Senator Kay R. Hagan was named to the Senate Armed Services and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committees today.

From the Raleigh News & Observer
December 9, 2008

N.C. Labor Department has sloughed worker law to the side.

By The Charlotte Observer
September 16, 2008

The following statement was made by Barack Obama in Flint, Michigan on June 15, 2008.

It's great to be at Kettering - a university that is teaching the next generation of leaders, and training workers to have the skills they need to advance their own careers and communities.

For months, the state of our economy has dominated the headlines - and the news hasn't been good. The sub-prime lending debacle has sent the housing market into a tailspin, and caused a broader contraction in the credit markets. Over 360,000 jobs have been lost this year, with the unemployment rate registering the biggest one month jump since February 1986. Incomes have failed to keep pace with the rising costs of health insurance and college, and record oil and food prices have left families struggling just to keep up.

Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer

from the Charlotte Observer:

The Observer's recent interview with Republican N.C. Labor Secretary Cherie Berry sounded like a satire on how public officials work.

Staff writer Ames Alexander asked her whether she planned to do anything in response to the Observer's series describing workplace safety violations at poultry processing plants run by House of Raeford Farms, a big N.C. company.

Her answer: No.

Asked how her department is doing in keeping workers safe in such dangerous jobs as poultry processing, she replied:

"Our department has the best safety record and fatality record we've had in many, many years. Our numbers have been on a downward trend. And that's what our work is targeted toward -- keeping those numbers going down."

What about companies that aren't reporting workplace injuries? Her response:

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writers

The fate of $600-$1,200 rebate checks for more than 100 million Americans is in limbo after Senate Republicans blocked a bid by Democrats to add $44 billion in help for the elderly, disabled veterans, the unemployed and businesses to the House-passed economic aid package.

GOP senators banded together Wednesday to thwart the $205 billion plan, leaving Democrats with a difficult choice either to quickly accept a House bill they have said is inadequate or risk being blamed for delaying a measure designed as a swift shot in the arm for the lagging economy.

The tally was 58-41 to end debate on the Senate measure, just short of the 60 votes Democrats would have needed to scale procedural hurdles and move the bill to a final vote. In a suspenseful showdown vote that capped days of partisan infighting and procedural jockeying, eight Republicans — four of them up for re-election this year — joined Democrats to back the plan, bucking GOP leaders and President Bush, who objected to the costly add-ons.