OSHA
The Pump Handle
Category archives for OSHA
Spring 2013 looked like it would be a banner season for progress by the Obama Administration on new worker safety regulations; not so much anymore.
The AFL-CIO’s “Death on the Job” report shows why U.S. workers deserve much better protections than they are getting.
In the early 1990′s, the American Dental Association put up quite a fight to oppose an OSHA regulation requiring dentists to provide gloves, masks and goggles to employees who could be exposed to blood-contaminated saliva.
Eric Rodriguez and his colleagues at the Latino Union of Chicago quite literally meet workers where they’re at — on the city’s street corners. Many of the day laborers who gather there are hired to work construction at residential housing sites. Work arrangements are hardly formal and day laborers are frequently subjected to unnecessary and illegal dangers on the job. Unfortunately, worker safety is often kicked to the curb in the street corner marketplace.
A quick review of the bi-partisan Senate immigration reform bill reveals a few provisions related to workplace safety.
Representatives of U.S. foundries met with White House officials behind closed doors to complain about a not-yet-proposed OSHA regulation. It was the group’s second such meeting. But they wouldn’t be necessary if the White House would simply allow OSHA’s public hearing process to take place.
Municipalities should see a red flag when one of its major construction contractors is found willfully and repeatedly violating worker safety standards.
Imagine an organization that is given 90 days to complete a task, but after two years still hasn’t finished the job. When you ask them ‘when we’ll you be done?’ they respond with ‘no comment.’ That’s what’s happening with a Labor Dept rule to protect workers from respirable silica.
Texas may boast a booming construction sector, but a deeper look reveals an industry filled with wage theft, payroll fraud, frighteningly lax safety standards, and preventable injury and death. In reality, worker advocates say such conditions are far from the exception — instead, they’ve become the norm.
In Austin, Texas, a growing movement to transform working conditions for construction workers is underway and the new Construction Career Center is playing a pivotal role.