Help for Injured Workers
“Work at Your Own Risk” (April 14, 2011) exposed how inadequate the workers’ compensation system is. Patrice Woeppel’s book, Depraved Indifference, is excellent. We are very fortunate in Western Massachusetts to have an advocacy organization for injured workers. The Alliance for Injured Workers is part of the Western Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit organization.
We have an Injured Workers’ Hotline (413-731-0760) and will meet with injured workers to discuss problems they are facing. We will accompany injured workers to court or medical appointments if they don’t want to face these stressful situations alone. We publish a book called Hurt on the Job: A Guide to the Massachusetts Workers’ Compensation System and have donated copies to many libraries. This book includes a section on federal workers compensation.
In addition to helping injured workers, we educate healthy workers (including refugees just entering the country) about their rights before they are injured. Your article mentions that, aside from an initial visit with the company doctor, workers in Massachusetts have the right to choose their own doctor. Many people are unaware of this and go to the company doctor because they think they must.
Injured workers are invited to join us for one of three area workers’ Memorial Day events: 10 a.m., April 30, at Veterans Park in Pittsfield; noon, April 28, Northampton City Hall; and 1 p.m., April 29, at the Teamsters Hall, Local 404, 115 Progress Avenue, Springfield.
Nancy Ann Foley
Senior Program Director
Western MassCOSH
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Wake Up, AFL-CIO
It is about time that the AFL-CIO woke up (see “Mouthpieces for Big Business,” Letters, April 14, 2011). But it may be just a tussle in their long sleep.
For instance, what did the AFL-CIO do about the exportation of jobs and outsourcing? They told people to vote Democrat while both major parties de-industrialized the United States. Kind of stupid for a union.
But they are right: the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation does represent business. They see anything that benefits labor as anti-business. They would turn back the clock to the society portrayed in a Charles Dickens novel.
Robert Underwood
Online comment
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Nukes Related to Defense?
Almost everyone who hopes that Vermont Yankee will shut down in 2012, while understanding that the NRC, in spite of its blather, couldn’t care less about our safety, still has a hard time grasping such an utter lack of humanity.
Going into high schools for years, countering the military, has made me especially conscious of the sneaky and dangerous connection between nuclear power and the military. It involves so-called “depleted” uranium produced during the enrichment process and plutonium from both highly enriched uranium and spent fuel, with the most plutonium coming from what is called MOX, or the waste that comes from reprocessing.
Thus, in spite the looming tragedy in Japan, we still have another reason why our government and the NRC seem determined to extend the lives of our old wobbly reactors, endangering our lives and filling our children’s world with the most toxic waste known to man.
In March 2005, in a speech, NRC Commissioner Jaczko told us: “The mission of the NRC is to license and regulate the nation’s civilian use of by-products, sources and special nuclear materials; to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety; to promote the common defense and security, and protect the environment.”
Think about those words: “promote the common defense and security.” To me they speak of DU and bombs and I feel afraid.
Jane Newton
So. Londonderry, Vt.
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God Leaves Jones in Charge
This letter is in response to the deadly protest in Mazar-i- Sharif, Afghanistan which appears to be as a result of the antics of Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla.
Mr. Jones, when did God die and leave you in charge? The name of your self-proclaimed religious organization is now the poster for hypocrisy. How about changing the name to Hawk World Outreach Center? Because that is exactly what you intended; to aggravate a group of people who are already seething with anger at their oppression.
You, sir, are what is wrong with religion today; do as I say, not as I do. What would Jesus do? Or didn’t you even consider how Christianity came about?
As for the murderers in Mazar-i- Sharif, how dare you take it upon yourselves to defend your “sacred” religious beliefs by killing innocent people who meant you no harm and were there voluntarily? Perhaps it was the Christian belief in charity that motivated them to serve. Now you have taken them away from us and discouraged others from serving the needs of the Afghan people in spite of the differences in faith. What would Muhammad do? Or didn’t you even consider this as well?
The inciting of hate and the reactionary killing must stop before it is too late and the world descends into more chaos and confusion on the way to unraveling completely. Both Jones and the murderers need to request some sort of forgiveness by extending whatever they can to the families of the survivors. Follow your true religious precepts; don’t use them for your own self-aggrandizement.
Joe Bialek
Cleveland, Ohio
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Clarification: In response to our recent story on the Nash Dinosaur Site and Rock Shop (“Layers Beneath Dinosaurland,” April 7, 2011), a number of Granby readers contacted us to let us know the track site was located in their town and not South Hadley, as had been reported. While, geographically speaking, this is true, both Nash and the U.S. Post Office identify the shop’s address as being in South Hadley. When interviewed on this point, rock shop owner Kornell Nash explained that using the South Hadley address made his attraction easier for tourists to find.
