Getting Screwed Without Protection

 

Despite appearances, this post is not about teens who don't use condoms. It's about, who else, BP: they are refusing to let clean-up workers wear respirators while they work, subjecting them to toxic fumes, sending some to the hospital with "nausea, chest pains, and headaches." (Adam Green of BoldProgressives, who emailed me about it, obviously likes the Oxford comma.) Apparently, BP thinks the appearance on TV of respirators on the clean-up crew will generate worse publicity than the workers' illness.

It is our task to make BP pay for that deeply stupid decision. "Risk your health or lose your job" is a choice no worker should be forced to make.

In response to BP's folly, all kinds of people, from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of Progressive Change Campaign Committee to Keith Olbermann to dozens of members of Congress to labor leaders to teachers to preachers to you-name-it have mobilized a publicity effort under the name BP Makes Me Sick in hopes of pressuring BP through bad PR to end this awful practice. Yesterday when I signed, there were about 25,000+ signatures; this morning, there are 50,000+. Please add your name to the petition.