labor rights
kkrisberg | November 23, 2016At In These Times, Elizabeth Grossman writes about whether workplace safety will survive a Trump presidency, noting that “Trump’s transition team has said he will introduce a moratorium on new regulations and cancel executive orders and regulations ‘that kill jobs and bloat government.’” In interviewing labor, health and safety advocates, Grossman writes that a number of federal protections could land on the chopping block, including the new overtime rule, proposed beryllium rule and fall protections. Grossman writes:
How does Trump’s promise to reduce and eliminate regulations square with…
cmonforton | November 21, 2016The Butterball turkey plant in Huntsville, Arkansas ramps up production beginning in October to meet the demand for fresh (not frozen) Thanksgiving turkeys. The working conditions are already dismal. The bad situation is magnified during this peak season as workers on the production line try to keep up with turkey carcasses moving passed at 51 per minute.
Just in time for this week’s holiday, Gabriel Thompson reports on the experiences of Butterball workers in an article appearing today in Slate. One worker, a former prison guard from Puerto Rico named Lisandro Vega spoke to Thompson. Vega…
cmonforton | November 17, 2016Two new reports describe the working conditions for some of the 21 million workers in the U.S. food industry. Food workers constitute 14 percent of the U.S. workforce. They are employed across the system from those who work on farms and in canning plants, to meat packers, grocery store clerks and restaurant dishwashers.
No Piece of the Pie: U.S. Food Workers in 2016 was released this week by the Food Chain Workers Alliance. The report examines employment trends, wages, advancement opportunities, discrimination, and work-related injuries. The authors use government and industry data, but…
kkrisberg | November 11, 2016Three days out from the election and many of us are still trying to adjust to this new reality. It’s been a very rough week.
And assuming that we take the new president-elect at his word — that we believe the promises he made on the campaign trail — public health workers and advocates, as well as the often-vulnerable people and communities they serve, now face a very difficult four years. Fortunately, public health has plenty of practice confronting and overcoming powerfully entrenched interests for the greater good. Just ask Big Tobacco.
In that vein, below are excerpts from post-election…
garrettbrown | November 9, 2016By Garrett Brown and Bob Jeffcott
A group of brave women’s rights and labor activists in San Pedro Sula, Honduras were the recipients of the 2016 International Award of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). The distinction was formally announced at the association's annual meeting. Lynda Yanz, Executive Director of the Maquila Solidarity Network, based in Toronto, Canada, traveled to Denver, Colorado to accept the award on behalf of the Honduras Independent Monitoring Team (EMIH) at the November 1st awards luncheon.
EMIH team (L to R):…
kkrisberg | November 8, 2016At The New York Times, Dan Barry reports on the Hispanic hotel workers who are becoming a powerful political force in Las Vegas. In particular, the story focuses on the 56,000-member Culinary Union, whose membership is more than half Hispanic. The story is told through the eyes of Celia Vargas, 57, a guest room attendant at a hotel along the famous Vegas Strip — Barry writes:
Despite their name tags, guest room attendants are anonymous. They go unnoticed by many as they push their 300-pound carts to the next room, and the next.
A glimpse of what is expected of these attendants can be found at…
egrossman | November 4, 2016On a typical week, about 3 million people are on the job in the United States as temp workers, this according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In September 2016, just shy of 3 million people were working as temps – an all-time high. Numbers can vary depending on how temp work is defined, but according to the BLS, temp jobs now account for about 2.4 percent of all U.S. private sector jobs. Yet, said National Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) co-executive director Jessica Martinez on a call with reporters, “Temp workers represent almost 17 percent – or one out of…
kkrisberg | October 26, 2016Charles Ornstein at ProPublica and Mike Hixenbaugh at the Virginian-Pilot investigate the man known as Dr. Orange for his “fervent” defense against claims that exposures to Agent Orange sickened American veterans. A part of their long-running investigation “Reliving Agent Orange,” this most recent article reports that the Veterans Administration has repeatedly cited Dr. Orange’s (real name: Alvin Young) work to deny compensation to veterans, even though many argue Young’s work is compromised by inaccuracies, inconsistencies and omissions. In addition, the very chemical companies that make…
kkrisberg | October 21, 2016In September 2015, New York farmworker Crispin Hernandez was fired after his employers saw him talking with local workers’ rights advocates. But instead of backing down, Hernandez filed suit against the state. And if he prevails, it could help transform the often dangerous and unjust workplace conditions that farmworkers face to put food on all of our tables.
Officially filed May 10, 2016, Hernandez v. State of New York demands that the state provide the same constitutional protections to farmworkers as it does for other workers. Right now, according to the New York state constitution, all…
kkrisberg | October 11, 2016At the Denver Post, John Ingold and Monte Whaley authored a year-long investigative series into the dangerous conditions facing Colorado’s oil and gas workers, the role of subcontracting in heightening worker safety risks, and the lack of employer accountability and oversight. The series, “Drilling through danger,” noted that 1,333 workers died in the nation’s oil and gas fields between 2003 and 2014, with 2014 being the second-most lethal year for oil and gas workers in Colorado in a decade. According to the newspaper’s analysis, there was about one oil and gas worker death per every 12 rigs…
cmonforton | October 6, 2016That’s the title of a report released this week by the Labor Department. It came in response ProPublica’s and National Public Radio’s investigative series, which began in March 2015, called “Insult to Injury.” The series had many revelations and interesting features. My favorite was an interactive graphic where you can see how much a body part is worth (if you lose it because of a workplace hazard) depending on the state you live. I've used it with my students.
The stories by ProPublica and NPR compelled eight Democratic Members of Congress, including Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep.…
kkrisberg | September 27, 2016In “The Invisible Workforce: Death, discrimination and despair in N.J.'s temp industry,” NJ Advance Media reporter Kelly Heyboer investigated conditions facing temp workers in New Jersey, which now has one of the largest concentrations of temp workers in the nation. She reports that growing demand for temp workers has led to the proliferation of “temp towns” — places with dozens of temp agencies and neighborhoods full of temp workers, many of whom report low pay, wage theft, racial and sexual discrimination, and unsafe workplaces.
Heyboer writes:
The temp agencies in New Brunswick are easy to…
kkrisberg | September 23, 2016Despite all the concern about shuttered businesses, fired employees and lost profits, a new report has found that New York City’s paid sick leave law was pretty much a “non-event” for most employers.
Released this month, “No Big Deal: The Impact of New York City’s Paid Sick Law on Employers” reported that in the years following the 2014 implementation of the paid sick leave law, the great majority of businesses surveyed said the law had no effect on overall costs. The report, authored by researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Murphy Institute at the City University…
garrettbrown | September 21, 2016In the early 1990s, sports apparel giant Nike became the “poster child” for sweatshops in its global supply chain – child labor, forced labor (mandatory overtime), wage theft, confiscation of migrant workers’ passports, sexual harassment of women workers, and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions.
Jump ahead 25 years, vast global supply chains with multiple tiers of international “brands,” contracted supplier factories, and numerous sub-contractors are now the norm for consumer goods sectors such as electronics, toys, apparel, home furnishings, food like fish and chocolate, sports shoes and…
kkrisberg | September 14, 2016In a big win for workers, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court has ruled that state law allowing businesses to opt out of traditional workers’ compensation is unconstitutional.
At ProPublica, Michael Grabell writes that the ruling now leaves Texas as the only state that lets employers pull out of workers’ comp in favor of creating their own alternative plans. Last year, Grabell, along with Howard Berkes at NPR, investigated the new opt-out trend, finding that such workers’ comp alternatives typically come with fewer employee benefits, more restrictions and no independent oversight.
In reporting on the…
kkrisberg | September 9, 2016Earlier this week, we published our annual report, “The Year In U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2015 – Summer 2016,” chronicling the victories, setbacks and struggles taking place in the American workplace. But it was just about impossible to piece together a report like this without thinking about the strange — and often scary — election before us and its implications for workers.
So, when we were crafting the report’s concluding thoughts — a section we call “The Year Ahead” — it seemed almost logical to go down that “scary” road, to talk about the presidential election as if…
kkrisberg | September 6, 2016From the weakening of workers’ compensation to the lives of America’s nuclear plant workers, it was another year of stellar news reporting on worker health and safety.
Myself, along with Celeste Monforton and Roger Kerson, did our best to highlight such reporting, as well as new worker health research, in “The Year In U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2015 – Summer 2016,” which we released, appropriately, on Labor Day. Among the journalistic highlights, reporters at the Center for Public Integrity, ProPublica and NPR continued investigative efforts into the dismantling of…
kkrisberg | August 30, 2016At KCRW (an NPR member station), Karen Foshay reports on occupational injuries among low-wage restaurant workers in California and the retaliatory barriers that often keep them from speaking up. She cited a 2011 Restaurant Opportunities Center survey of Los Angeles restaurant workers that found 42 percent experienced cuts, 43 percent experienced burns and more than half reported working while sick. Foshay writes:
At a recent meeting in Azusa (in eastern Los Angeles County), several workers showed off their appointment cards for clinics like Santa Adelina. Three men lifted their pant legs to…
kkrisberg | August 16, 2016At NPR, John Burnett reports on the conditions facing farmworkers in south Texas 50 years after a landmark strike in which farmworkers walked 400 miles to the capital city of Austin to demand fair working conditions. He writes:
A lot has changed since 1966, when watermelon workers in the South Texas borderlands walked out of the melon fields in a historic strike to protest poor wages and appalling working conditions.
They marched 400 miles to the state capital of Austin; California labor activist and union leader Cesar Chavez joined them.
The farmworkers succeeded in publicizing their cause…
kkrisberg | August 3, 2016At Slate, Gabriel Thompson writes about a little-used legal provision that could go far in helping farmworkers fight wage theft and other labor abuses. A part of the Great Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act, the statute is known as the “hot goods provision” and it gives the U.S. Department of Labor the authority block products made in violation of labor laws from being shipped across state lines.
Thompson’s story begins with Felix Vasquez, who works in the strawberry fields of Oxnard, California, and had successfully worked with legal advocates to recover owed wages from his employer,…