I’m back! And here’s a roundup of some of the news that broke while I was away…

FOCUS ON THE (WORKING) FAMILY: President-Elect Obama announced that VP-Elect Joe Biden will be heading up a White House Task Force on Working Families:

The Vice President-elect said: “Our charge is to look at existing and future policies across the board and use a yard stick to measure how they are impacting the working and middle-class families: Is the number of these families growing? Are they prospering? President-elect Obama and I know the economic health of working families has eroded, and we intend to turn that around.”

The Vice President-elect and members of the task force will work with a wide array of federal agencies that have responsibility for key issues facing middle class and working families, and expedite administrative reforms, propose Executive orders, and develop legislative and policy proposals that can be of special importance to working families.

… which is great news, but I doubt you needed me to tell you that.

EXTREME MAKEOVER: The Wall Street Journal reported that Wal-Mart plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to settle 63 lawsuits from former employees:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. agreed Tuesday to pay up to $640 million to settle 63 suits alleging it routinely underpaid employees around the country, ending years of embarrassing legal battles over its treatment of workers…

If approved, the settlements would close the majority of the long-running cases Wal-Mart faces on allegations that it did not provide its workers with proper rest and meal breaks, violating state laws. The company disclosed in a regulatory filing earlier this year that it had 76 such cases; resolving 63 in one fell swoop would leave just 12 remaining cases. Wal-Mart settled a case in Minnesota earlier this month.

This strategy shift could mark the start of a charm offensive from the company to convince Congress that it’s changed its anti-worker ways.

RESTARTING THE ECONOMY: The New York Times had a great editorial explaining why the Employee Free Choice Act is so important:

The first and biggest test of Mr. Obama’s commitment to labor, and to Ms. Solis, will be his decision on whether or not to push the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009. Corporate America is determined to derail the bill, which would make it easier than it has been for workers to form unions by requiring that employers recognize a union if a majority of employees at a workplace sign cards indicating they wish to organize…

The measure is vital legislation and should not be postponed. Even modest increases in the share of the unionized labor force push wages upward, because nonunion workplaces must keep up with unionized ones that collectively bargain for increases. By giving employees a bigger say in compensation issues, unions also help to establish corporate norms, the absence of which has contributed to unjustifiable disparities between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.

The argument against unions — that they unduly burden employers with unreasonable demands — is one that corporate America makes in good times and bad, so the recession by itself is not an excuse to avoid pushing the bill next year. The real issue is whether enhanced unionizing would worsen the recession, and there is no evidence that it would.

There is a strong argument that the slack labor market of a recession actually makes unions all the more important. Without a united front, workers will have even less bargaining power in the recession than they had during the growth years of this decade, when they largely failed to get raises even as productivity and profits soared. If pay continues to lag, it will only prolong the downturn by inhibiting spending.

As they say, read the whole thing.

“THE BLAST COULD BE HEARD THROUGHOUT THE CITY”: Maricopa, Arizona is rocked by a combustible dust explosion at a grain silo that left three workers severely burned:

Fire Division Chief Mark Boys said welders were working on a tower near a grain elevator when hot metal apparently hit a device used to scoop grain out of the elevator, igniting corn dust and causing an explosion. A second, much larger explosion occurred moments later when more corn dust ignited, sending smoke and dust high into the air above the city of 37,000. The blast could be heard throughout the city, police said.

Three workers who were offloading corn onto a silo pit suffered first- and second-degree burns to mostly their faces and arms. Two of the men, ages 34 and 47, have been Arizona Grain employees for about a year. The third man was a truck driver, officials said.

The three were airlifted to the Arizona Burn Center at Maricopa Medical Center, where one man was in critical condition Monday afternoon while the other two were in good condition, Boys said.

Boys said the men were lucky to survive the explosion, which was so intense it lifted a semitruck carrying 80,000 pounds of grain.

“The force was just tremendous,” Boys said.

Another fire official called it “a miracle” the three workers weren’t killed instantly by the force of the blast.

We’ve been following the combustible dust issue for some time now; hopefully the Obama Labor Department will make worker safety a higher priority than the Bush Labor Department has. I don’t want to have to write any more stories about workers being killed or injured by combustible dust.