This is the first video made by a former union buster.

With the U.S. economy sputtering toward recession, working women and their families will feel more pain than in past downturns.

According to a report by the congressional Joint Economic Committee, women are now working in jobs and industries that are more likely to lay off workers than they were in most previous recessions:

In recessions prior to 2001, women could buffer family incomes against male unemployment because they did not experience sharp job losses. However, this changed in the 2001 recession as women lost jobs on par with men in the industries that lost the most jobs.

For seven and a half years, the Bush administration has delayed and sometimes just refused to act on workplace safety and health rules that could save lives and prevent serious injuries. Had the administration acted on those stalled rules, it may have prevented the deaths of 13 workers in a Georgia sugar plant explosion in February and the more than a dozen crane accident deaths this year in New York City, Las Vegas, Miami and Houston.

Now, with time running out on the Bush White House, it is fast-tracking a secretly written rule—long sought by the business community—that could increase workers' exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxic substances on the job and tie the hands of future administrations trying to improve workplace safety.