When I was pregnant with my daughter many years ago, I was working for the worse boss I had ever had. He was vindictive, passive aggressive, and afraid of his own shadow — all the key characteristics you don’t want in a boss.

I loved what I was doing, but this guy made my life hell. Many nights were lost to bitching about this manager and at some point my husband and I decided I needed to make a change.

My ultimate goal had always been to write a book or two, and try my hand at freelancing and becoming my own boss, but it was always not the right time to take the plunge. Well, we decided to save my whole paycheck for the nine months I was pregnant and then consider whether I could actually start life as a freelancer once my daughter was born. The jerky boss was a great motivator for finally pushing my fears aside.

We ended up saving enough money that after my six-week maternity leave I made the happy walk into my boss’ office.

I told him I was not coming back to my job because I wanted to become a freelancer and take time to write my first book.

His response: “oh, I know, once women become moms the pull of the child is just too strong.”

I tried to reiterate that I was quitting to embark on a new career path for myself, but he kept doing the wink and nod, as if I was just kidding about my new direction.

I sat there thinking, should I tell this guy — “you’re a prick. That’s why I’m out of here bozo”?

But I restrained myself, opting to do the right thing for the sake of my future in journalism and for the sake of our civil society.

Women do not leave a job they love, that pays them a good wage and fulfills them just because the call of motherhood is tugging at them. I don’t care what Dr. Laura says.

They leave because they don’t like their job, or because their bosses suck, or because the opportunities suck, or because the pay sucks.

The latter, it turns out, is one of the biggest reasons, according to a new study to be released today.

The New York Times broke the story this morning about a Congressional study and research by economists that shows women are leaving the workplace in higher numbers because of the tough economy and it’s not for the reasons everyone has assumed.

Indeed, for the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.

When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.

It’s the money stupid.

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.

“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”

I have long talked about how a good job, with bosses who are understanding of family issues, with opportunities for advancement, and that pays a fair wage, are the kinds of jobs most people don’t just check out of. You don’t need an HR experts to explain why there is low turnover in gigs like this.

Women are done a disservice if we all just assume they are leaving the workplace because they have a child. It’s clearly not the case for most women. Saying it diminishes the importance of changing the major negatives in today’s workplace — a growing disparity in pay among the rank and file and top executives, and the inflexibility when it comes to work-life balance.

And the occasional pricky boss of course.

“I’m fighting for my life here,” said William Parker a 74 year old, former General Motors employee.

Yesterday, GM pulled the rug out from under him when the auto giant announced it would eliminate health benefits for retired, salaried workers over 65.

I’m not kidding folks. Just like that, he lost his GM health care benefits that he has relied on. It’s horrible timing because Parker has cancer and a new cancer drug he’s been taking will now cost him $2,700 a month, not the $50 he was paying thanks to his GM coverage, according to an article in the New York Times today.

GM’s move is part of an overall cost cutting effort to help the financially troubled automaker, and it’s the latest in the type of worker screwing that’s been going on in this country.

“Yes we promised you health benefits Mr. Parker,” said the company. “Sike! We had our fingers crossed.”

That’s really the bottom line. There are no guarantees you’ll have health benefits, a pension. It’s all just a house of cards ready to collapse.

Health care coverage has been the target of many companies in the United States. Many younger workers are lucky if they get bare-bones plans, and older workers who are retired and those who are struggling with illnesses are at risk of losing it altogether.

There is Medicare of course, but according to Fidelity Investments, even with that coverage, the out of pocket costs for a 65 year old couple can top $200,000.

So, the way I see it, we’re dooming this population of hard workers to a life of money woes in their supposed Golden Years.

That is, of course, the workers who were not members of the corner office. Those top dogs are golden when it comes to their health upon retirement thanks to lucrative packages they’ve secured for themselves, on top of the obscene pay these executives have pocketed.

I’m assuming GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner will hold on to his benefits when he heads for the rocking chair.

It seemed like things were getting better Rick. After a pay cut, the executive got a 33 percent pay hike this year for a grand total of $2.2 million a year, not including benefits.

I guess it wasn’t rosy for every one, especially not for people like Parker:

“G.M was good to me and I hate to be bitter. But I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.”

Indeed, this nation has to figure out what it’s going to do.

Sometimes I’m amazed and full of pride at how far this country has come when it comes to equality among workers. But sometimes I’m anything but proud.

There was a lot of hoopla over Michelle Obama’s comments recently about American pride.

“People in this country are ready for change and hungry for a different kind of politics and … for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”

Many people were outraged that she would say such a thing, that she hasn’t been proud all along. But those people apparently have no clue about the prejudice that still permeates throughout our society.

Today, The American Medical Association, the largest and most respected physicians’ group in the nation, is issuing an apology to African American doctors throughout the country because of decades of discrimination against them.

Today they are doing that. This is 2008 folks, not 1958.

The Washington Post writes that the AMA is “expressing regret for a litany of transgressions, including barring black physicians from its ranks for decades and remaining silent during battles on landmark legislation to end racial discrimination.”

It’s a great thing that such an organization is expressing remorse, but it should also be a wake up call to all of us that we still have a long way to go when it comes to equality in this country.

Discrimination against African Americans in the workplace is actually on the rise. If well-educated, well-off black doctors can’t get a level playing field, what hope do rank and file minority workers have?

I wrote about a rise in workplace racism for MSNBC.com a few months back:

Many of us are marveling at how seemingly far our society has come given a man with an African American heritage is being considered a serious candidate for president. But in the workplace, attitudes toward many black workers are anything but inspiring.

Racial harassment is up to record levels in offices and factories across the country, and we’re not talking just the use of the “N” word. Racist graffiti, Klu Klux Klan propaganda and even physical threats including the display of hangman’s nooses are included among the intimidation tools.

“It is shocking that such egregious and unlawful conduct toward African American employees is still occurring, even increasing, in the 21st century workplace, more than 40 years after enactment of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964,” says David Grinberg, spokesman for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also known as the EEOC.

It’s hard to stand up and claim to be prideful when you hear this. It’s a disgrace that in this day and age we’re still dealing with such ignorance.

We should always question injustices, just as the AMA’s past president did in a publication for the group. Ronald Davis wrote that many of the organization’s questionable actions reflected the “social mores and racial discrimination” that existed for much of U.S. history. But, he added, that should not excuse them.

“The medical profession, which is based on a boundless respect for human life, had an obligation to lead society away from disrespect of so many lives,” Davis wrote. “The AMA failed to do so and has apologized for that failure.”

Failure is a fact of human life. But we shouldn’t allow failure to go unchecked and pretend everything is great when it’s not.

So don’t be surprised if someone says they are finally proud of America when it seems, as a nation, we’re trying to right the wrongs of the past.

Everyone is celebrating now that Congress passed a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits, on top of the 26 weeks already provided.

But many of you shouldn’t be breaking out the champagne.

If you get laid off tomorrow will you get an unemployment check?

Maybe not.

Have you checked your state lately to find out how long you’re supposed to be working for an employer before you’re eligible for jobless benefits?

In many states, you have to be working full time for a company for a few years and make a certain threshold income before you qualify.

“Most people who lose their jobs these days don’t qualify for any unemployment at all,” said Robert Reich, the former U.S. Labor Secretary under Clinton, on the Marketplace Morning Report this morning. Here’s an audio of the piece:

The economic world has changed a lot since the federal government encouraged states to adopt unemployment insurance in 1935, but no one seemed to notice.

The unemployment system made sense decades ago, Reich says, when people were in the same full-time job for years and one breadwinner could sustain a whole family.

But today, he adds, when people are going from job to job, and a growing number of individuals have several part time jobs or are contractors, a gigantic economic black hole is left for a huge number of working Americans to fall into.

“It’s a disgrace that most Americans that loose their jobs don’t qualify,” Reich maintains. “Congress should expand coverage in these perilous times.”

Expanding the benefits by 13 weeks was a good thing. I’m not knocking it. But it will do little to help American workers if they can’t even qualify for one day.

It seems almost everyone has a “sky-is-falling” attitude toward the economy these days.

You know we’re in trouble when long-time NPR commentator Daniel Schorr starts singing depression era songs.

“I have found myself reflecting on the recession, no depression, that I experienced in my youth,” said 92-year-old Schorr in his analysis yesterday of our present economy. After describing the horrific economic tragedy of the Depression, he then was asked by Liane Hansen, the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition, about the music of the era. He said there was one song he remembered, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.”

It’s a haunting song about the Great Depression written by Yip Harburg.

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

Here’s a more updated version by George Michael I love:

While it was a great radio moment, hearing Schorr sing the old tune a cappella, I couldn’t help but think these type of comparisons are hurting all of us.

I know, Starbucks is closing 600 stores and with that 12,000 jobs will be lost. And the U.S. auto industry is in a tail spin. Not to mention banking and the brokerage industry. Thousands of jobs among hourly workers, and even among the mansion set have been hacked and slashed.

But are we really talking economic collapse? There’s been so much shrill in the media lately and among politicians that it got me wondering if we really should be making any analogies to the Depression.

Since I didn’t live through that time I figured I had to ask a historian if our present economic state mirrors the Depression, or have we all lost our minds?

“I’d be happy to offer my two cents though you ask quite the large question,” says Peter Cole, an associate professor and labor historian from Western Illinois University.

“My short answer is no, we are nowhere near the economic conditions of the Great Depression, fortunately,” he maintains.

Phew!

“While foreclosures are at the level that they were then, seeing that unemployment is SO much lower that there’s really no comparison,” he adds.

You all might be wondering why I’m making such a big deal out of this. Why I care that some people equate our present situation to something much more dire.

The reason is simple, if we think the sky is falling we may be apt to make rash career decisions right now. We may be convinced to accept less pay or benefits because everything is falling apart, and oh, aren’t we lucky that an employer has offered us a job at all.

This is never a good way to navigate through your work life, with a sense of panic.

Look, it is bad out there right now. We’re all struggling with higher prices and many of our jobs could be up on the chopping block, but we have to resist this crowd mentality of fear. There are still jobs to be had and many companies are stilling turning in profits.

So, take a deep breath and concentrate, with a level head, on your own situation and your own job opportunities.

Clearly, there are economic problems, but our worries may be feeding the flames.

Here are some more of Cole’s insights:

The tremendous anxiousness of most US workers and the powerlessness most feel, the ever-dwindling number of folks with employer-based health and retirement benefits, the very real fear that globalization will result in more jobs lost (not just in manufacturing), the seemingly-endless decline of US organized labor (essential, I believe, for a healthy society and economy with a large middle class) all suggest real issues that dramatically affect the lives of us workers as well as the entire economy. Just look at the stats on number of strikes today compared to previous decades; SO much lower. That, too, is a result of not just Bush’s anti-worker National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor but longer trends of corporations cavalierly ignoring US labor law because they know no enforcement is happening.

I wouldn’t say that the problems we are facing our trivial, not by a long shot, but I wouldn’t say that they have risen (or, perhaps, I should say fallen) to the level of the 1930s. Of course, it was the economic crisis of the 30s that produced many of the programs that ALL Americans have benefited from for almost a century as well as a revitalized labor movement that greatly democratized workplaces and our nation. Americans are more individualistic today but I believe that a dose of collective action would be quite beneficial. But Americans and US workers are scared and individualistic and unions are weak, if attempting to rectify that.

Now I understand being spurred to take “collective action”. But that can only be spurred by anger and disgust on the part of workers who believe they’re getting the shaft, and not because pundits, journalists and politicians pull a Chicken Little on us and have everyone running scared.

There’s an essay in the New York Times magazine today on how the “New Deal” is never coming back.

The author, a Democrat, puts out a challenge to his party — Come up with a plan to replace the “New Deal”.

The New Deal, which spawned Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and a pact between business and government: “Business, you provide a living wage and benefits, and government, you fill in the gaps with programs to help those who fall through the gaps.”

The author, Dalton Conley, puts it more eloquently:

Government and big business had an understanding, famously embodied by the line, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.” Employers, in turn, agreed to pay their (male) employees a living wage and provide generous benefits. Men, in turn, had an obligation to provide for their dependents. To complete the sequence, the state would step in if any of these links broke down by providing a minimal level of support in the case of unemployment, death, desertion or disability.

Conley makes some good points about providing new systems where people can become part of a pool and buy affordable health insurance, and creating savings incentives.

But alas Conley does not tackle what is probably the biggest problem in our economic structure today, the demise of a living wage.

Wages in this country have been stagnant. Jobs that once paid a good wage, where workers could have a solid middle class life and send their kids to college are disappearing. All the major U.S. automakers are laying off or offering buyouts to huge chucks of their workforces so they can replace them with employees who will work for half the money. And large retailers, such as Circuit City, a recent example, are showing veteran workers the door so they can also fill their jobs with people that will take less.

Last night, I was talking with my neighbor who told us his dad — who without a college education, worked for AT&T as a telephone repair man — and his mom — who was a stay-at-home mom — where able to raise seven kids and provide for them without ever getting help from the government.

Is that possible today?

Paying someone a fair salary will go a long way in providing for the nation’s middle class. We can have endless programs to fill in the gaps, but how will they work if the gaps are like black holes able to consume a whole segment of the population that once hoped it could fend for itself if only they were paid enough.

I reprimanded my six-year-old son this morning because he did not flush the toilet.

The way I see it, this is one of the many building blocks I am giving him so he can go out and be a productive citizen some day.

“Flush the toilet.” “Don’t hit your sister with a Hot Wheel.” “Don’t lie.” “Don’t steal.” “Don’t send incriminating emails that could someday come back to haunt you.”

So what the heck did the parents of Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi teach them?

Tannin and Cioffi are two former hedge-fund managers for Bear Stearns were arrested today. Supposedly, these two men knew their fund was “toast” but they still painted a rosy picture of the funds to investors. Investors ended up losing $1.6 billion.

Here are photos of Tannin and Cioffi:

It’s not a new story. This type of scam has happened at other firms. We all remember Enron. Executives saying everything is okay when clearly everything is not.

This morning, disgusted with yet another one of these situations, I look back and wonder, how were these men raised? My mom would say, “they were raised by wolves.”

Since we know that’s not the case, I figured I’d ask an ethics expert on whether these acts point to something amiss in a person’s upbringing.

Am I nuts to even consider this?

“No,” James Otteson, professor of philosophy and economics at Yeshiva College in New York, assures me.

Children, he says, need to develop a “deep sense of how their actions affect other people.”

This is not natural for human beings, he explains, so parents have to keep drumming this into their kids’ head, making it a habit to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, along the lines of, “What does Johnny think when you do that?” “Imagine what Johnny would feel.”

Without this basic empathy building block, it’s easy for individuals to do bad things without thinking about how their actions will impact others.

When you combine this attitude with the general predatory environment in certain areas of the business world today, he says, you have a lethal combination.

These hedge fund managers and corporate executives are dealing with ridiculous amounts of money, so they may begin to see investors as “tools, or pieces on a chess board they’re just moving around.”

We need to all get in the habit of thinking every day how our actions trickle down. Remember the circle of yelling theory? When you yell the people you yell at end up yelling, and so on and so on and so on.

The alleged actions of Tannin and Cioffi may have indirectly hurt thousands of individuals who lost lots of money and are now struggling to keep their homes, their lifestyles.

They were also stupid, it seems. The two guys actually corresponded via email about how the fund was in crummy shape several days before they told investors they were “quite comfortable” with the fund’s stability.

What were they thinking?

For a moment I started thinking we should all be more philosophical every day.

But then I started researching Tannin and Cioffi’s background and found out that Tannin actually had this foundation.

He was a Preston Warren scholar in philosophy at Bucknell University many years ago before heading for Wall Street.

I’m not kidding folks.

Here’s a definition of the prize from the University’s website:

The W. Preston Warren Prize, endowed by friends in honor of Professor Warren, for 26 years a distinguished professor of philosophy at Bucknell, is awarded to that senior majoring in philosophy who shows the greatest achievement and promise in philosophy.

Unfortunately, it appears it was all promise and no achievement for Tannin.

I guess he never learned early on to flush the toilet.

I’m having one of those mornings when little makes sense.

At a time when companies are cutting back on leave for working parents and a growing number of Americans are losing their jobs, why would intelligent men and women agree to give CEOs of major companies money after their dead.

The men and women I’m talking about are the board members of large corporations that approved so-called death benefits for top executives. The Wall Street Journal found these lavish payouts after reviewing federal filings and reported on these shocking perks yesterday.

You still can’t take it with you. But some executives have arranged for the next best thing: huge corporate payouts to their heirs if they die in office.

Take Eugene Isenberg, the 78-year-old chief executive of Nabors Industries Ltd. If Mr. Isenberg died tomorrow, Nabors would owe his estate a “severance” payment of at least $263.6 million, company filings show. That’s more than the first-quarter earnings at the Houston oil-service company.

These payouts are known as “golden coffins” and they really make you wonder whether “supply side economics” really does lift all boats.

Lately it seems the average worker is sinking when you look at stagnant wage increases among the rank and file, and continued reductions in benefits, everything from healthcare to time off.

Employees are paying more than ever for the health insurance they get from their employers, if they get any coverage at all. And paid leave benefits are few and far between. Indeed, a story in today’s Wall Street Journal talks about how maternity leave is the latest benefit to be hacked and slashed in the workplace.

At a time when many consumers are scrambling for cash, working parents face an added source of pressure: a squeeze on maternity-leave pay and time off.

Employers are cutting back on post-childbirth pay for mothers and offering shorter leaves, on average, for both moms and dads, compared with a decade ago. This comes despite research showing attentive nurturing has particular developmental power in a baby’s first year, and that longer leaves can ease postpartum depression in some mothers. The pattern heightens the need for parents to plan carefully for time off post-childbirth.

Unfortunately, if your employer doesn’t give you some paid time off to have a baby or care for a sick relative you’re on your own. The United States is one of only a few industrialized nations that does not mandate paid family leave. The other nations that join us in this distinction include Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

So, instead of just ranting about the lack of fairness in today’s workplace, there are things we can do if we’re employees that need help when it comes to caring for loved ones, or when we lose our jobs.

Three states, including California, New Jersey and Washington, now have paid-family- leave legislation on the books, and a host of other states are considering it. Also, federal bills are circulating right now that call for varying amounts of leave. I wrote a story about this recently for MSNBC.com. Workers who want to see this mandated should call their local and state representatives and tell them they want to see this become the law of the land.

And right now, the House Democrats are on the verge of presenting a bill to extend umemployment benefits for workers who have lost their jobs in this tough economy. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer from Maryland is pushing this extension so get on the horn to your Congressmen and women if you think this is a good idea.

Even if you think government should stay out of the mandating business and let the economic engine take care of itself, you should make your voices heard.

While I can’t help but think such benefits will really help lift all boats down the line, we always need healthy discourse in order to make the best decisions.

I’m sure the board members locked in those wood-paneled rooms at corporations deciding whether to pay out millions to dead executives missed out on healthy discourse.

Let’s just hope they don’t decide to bury some workers with the dead CEOs to accompany them into the after worklife.

Can your boss fire you if your spouse or child is disabled and their medical bills are high, or because your employer thinks you’ll slack off at work because you’re caring for a loved one?

Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, this is a legal no no.

Alas, some employers are doing this exact thing, or at least alleged to be doing this, according to an interesting story in the Wall Street Journal today.

The number of employees filing charges against companies who are firing or in some way discriminating against non-disabled workers because they care for disabled family members is rising. This is called “association discrimination” and it’s not allowed under the ADA.

Did you guys even know this protection existed? Probably not.

But you might be hearing more about it because there are two law suits pending that deal with this little known ADA provision and the outcome of these lawsuits will likely impact many employees who now care for a disabled loved one, or who cover that family member under their employer’s insurance.

According to the article, many of these lawsuits don’t end up benefiting the employee because it’s often hard to prove an employer took some sort of job action against a worker because of his or her disabled family member.

However, the two suits now in the courts “appear to have strong circumstantial evidence” to back up worker claims of discrimination by association.

One case in particular involving Phillis Dewitt whose husband had terminal prostate cancer appears to be strong.

This from The HR Specialist:

Phillis Dewitt worked as a nurse at Proctor Hospital. She received promotions and excellent evaluations that referred to her as an “outstanding clinical manager who consistently goes the extra mile.”

While Dewitt may have gone to lengths for the hospital, the hospital didn’t seem to have returned the favor. The hospital provided health insurance for employees and their dependents through a hybrid self-insurance and catastrophic coverage plan. The hospital covered medical expenses up to $250,000 per year, after which an insurance policy covered the rest.

The HR office regularly tracked expenses and noticed that Dewitt’s husband was racking up big bills for prostate cancer. At one point, Dewitt’s supervisor pulled her aside and suggested that she put her husband into hospice care rather than undergoing chemo and other expensive treatment.

Then, after a financial crisis in which the hospital invited managers to come up with creative solutions to budgeting, Dewitt was fired. Her husband died about a year later.

She sued, alleging association disability discrimination. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said her case should go forward. It reasoned that there was direct evidence of association discrimination. A jury will decide how much that might be worth. (Dewitt v. Proctor Hospital, No. 07-1957, 7th Cir., 2008)

Given the aging of the working population and the never-ending drumbeat in Corporate America to cut labor costs, I think it’s safe to say we’ll be seeing more of these cases…unfortunately.

UPDATEThe most dangerous job in the country is now cell tower climber. These are the guys that climb up high on cell towers to install and maintain our nation’s mobile phone infrastructure.

Well, in the last two months, the profession has gotten even more deadly.

Since April 12, six men have fallen to their deaths working on cell towers in many different parts of the country.

Some experts believe it is the telecommunications industry’s rush to roll out a high-speed cellular phone technology called 3G that may be contributing to this out-of the-ordinary number of fatalities. Phone giant, AT&T has been scrambling to roll out the new system in hundreds of markets throughout the U.S. and has promised to have the system running by the end of this month.

But this upgrade in technology, which will mean all of us will benefit by faster mobile phone connections that will make it easier to surf the Internet from our phones, is coming at a horrendous cost.

On April 23, Mike F. Haynes, a cell tower employee with Overland Contracting Inc., fell 100 feet to his death from a tower near Natchez, Mississippi., and on May 16, Jonathan Guilford, 25, fell from a 200 foot tower while working on a At&T 3G project in Haubstadt, Indiana.

Clearly, such deaths are not unheard of in this industry, but this spate of falls “is unusual,” says Craig Lekutis, president of the online community for tower professionals Wireless Estimator.

The 3G roll-out schedule is ambitious, Lekutis says, and that could be contributing to the rise in deaths. Sometimes, foremen put extra pressure on workers to go faster, and unfortunately safety often suffers. The industry operates with such slim margins, every second counts when installing new systems, he adds.

In a Fortune online article on the deaths, AT&T officials denied that the 3G roll-out schedule had anything to do with the deaths:

A spokesman for AT&T Mobile confirms that Jonathan Guilford was working on a tower for an AT&T 3G network, but denies that his death or the others had anything to do with the June deadline. “That is a software upgrade,” says William Marks. “You go to each tower and use a laptop to perform the upgrade at the base station at the bottom of the tower. There is no need to climb towers.”

Marks acknowledges that AT&T is continuing to bring 3G networking to new markets in the U.S., work that involves building new towers and installing new antennas. But he says that this is part of the company’s broader 3G roll-out, and unrelated to any events in June.

On April 21, after the first two deaths on its projects, AT&T called for a construction stand down and issued an order to subcontractors that read, in part:

“AT&T … requires you to hold, at a minimum, a half-day safety refresher training course this week with all of your construction employees and subcontractors providing services for AT&T. Upon completion of the safety refresher training this week, AT&T expects that you will reinforce this training with additional random safety checks at the construction sites to ensure that appropriate safety measures are being used.”

AT&T’s Marks prefers to describe the order as a “refresher course,” rather than stand down. “We consider the safety of our contractors and our employees to be our first priority,” he says.

No matter who is to blame, workers need to get a reality check pronto!

I called the Occupational Health and Safety Administration last week to find out if the federal safety agency has launched an investigation into the deaths.

The spokeswoman at OHSA had her hands full on Friday when a crane fell in Manhattan and two workers were killed. She said she’d try to get back to me but I didn’t hold my breath. I am hoping to hear from her today because we need to get the word out there before more of these cell workers die.

These men, and a handful of women, that have the unbelievable courage to climb to such heights need to sit back and realize what really matters.

Cell workers are given the safety tools they need to keep safe. But too often when time constraints surface, “they just don’t practice 100 percent fall protection,” says Lekutis. They know one mistake could mean tragedy, but “in any profession people take short cuts.”

I know, we all get cocky on the job. The thinking is, “this can’t happen to me.”

But it can folks. Slow down!

UPDATE: Frankly, I’m disappointed with the response I’ve gotten from OSHA on this disturbing trend.

Here’s the reply from a spokeswoman there: “The Jackson area office is currently conducting in investigation into the death of an employee working on a cell tower in Natchez, MS. The Texas fatality is also currently under investigation by the San Antonio Area Office.”

As for putting out any safety and health bulletins to the industry so they can curtail any future deaths? Nope, nada. Nothing, even though industry observers have said this is an unusually high number of deaths.

The spokeswoman actually directed me to two old bulletins, one put out in 2004 and another from 1991. 1991?! Are they kidding?!

Here are the links just in case they may be useful. One here. The other here. I’m posting them because it doesn’t seem OSHA has the fire under them to get the word out on this pronto and maybe these will help somebody.