MSNBC reported this hour that two workers involved in the recovery effort of the BP oil disaster have died. Details are sketchy at this time; the network said that two were dead; one was a cleanup worker, one was a ship captain.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney took to the floor of the House of Representatives this morning to speak about the need to protect the health of cleanup workers responding to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Knowing OSHA’s poor track record at enforcing laws during times of crisis, like the 9/11 cleanup, Maloney saw the situation unfolding in the Gulf and spoke out about the need to protect the health of cleanup workers, as she put it, “before they lose it.” Watch the video.

Rachelle Honeycutt works at an oil refinery in Washington State. Sam Schaffer is a skilled sheet metal worker from West Virginia. Javier Almazan organizes workers in south Florida and Cathy Merkel is an registrar in Maryland. They’re all union members. And in a few days, all four will be graduates of one of the crown jewels of the labor movement: The National Labor College.

Corporate opponents of workers’ freedom to form unions repeatedly have shown they are not interested in the welfare of their employees or any of the pseudo-lofty ideals they cite while fighting the Employee Free Choice Act.

Now, they’ve made clear they will do anything—even destroy jobs, communities and harm the U.S. economy—to ensure that more American workers do not have a voice on the job.

Someone responded yesterday to an AFL-CIO blog in which we mentioned that just days before leaving office, Bush got a whole new set of nearly $600,000 china for the White House. The fellow who commented was rightly appalled.

I don’t know about the rest of you who are reading this, but I am just barely making it the way it is.