{"id":209109,"date":"2026-04-28T18:56:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/dire-news-today-april-28-on-workers-memorial-day-peoples-world\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T18:56:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:56:45","slug":"dire-news-today-april-28-on-workers-memorial-day-peoples-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/dire-news-today-april-28-on-workers-memorial-day-peoples-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Dire news today, April 28, on Workers Memorial Day – People's World"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON\u2014The Donald Trump regime has spent the first years-plus of his second presidential term trashing decades of progress in protecting workers\u2019 safety and health on the job, the AFL-CIO says.<\/span>
But a close reading of the federation\u2019s 35<\/span>th<\/span> annual report of <\/span>Death On The Job: A Toll Of Neglect, <\/span><\/i>and especially its state-by-state figures, shows the problem is far deeper than one anti-worker government and the wreckage it\u2019s producing at the 55-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).<\/span>
With Wyoming in the lead\u2014again–the states where workers are most likely to die on the job are all heavily dependent on fossil fuel firms and facilities: Coal mines, oil derricks, natural gas wells, and offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cTrump\u2019s Department of Labor is making it easier every day for billionaire CEOs and corporations to dodge their obligations to workers, shifting agencies from enforcing the law and holding employers accountable to promoting \u2018self-audit\u2019 programs for employers,\u201d federation President Liz Shuler said.<\/span>
\u201cEvery worker should be able to go home safe and healthy at the end of their shift, but 55 years after the founding of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that fundamental right is in danger,\u201d Shuler warned.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cFrom the dismantling of critical federal agencies and laws to the expansion of unregulated, untested artificial intelligence technology, the protections workers fought and died for are under serious threat.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
Trump \u201cstopped conducting Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) impact inspections, proposed to eliminate critical research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, attempted to remove dozens of OSHA and MSHA standards from the books, and moved to dismantle the regulatory process,\u201d the federation said in a statement.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cMore than five decades after a Republican,\u201d Richard Nixon, \u201csigned the landmark Occupational Safety and Health Act into law, we urge all members of Congress\u2014from both sides of the aisle\u2014to join us in this fight,\u201d\u00a0Shuler, an Electrical Worker, concluded.<\/span>
\u201cIt is a disgrace that in 2026, being Black, Latino, or an immigrant can still be a death sentence on the jobsite,\u201d added AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond, a Steelworker. <\/span>Death On The Job <\/span><\/i>\u201cmakes it terrifyingly clear that the Trump administration\u2019s anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion, mass deportation agenda will only make this crisis worse.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cWhen workers are afraid that reporting threats to their safety could result in their work permits being revoked and their families being ripped apart, and when employers fear reporting workplace data will hurt their bottom line, we are all less safe: Workers of color and white workers, immigrant workers and U.S.-born workers.\u00a0<\/span>
\u201cWe must fight the Trump administration\u2019s attacks on communities of color like our fellow workers\u2019 <\/span>lives are on the line\u2014because they are.\u201d<\/span>
The report did not cover, except by implication in Shuler\u2019s statement, how corporate chieftains, especially from fossil fuel industries, influence job safety and health enforcement, or lack of it. Trump\u2019s infamous dinner with fossil fuel barons at his Mar-a-Lago estate during the 2024 campaign symbolizes that clout. And the corporate class has always hated OSHA, with a vengeance.<\/span>
Trump promised the executives complete deregulation, plus more tax cuts for the rich, if they would contribute a billion dollars to his presidential drive. His so-called \u201cBig Beautiful Bill\u201d delivered on the tax cuts–while decimating the fossil fuel firms\u2019 competition in wind and solar power.<\/span>
The federation issued the report a day in advance of Workers Memorial Day, April 28. Using the latest available federal figures for calendar 2024, it reports 5,070 workers died on the job that year, and the national death rate was 3.3\/100,000 workers.\u00a0<\/span>
But the data, along with data for on-the-job injuries and injury rates–which are also in the report–are underestimates. The federal figures only count immediate deaths on the job, not those related to toxic exposures retired workers contracted over their working lives, such as coal miners dying of black lung disease years after they retired. Those deaths totaled 135,000 in 2024, the report calculates.<\/span>
Independent studies in past years, comparing workers\u2019 comp data, state by state, and state reports of job-related deaths, showed undercounts in the federal figures. And the Occupational Safety and Health Act does not cover 7.9 million state and local government workers, including 1.8 million in Texas and 946,000 in Florida, the two most populous right-wing Republican-run states.\u00a0<\/span>
The federal figures also omit deaths from the coronavirus, even though that plague, during Trump\u2019s first term, saw significant occupational exposure via infected workers forced to toil on the job and exposing colleagues and customers. When Democratic President Joe Biden\u2019s OSHA tried to use the law\u2019s general duty clause to regulate those exposures, the Supreme Court\u2014at corporate behest\u2014beat him.<\/span>
Open-pit strip coal mining and forests of oil derricks signify the predominance of fossil fuel industries in Wyoming, which had a death rate of 13.9\/100,000 workers in 2024. Wyoming has finished with the highest death rate in the five years the report covers. Its 2024 death rate was an improvement over 2023 (16\/100,000). The 2024 national death rate for oil and gas workers was 13.8\/100,000.<\/span>
Fossil fuel-producing states dominate the bottom 10 on the 2024 death rate list. Behind Wyoming are Mississippi (49<\/span>th<\/span>, 8 deaths\/100,000 workers), Alaska (48<\/span>th<\/span>, 7.1\/100,000 workers), North Dakota (47<\/span>th<\/span>, 6.8\/100,000), Arkansas (46<\/span>th<\/span>, 6.2\/100,000), Montana, West Virginia and South Dakota (tied at 43<\/span>rd<\/span>, 5.8\/100,000), Iowa (42<\/span>nd<\/span>, 5.2\/100,000) and Louisiana and Tennessee (tied for 40<\/span>th<\/span>, 5.1\/100,000).<\/span>
Meanwhile, the Trump regime is ripping away workers’ job safety and health protections and cutting OSHA\u2019s budget and personnel. There are now only five federal and\/or state job safety and health inspectors per million workers, according to <\/span>Death On The Job<\/span><\/i> reports. That\u2019s the lowest level in 45 years, and it would take 181 years for OSHA to visit all workplaces in the U.S.<\/span>
And that doesn\u2019t take into account Trump\u2019s proposed budget for the fiscal year starting October 1. He\u2019d\u00a0<\/span>cut OSHA alone by $50 million, to $582 million, and job safety, health, and workplace wage and\u00a0<\/span>hour enforcement overall by $234 million.<\/span>
The report closes with many recommendations for Congress and some for worker safety and health agencies, including OSHA, MSHA, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which handles toxic chemical exposures, or is supposed to do so. Recommendations include:<\/span>
Most of EPA\u2019s scientists have been sidelined or let go, and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, which performs research on job safety and health hazards, was decimated by multibillionaire Elon Musk\u2019s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. A federal court order revived it.\u00a0<\/span>
There are also legislative proposals, by congressional Democrats, to increase OSHA\u2019s notoriously low fines. The report shows California\u2019s state OSHA program levied the highest average penalty, $9,281, for \u201cserious\u201d OSHA violations in fiscal 2025, which ended Sept. 30, 2025. Maryland had the lowest average, $987. Fines for \u201cwillful\u201d violators and fines levied on repeat violators are higher.<\/span> \u00a0<\/span>
We hope you appreciated this article. At\u00a0People\u2019s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading\u00a0People\u2019s World\u00a0and the stories we bring you, please\u00a0support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today<\/a>. Thank you!<\/em>
Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People’s World<\/i>. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.
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WASHINGTON\u2014The Donald Trump regime has spent the first years-plus of his second presidential term trashing decades of progress in protecting workers\u2019 safety and health on the job, the AFL-CIO says.But a close reading of the federation\u2019s 35th annual report of Death On The Job: A Toll Of Neglect, and especially its state-by-state figures, shows the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-209109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}