Minimum Wage
kkrisberg | September 27, 2017At the Toronto Star, reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh went undercover as a temp worker at Fiera Foods, an industrial bakery, to investigate why temp workers are more likely to get hurt on the job. Earlier this year, Canadian occupational health and safety officials brought charges against the company, whose clients include Dunkin’ Donuts, Costco and Walmart, for the death of 23-year-old Amina Diaby, who was strangled to death after her hijab got caught in a machine.
Mojtehedzadeh, along with Brendan Kennedy, write:
I get about five minutes of training in a factory packed with industrial equipment…
kkrisberg | July 11, 2017At the Intercept, Avi Asher-Schapiro reports on a new insurance plan that Uber is offering its drivers that could help them recoup wages and cover medical expenses if they’re injured on the job. Asher-Schapiro notes that while some have described the Uber insurance plan — which workers buy by setting aside 3.75 cents per mile — as a form of workers’ compensation, it hardly fits the bill. In fact, in documents obtained by the Intercept, Uber explicitly states that the insurance plan isn’t workers’ comp. He writes:
Compared to traditional workers’ compensation insurance, Uber’s policy…
kkrisberg | June 14, 2017At the Guardian, Krithika Varagur interviewed workers inside the Indonesian factory that manufactures clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, finding poverty wages, anti-union intimidation and unreasonably high production targets. The story includes interviews with more than a dozen workers, who asked that details about their identities be changed to avoid being fired. Varagur writes:
Alia is nothing if not industrious. She has worked in factories on and off since leaving her provincial high school, through the birth of two children, leading up to her current job making clothes for brands…
kkrisberg | May 2, 2017At ProPublica, Michael Grabell investigates how U.S. companies take advantage of immigrant workers, focusing on Case Farms poultry plants, which former OSHA chief David Michaels once described as “an outrageously dangerous place to work.” He reports that Case Farms built its business by recruiting some of the world’s most vulnerable immigrants, who often end up working in the kind of dangerous and abusive conditions that few Americans would put up with.
Grabell chronicles the history of Case Farms and how it first began recruiting refugees from Guatemala who were fleeing a brutal civil war in…
kkrisberg | April 18, 2017At Bloomberg BNA, Stephen Lee reports that with fears of deportation looming, undocumented immigrants are becoming afraid to access legal remedies when they’re injured on the job. The article notes that such immigrants are disproportionately employed in hazardous jobs and while they account for just 15 percent of the overall workforce, they account for 18 percent of occupational fatalities. Lee writes:
Sofia, a Mexican fieldworker in Santa Rosa, Calif., has a workers’ compensation case in the works after hurting her arm and shoulder pulling vine roots, requiring surgery. But she says she’s…
kkrisberg | April 8, 2017At the Center for Public Integrity, Talia Buford and Maryam Jameel investigate federal contractors that receive billions in public funds despite committing wage violations against their workers. In analyzing Department of Labor data on more than 1,100 egregious violators, the reporters found that federal agencies modified or granted contracts totaling $18 billion to 68 contractors with proven wage violations. The Department of Defense contracted with the most wage violators.
Under Obama, labor officials had attempted to address the problem with the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which…
kkrisberg | March 8, 2017At the Atlantic Monthly, Alana Semuels interviews David Weil, who served as administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division under President Obama, on his time at DOL and the future of labor under Trump.
On Obama’s effect, Weil told Semuels:
Semuels: What specifically changed in the Department of Labor under Obama?
Weil: One of the things Obama did from the beginning was to fight hard to get resources for his enforcement agencies. He came in and the number of investigators in the Wage and Hour Division was barely 700 nationally—and it is responsible for 7.3 million workplaces…
kkrisberg | February 7, 2017At the American Prospect, Justin Miller interviews Obama-era Labor Department officials on the future of worker protections under President Trump. Miller takes a behind-the-scenes peek at what it took to pass some of the Obama administration’s key labor rules, discusses the nomination of Andy Puzder to become the nation’s next labor secretary, and addresses rumors that the new administration might be gunning to abolish some Labor Department divisions entirely. Miller writes:
Not surprisingly, Obama’s top labor alums express pride in the many worker protections they were able to put in place…
kkrisberg | February 7, 2017Not violating federal labor law seems like a commonsense precursor for being awarded lucrative federal contracts. House Republicans, however, disagree.
Last week, majority members in the House of Representatives successfully passed a resolution to get rid of federal disclosure requirements included in President Barack Obama’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, which he originally signed in 2014. Those disclosure requirements directed businesses bidding for federal contracts of $500,000 or more to report any violations of 14 labor laws within the prior three years. Among those 14…
kkrisberg | January 17, 2017At The New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Jennifer Medina report on Trump’s pick to head up the U.S. Department of Labor, fast food CEO Andrew Puzder, an outspoken critic of labor laws that benefit hourly workers.
Puzder is expected to face tough questioning during his confirmation hearings, especially as his company’s restaurants have been accused of multiple labor law violations. The article explores Puzder’s entry into the fast food world, his work as a lawyer, and interviews current and former workers at one of the chains that Puzder runs, Carl’s Jr. Kantor and Medina write:
In interviews…
kkrisberg | January 4, 2017At the Toronto Star, Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the “lethal legacy” of a General Electric plant in the Canadian city of Peterborough, Ontario, where hundreds of compensation claims have been filed for illnesses that workers say were caused by occupational chemical exposures. In fact, one occupational health expert described the plant as a “cancer generator.”
Mojtehedzadeh reports that a study commissioned by General Electric and that the Star obtained found that male workers at the plant were up to 57 percent more likely to die of lung cancer than the general population, while female…
kkrisberg | December 6, 2016At Stat, Eric Boodman reports on whether a Trump administration might deprive miners of compensation for disabilities related to black lung disease.
In particular, Boodman examines a little-known provision in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that shifted the burden of proof from miners and onto mining companies. In other words, if miners had spent at least 15 years underground and can prove a respiratory disability, it’s assumed to be an occupational illness. However, if the ACA is repealed in full — as candidate Trump promised on the campaign trail — that provision would go away as well, making…
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…
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…
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…
cmonforton | November 3, 2016The American Public Health Association (APHA) adopted 11 new policy statements which will guide its work in the coming years. They include:
Raising the minimum wage: The policy calls on states to increase their minimum wage, index the minimum wage to inflation, and prohibit state-government preemption of municipal minimum wage policies. Among other things, the new APHA policy also recommends research on the effects of living wages on public assistance budgets.
Reducing exposure to highly fluorinated chemicals: The policy calls on Congress to fund research on alternatives to perfluoroalkyl and…
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 | 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 | 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 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,…