Listen: AFL-CIO Wins CDC Study of Occupational Health Impact on Essential Workers; Triangle Factory Fire Remembered

New York, NY – Labor Press’s Stuck Nation Radio broadcast live from Washington D.C. this week, covering the American Federation of Government Employees annual legislative conference. The AFGE represents 700,000 of this nation’s federal civil servants who kept our nation running providing vital services amidst a pandemic,  an insurrection and a government shutdown. Whether it be at their jobs in our nation’s veterans hospitals, our airports or meatpacking plants as USDA inspectors during COVID, these service oriented people, put themselves and their families at risk to serve our nation. In fact, in way, way  too many cases they paid dearly for their commitment to us, to their communities and to our nation.  

Part I

On this edition of Stuck Nation Radio we speak with Rebecca Reindel, the AFL-CIO’s National Director of Occupational Safety & Health about how we can keep healthcare professionals, first responders and other essential workers safe on the job in the age of COVID. Reindel shares details on an under-reported major win for working people that the AFL-CIO secured with the passage of the federal budget. The initiative requires the Centers for Disease Control to study and issue a report on COVID deaths based on  the deceased’s occupational exposure and issue its results in six months. Such an analysis is essential to protect workers in the future and to better understand how infectious diseases impact essential workers and their communities.

Part II

Mary Ann Trasciatti, president of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and director of Hofstra University’s Labor Studies Program, talks about the significance of the March 25, 1911 fire for the America labor movement and how it has continued to be relevant as workers confronted the toxic fallout from the 9/11 WTC attack and clean-up, as well as the ongoing pandemic.  Trasciatti takes calls from listeners and discusses her new anthology out “Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Fire” co-edited with colleague EdvigeGiunta.