government
egrossman | September 29, 2014There’s been a lot going on this past week so it’s likely that National Farm Safety Week, announced by Presidential Proclamation on September 19th may have escaped notice of those not working in agriculture. “America,” said President Obama in the proclamation, “depends on our farmers and ranchers to clothe our families, feed our people, and fuel our cars and trucks.” And he continued:
“While our farmers and ranchers are the best in the world, agriculture remains one of our country's most hazardous industries. Producers and their families are exposed to numerous safety and health dangers --…
kkrisberg | September 23, 2014Today in Mother Jones, reporter Stephanie Mencimer writes a great piece previewing an upcoming Supreme Court case that could transform how pregnant women are treated in the workplace. In fact, the case has attracted the attention and support of some very strange bedfellows. Mencimer writes:
It's a rare day when pro-choice activists, anti-abortion diehards, and evangelical Christians all file briefs on the same side of a Supreme Court case. But that's what happened recently when the National Association of Evangelicals, Americans United for Life, Democrats for Life of America, and the National…
kkrisberg | September 17, 2014New data from the U.S. Census Bureau finds that the U.S. poverty rate declined slightly between 2012 and 2013, however the numbers of people living at or below the poverty level in 2013 didn’t represent a real statistical change.
Yesterday, the Census Bureau released two annual reports: “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013” and “Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2013.” The agency found that between 2012 and 2013, the nation’s poverty rate declined from 15 percent to 14.5 percent. But the 45.3 million people living in poverty as of 2013 was not a “statistically…
cmonforton | September 15, 2014“OSHA nunca llego.” [Translation: "OSHA never came."] That was the disappointed phrase I heard from a worker who told me about his on-the-job injury. He was a temp worker hired by a moving company to relocate a small manufacturing company. The worker’s shoe got caught in a faulty industrial dumbwaiter and his toes were smashed. He was patched up at a local urgent care clinic, but developed a serious infection a couple of weeks later. Gangrene set in and his toes had to be amputated. He still suffers pain and walks with a limp.
The fact that “OSHA nunca llego” surprised this worker. Like the…
kkrisberg | September 12, 2014For eight years, Dora worked at a frozen pizza factory in Romeoville, Illinois, called Great Kitchens. For eight hours a day — sometimes seven days a week — she assembled pizza boxes or arranged cheese and other toppings on pizzas. The consequences of years of such repetitive work surfaced in October 2012, when her hands would go numb and a painful cyst formed on her left wrist. She told her supervisor about the problem, but he said he couldn’t do anything about it — Dora was a temporary worker hired through a staffing agency and so Great Kitchens wasn’t responsible for addressing her injury…
cmonforton | September 10, 2014The public health community is mourning the loss of Andrea Kidd-Taylor, DrPH, MSPH, 59, who died on September 1 from cancer. Celebrations of her life were held on September 8-9 in Randallstown, MD.
I first met Andrea Kidd-Taylor in 1994 when she was a member of OSHA’s 12-person National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH). With her masters and doctoral degrees in public health, and her training as an industrial hygienist, Andrea held the NACOSH slot designated for an occupational health expert. At the time, she was with the Health and Safety Department of the United…
kkrisberg | September 9, 2014Across the country, roughly 10 million construction workers spend each day in a dangerous and fickle industry. They hang drywall, lay carpet, shingle roofs. Yet in the eyes of their bosses, they aren't employees due the benefits the government requires.
That’s the intro to an extensive series of articles that McClatchy DC recently published called “Contract to Cheat,” which chronicles a year-long investigation into the consequences of misclassifying workers as independent contractors and how government regulators are doing nothing to stop it. The in-depth series offers investigations from…
egrossman | September 8, 2014It may come as a surprise to those not familiar with the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – the primary law that regulates chemicals used in the US that go into products other than cosmetics, drugs and pesticides – to learn that about 15,000 chemicals on the TSCA inventory have their identities claimed as trade secrets. According to an analysis included in the petition filed with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on August 21st by Earthjustice and five other non-profits, approximately 62.5 percent of the 24,000 chemicals added to the TSCA inventory since 1982 cannot be “…
kkrisberg | September 4, 2014During the past year, not one state experienced a decrease in adult obesity rates and, in fact, six states are home to even higher rates than before, according to a new report released today.
This morning, Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released “The State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America,” finding that adult obesity rates rose in Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, New Jersey, Tennessee and Wyoming. Mississippi and West Virginia tied to take the unenviable top spot, both with an adult obesity rate of 35.1 percent, while Colorado is…
kkrisberg | September 2, 2014Yesterday, the nation celebrated its workers. However, new research finds that most workers face fewer and fewer reasons to rejoice.
Last week, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a new report finding that hourly wages fell in the first half of 2014 when compared to the first half of 2013. And those wages fell for nearly all groups of workers, including those with bachelor’s degrees and higher. This isn’t a new trend, just one that’s quickly heading toward crisis proportions. The report, “Why America’s Workers Need Faster Wage Growth — And What We Can Do About It,” states that…
cmonforton | September 1, 2014Our Labor Day tradition continues with the third edition of The Year in US Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2013 – Summer 2014. Liz Borkowski and I produce it to serve as a resource for activists, researchers, regulators and anyone else who wants a refresher on what happened in the previous 12 months on worker health and safety topics. We prepare it as a complement to the AFL-CIO’s excellent annual Death on the Job report which has been released each spring for the last 23 years.
We divide the report into three sections: Happenings at the federal level, activities in state and local…
cmonforton | August 29, 2014Just before Memorial Day---the kickoff of the summer season---the Obama Administration released its agenda for upcoming regulatory action. In the worker safety world of OSHA, “regulatory action” rarely means a new regulation. Rather, it refers to a step along the long, drawn-out process to (maybe) a new rule to protect workers from occupational injuries, illnesses or deaths.
The items identified by the Labor Department suggested that OSHA planned a productive summer of 2014. Here’s what OSHA outlined for its summer tasks.
In May 2014:
Convene a meeting of small business representatives to…
kkrisberg | August 27, 2014As Texas Gov. Rick Perry makes moves toward a 2016 presidential run, it seems he can’t talk enough about the so-called “Texas Miracle." But upon closer inspection, it seems clear that a “miracle” based on small government, big business tax breaks and laissez-faire regulations is hardly a blessed event for Texas workers.
In an in-depth article on workplace deaths published in the Dallas Morning News, reporter James Gordon writes that Texas workers face the highest workplace death rates in the nation. In fact, Gordon notes that a Texas worker is 12 percent more likely to be killed on the job…
Not an “accident”: Elbert C. Woods, 45, suffers fatal work-related injury at Cleveland, Ohio company
cmonforton | August 25, 2014Elbert C. Woods, 45, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, August 21 while working at Cleveland Track Material. Local reporters provide some initial information on the worker’s death:
The Northeast Ohio Media Group reports:
Woods’ clothing became stuck in a machine and he was pulled into it.
Woods’ co-workers were able to free him from the machine while they awaited response by the local fire department.
Cleveland.com notes that Cleveland Track Material:
Employs about 250 people.
The company manufactures railway track and components, such as switches that move trains from one…
kkrisberg | August 22, 2014After nearly a decade of hoping state legislators would pass an earned paid sick time law, advocates in Massachusetts decided it was time to put the question to voters. Now, in November, voters will have the chance to help improve the lives of nearly 1 million workers who can’t earn one, single hour of sick leave and are often left to choose between caring for themselves or a loved one, paying the bills or losing a job.
“This is about fundamental fairness in the workplace,” said Elizabeth Toulan, a senior attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services and former coordinator of the Massachusetts…
kkrisberg | August 15, 2014Next time someone asks you what exactly public health does, repeat this number: 4.3 million. That’s the number of women — mothers, sisters, wives, aunts, grandmothers, daughters and friends — who might have otherwise gone without timely breast and cervical cancer screenings if it weren’t for public health and its commitment to prevention.
This year marks the 23rd anniversary of the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched in 1991 to ensure that low-income women would have the same opportunity to detect cancers…
cmonforton | August 13, 2014Failing to get the time to acclimate to a hot work environment can be deadly. That’s the message I took away from an item in last week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
“Heat illness and deaths among workers --- U.S. 2012-2013” reports on 13 occupational heat-related fatalities investigated by federal OSHA. Nine of the 13 incidents (69 percent) involved an individual who was working in their hot job for three or fewer days. Among the cases examined by the authors, none of the employers had acclimation programs, and only five of the 13 had provided access to a cool or shaded…
kkrisberg | August 12, 2014It didn’t make a lot of headlines, but a new presidential executive order could be a big deal for workers' rights and safety. On July 31, President Obama signed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, which requires federal contractors to disclose prior labor violations and prohibits contractors from forcing workers into arbitration to settle workplace discrimination cases.
The National Law Review explains the order in detail. According to writers Dwight Armstrong and Nisha Verma, the order applies to federal contracts valued at more than $500,000 and could affect a substantial…
kkrisberg | August 8, 2014Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data on heat deaths among U.S. workers, underscoring the often-tragic consequences that result when employers fail to take relatively simple and low-cost preventive actions.
Published in today’s issue of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), researchers reviewed two years worth of OSHA enforcement cases that were investigated under its general charge to uphold safe and healthy workplaces. (OSHA investigates workplace heat illness and death via the “general duty clause” of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of…
cmonforton | August 7, 2014[Update below]
Stanley Thomas Wright, 47, was asphyxiated on Saturday, August 2, while working inside a tank car at a railyard in North Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports
the local fire department was called to the scene at about 1:00 am
Wright’s co-workers said he lost consciousness while inside the railcar tanker
Fox5 reports
the railcar contained ethanol vapors and Wright was overcome by the gas
it took fire and rescue crews until mid-day Saturday to make the scene safe
This incident brings to mind Ingrid Lobet's reporting from May in the Houston Chronicle: "Largely…