labor department
GRITtv: The Politics of Being Transgender
Barack Obama made the first transgender political appointments that we know of recently -- Amanda Simpson, appointed last week as senior technical adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security in the Commerce Department and Dylan Orr, special assistant to Assistant Secretary of Labor Kathleen Martinez in the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the Department of Labor -- but even David Letterman couldn't resist making a crack at Simpson's expense. The "T" at the end of LGBT often seems like an afterthought, with transgender rights being excluded even when LGBT rights are approved. Today we talk to Julia Serano, author of "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity," Naomi Clark of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and blogger at Feministe, and filmmaker Jules Rosskam of Against a Trans Narrative, about being transgender in the U.S. and how far we still have to go.
Email this pageGRITtv: Slap on Wrist for Killing Workers?
Sixteen workers a day die from work-related injuries, according to this latest video from Brave New Films. Charles Jeffress, former Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, notes that there are hardly any consequences to employers for failing to comply with guidelines -- and with four million injuries on the job each year, it seems that employers have decided that it's easier to flout the law than to comply. The law is inadequate, Jeffress says. With a new and supposedly labor-friendly administration and a Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, who announced, "There's a new sheriff in town," upon her confirmation, perhaps we can do better than one OSHA inspector per 63,000 workers?
