Occupational Health & Safety
kkrisberg | August 9, 2017At The New York Times, Elizabeth Olson writes about the challenges that older workers face in proving workplace bias. She begins the story with Donetta Raymond, a longtime manufacturing worker laid off, along with hundreds of others, by Spirit AeroSystems Holdings. Now, some of those workers are bringing a lawsuit after discovering that nearly half of the laid-off workers were 40 or older, the age when federal age discrimination protections kick in. Olson writes:
Such lawsuits are popping up as the nation’s work force ages and as many longtime workers claim that they are being deliberately…
lborkowski | August 7, 2017In late July, while many of us were preoccupied with Republican Senators’ attacks on healthcare, the Trump administration released its first regulatory agenda (technically, the Current Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions). These routine updates are published so the public can see what they can anticipate from federal agencies in the way of rulemaking. (Celeste Monforton has been tracking the Department of Labor regulatory agenda for years.)
The Trump administration’s first entry into this genre is better described as a de-regulatory agenda. It’s a dizzying array of delays,…
kkrisberg | July 26, 2017At PBS Newhour, Aubrey Aden-Buie reports on the shipbuilders that receive billions in federal contracts despite histories of serious safety lapses. In a review of federal contracts, Aden-Buie and colleagues found that since 2008, the federal government has awarded more than $100 billion to companies with records of safety incidents that injured and killed workers.
In a transcript of the broadcast (which you can also watch at the link above), Aden-Buie interviews Martin Osborn, a welder at shipbuilder Austal USA in Alabama:
MARTIN OSBORN: I was up in a boom lift, as we call it, or a man lift,…
lborkowski | July 24, 2017Members of the public health community are aware of many of the ways the Trump administration and the 115th Congress are hindering and reversing evidence-based actions for public health – from an executive order requiring agencies to scrap two regulations each time they create a new one to advancing legislation that would make it harder for EPA to obtain and use the most up-to-date science in its work. With so many threats to public health arising each month, it can be hard to catch all of them, though. The Union of Concerned Scientists has performed a tremendous service by producing the…
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…
garrettbrown | July 11, 2017At the end of two complete years when dozens of fully-funded field compliance positions went empty, reported workplace fatalities and injuries in California are on the rise. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has had a monthly average of 34 vacant field enforcement positions since July 2015, which means that more than $10 million in state-authorized funding was left unused.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest available data shows that 388 workers were fatally injured on the job in California in 2015. On average, that is more than one worker a…
cmonforton | July 7, 2017I started my post yesterday with my version of the famous quote from the film Casablanca:
“I'm shocked, shocked to find an epidemic of black lung disease.”
It was my reaction to the latest story by NPR’s Howard Berkes about nearly 2,000 recently diagnosed cases of the most severe form of black lung disease. They’ve been diagnosed over the last six years among coal miners in central Appalachia.
I gave five reasons to explain why I'm not shocked by the epidemic.
#1: Mine operators were allowed to expose miners to concentrations of respirable coal dust and silica that were known to be too high…
cmonforton | July 6, 2017I felt a little like Claude Rains (as Capt. Louis Renault) in the film Casablanca. He's the actor with the famous line "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here." On Sunday my neighbor asked me: “What do you think about all those coal miners with black lung?”
“Shocked, shocked,” I was tempted to say, but I’m not the least bit shocked.
My neighbor was referring to the latest story by NPR’s Howard Berkes about nearly 2,000 cases of progressive massive pulmonary fibrosis (PMF) diagnosed in the last six years among Appalachian coal miners. Two thousand cases is a hefty number…
kkrisberg | June 30, 2017At the Center for Public Integrity, a five-part investigative series on safety at the nation’s nuclear facilities finds that workers can and do suffer serious injuries, yet the Department of Energy typically imposes only minimal fines for safety incidents and companies get to keep a majority of their profits, which does little to improve working conditions. Reporters estimated that the number of safety incidents has tripled since 2013.
For example, in 2009, the chair of a safety committee at Idaho National Laboratory told high-ranking managers that damaged plutonium plates could put workers…
cmonforton | June 30, 2017It is maddening to read yet again about a worker being killed in a trench cave-in. These deaths are completely preventable by using some pretty cheap equipment. The death of Donald “DJ” Meyer in December 2016 is especially tragic. The 33 year-old is survived by his son Ashten, 8. The youngster’s mother died unexpectedly two years ago.
I learned this week that OSHA has thrown the book at Meyer’s employer. They issued citations against Arrow Plumbing for six willful and eight serious violations and proposed a $714,142 penalty.
Arrow Plumbing was responsible for making certain its excavation…
cmonforton | June 27, 2017I had one ear tuned this morning to the webcast of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta’s appearance before a subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee on his Department’s FY 2018 budget request. You never know what bumble bee might be in a lawmaker’s bonnet or how they might use their time to gush about Department-funded pet project in their home State. That's why I tuned in.
Two moments during the hearing were most memorable to me. The first involved Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander (R) who expressed dissatisfaction with the Administration’s slow pace of nominating individuals for top jobs at…
cmonforton | June 23, 2017The first six months of the Trump administration has been particularly deadly for coal miners. Nine workers at U.S. coal mines have been fatally injured in the first six months of 2017. Five of the nine deaths occurred in West Virginia. In all of 2016, eight workers were killed on the job at U.S. coal mines.
Some might want to attribute the increased number of coal mine deaths to President Trump's anti-regulatory agenda and more business friendly policies particularly for the coal industry. I don't know that to be the case. As far as I know, there are not any Trump officials micromanaging the…
cmonforton | June 22, 2017Tesla held its annual stockholder meeting this month, and co-founder/CEO Elon Musk was asked to speak about worker safety problems at their plants. He briefly mentioned the topic in his prepared remarks, but was probed later about it by a stockholder. The question came from @sunabeepdeep who asked:
"What changes are being made to address worker safety?"
Public attention on working conditions at Tesla’s manufacturing plant in Fremont, CA was prompted most recently by a May 18 story in The Guardian. Reporter Julia Carrie Wong spoke to current and former employees who described intense…
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…
cmonforton | June 7, 2017My typical afternoon snack has its roots in New York’s $14 billion a year dairy industry. The state leads the country in Greek yogurt production. A new report by the Workers’ Center of Central New York (WCCNY) and the Worker Justice Center of New York (WJCNY) fills me in on the laborers who make possible my daily cup of Chobani. I understand better now why many, many dairy parlor workers say their employers care more about the cows than the well-being of their employees.
Milked: Immigrant Dairy Farmworkers in New York State is based on interviews with 88 dairy workers from 53 different farms…
kkrisberg | June 6, 2017When you ask public health advocates about President Trump’s recent budget proposal, you typically get a bewildered pause. Public health people don’t like to exaggerate — they follow the science, they stay calm, they face off against dangerous threats on a regular basis. Exaggerating doesn’t help contain diseases, it only makes it harder. So it’s concerning when you hear words like this about Trump’s budget: “devastating,” “not serious,” “ludicrous,” “unfathomable.”
Released in late May, Trump’s fiscal year 2018 federal budget proposal calls for cutting the budget at the Centers for Disease…
cmonforton | June 1, 2017Add this to the list of absurdities from the Trump Administration: the Justice Department (DOJ) is arguing that the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers (USW) should rely on DOJ attorneys to defend an Obama-era OSHA regulation. Seriously?
The rule that DOJ says it will defend on the unions' behalf was adopted by OSHA in May 2016 and concerns the reporting of injuries by employers. It is being threatened by a frivolous lawsuit brought the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Home Builders, and the National Chicken Council. The business associations filed their lawsuit in the U.S.…
kkrisberg | May 30, 2017At Eater, Elizabeth Grossman reports that Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that would protect undocumented agricultural workers from deportation and provide them and their families with a path to long-term residence and citizenship.
The bill proposes that farmworkers who can prove at least 100 days of agricultural work in the last two years could apply for a “blue card” that grants temporary residency and the ability to work. Farmworkers with a blue card and who work for 100 days a year for five years or 150 days a year for three years would then be eligible for a green card…
cmonforton | May 25, 2017Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) says U.S. poultry companies “are being handcuffed” by a rule that set the maximum processing line speed at 140 birds per minute. Collins wrote this week to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and asked him to consider raising the maximum speed to at least 175 birds per minute. He says it's a step toward
“removing red tape and needless regulatory obstacles holding back our economy.”
Allowing poultry processing plants to increase line speeds above 140 birds per minute was a bad idea when the Obama administration's USDA proposed it, and it’s still a bad idea.
Workers in poultry…
cmonforton | May 22, 2017Former Mayor Gayle McLaughlin remembers the phone calls from that evening. It was August 6, 2012. Constituents were calling McLaughlin at home to describe a huge cloud of black smoke infiltrated their neighborhoods. The cloud of pollution was coming from the Chevron refinery. A corroded pipe at the Chevron refinery failed, causing a massive cloud of hydrocarbon and steam that ignited.
Next was the shelter-in-place warning. It covered the mayor's town of Richmond, CA town and neighboring San Pablo. The warning lasted lasted five hours. Four transit line stations were closed.
Residents of…