Fear Is Why Workers in Red States Vote Against Their Economic Self-Interest

[Tom Joad]

A job scared workforce is an employers wet dream.

This is why we need a massive WPA like Federal Jobs Program. To give people somewhere else to go so that when their employers tell them to eat shit they can reply "Take this job and shove it"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...b_4608891.html

Last week's massive spill of the toxic chemical MCHM into West Virginia's Elk River illustrates another benefit to the business class of high unemployment, economic insecurity, and a safety-net shot through with holes. Not only are employees eager to accept whatever job they can get. They are also also unwilling to demand healthy and safe environments.

The spill was the region's third major chemical accident in five years, coming after two investigations by the federal Chemical Safety Board in the Kanawha Valley, also known as "Chemical Valley," and repeated recommendations from federal regulators and environmental advocates that the state embrace tougher rules to better safeguard chemicals.

No action was ever taken. State and local officials turned a deaf ear. The storage tank that leaked, owned by Freedom Industries, hadn't been inspected for decades.

But nobody complained.

Not even now, with the toxins moving down river toward Cincinnati, can the residents of Charleston and the surrounding area be sure their drinking water is safe -- partly because the government's calculation for safe levels is based on a single study by the manufacturer of the toxic chemical, which was never published, and partly because the West Virginia American Water Company, which supplies the drinking water, is a for-profit corporation that may not want to highlight any lingering danger.

So why wasn't more done to prevent this, and why isn't there more of any outcry even now?

The answer isn't hard to find. As Maya Nye, president of People Concerned About Chemical Safety, a citizen's group formed after a 2008 explosion and fire killed workers at West Virginia's Bayer CropScience plant in the state, explained to the New York Times: "We are so desperate for jobs in West Virginia we don't want to do anything that pushes industry out."

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