mine, as well as 11 rig operators killed when the Deep Horizon oil rig exploded sparking the BP Gulf of Mexico spill.