CALIFORNIA: State OSHA Fines Gay Porn Studio For Allowing Barebacking

The California division of OSHA has fined the gay porn studio Treasure Island Media for workplace practices that exposed employees to potentially infectious agents such as semen. The company is appealing the fines, which total over $21,000 for three separate citations. Lyla Katz reports at Xbiz:

"On Nov. 5, 2009, Treasure Island Media had failed to write or otherwise establish, implement and maintain an effective exposure control plan,” the 23-page investigation report said. “Employees were exposed to semen and other potentially infectious materials, due to work activities during filming and set cleaning.” The second serious citation said, “Treasure Island Media does not observe universal precautions during the production of their films. They have not instituted engineering and work practices controls to eliminate or minimize contact with blood and semen, including, but not limited to, the use of barrier protection such as condoms.”

Treasure Island Media's general manager Matt Mason told XBIZ that the company has cooperated with the Cal/OSHA investigation and administrative process. "We have appealed the citations and participated in the informal conference process and expect to take the matter to a hearing in 2011 with an administrative law judge," Mason said. Treasure Island Media has recently signed HIV-positive performer James Roscoe and has been promoting scenes with other HIV-positive performers.

A spokesman for CAL/OSHA said the fines did not arise from the studio's practice of employing HIV-positive performers. "Anybody may be infected, therefore you have to treat everybody's blood and other potential infectious materials [such as semen] as though it can be infectious."

SAN FRANCISCO: Gay Flash Mobbers Use Gaga To Protest For Workers Rights

Finally, a great flash mob. Clip description:

A flashmob infiltrates the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco and performs an adaptation of Lady Gaga's song "Bad Romance." The event was organized to draw attention to a boycott called by the workers of the hotel who are fighting to win a fair contract and affordable healthcare. Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer activists put the song and dance together as a creative way to tell the hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people from all over the country coming to San Francisco in June for Pride to stay out of the boycotted hotels.

The hotels on the boycott list can be found here.

The Wal-Mart Virus

Via Flowing Data, watch Wal-Mart spread across the nation like a virus. Creepy. And the Agent Smith voiceover added by this YouTuber is rather apt. Full-screen original version here. Probably less creepy, but still fascinating is the Target version.

Obama Signs Equal Pay Bill

Barack Obama signed his first bill today. The act extends the statute of limitations for workers that want to sue their employers for unequal pay.

Mr. Obama was surrounded by a group of beaming lawmakers, most but not all of them Democrats, in the East Room of the White House as he affixed his signature to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men. After a Supreme Court ruling against her, Congress approved the legislation that expands workers’ rights to sue in this kind of case, relaxing the statute of limitations.

“It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness,” the president said. He said was signing the bill not only in honor of Ms. Ledbetter — who stood behind him, shaking her head and clasping her hands in seeming disbelief — but in honor of his own grandmother, “who worked in a bank all her life, and even after she hit that glass ceiling, kept getting up again” and for his daughters, “because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams.”

You may recall the TV spot that Lilly Ledbetter did for Obama during the campaign.