Occupational Health & Safety
cmonforton | May 29, 2013Nearly 40 percent of work-related injuries and illnesses seen in U.S. emergency rooms are not billed to workers’ compensation---the insurance program that’s designed to cover them. An increasing number of patients suffering from injuries or illnesses caused by exposures at work are using their private insurance, paying out of pocket or billing Medicaid or Medicare, instead of filing the appropriate claim to their employers’ workers’ compensation insurer. Those are the findings of a new study published in the journal Health Services Research by researchers with CDC’s National Institute for…
lborkowski | May 28, 2013Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved immigration legislation that would overhaul US immigration laws. Alan Gomez reports in USA Today:
The bill was produced by a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight. With four of those members on the committee, the bill survived 212 amendments over five lengthy hearings.
Left intact was the core of the bill, which will allow the nation's 11 million unauthorized immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship, add significant investments in border security and fundamentally alter the legal immigration system of the future.
The…
egrossman | May 22, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
What constitutes a disease? If the symptoms are sub-clinical and the cause is an environmental contaminant, what is the appropriate public health response? Once an environmental hazard is identified, who is responsible for removing that hazard to protect people from ongoing exposure and to what extent – or is society’s responsibility limited to treating those individuals already harmed?
These are questions central to Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and Fate of America’s Children, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner’s provocative new book that tells the disheartening…
cmonforton | May 15, 2013Spring 2013 looked like it would be a banner season for progress by the Obama Administration on new worker safety regulations. In the Labor Department's most recent regulatory agenda, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) indicated they'd be taking key steps in March through June 2013 on rules to better protect workers from health and safety hazards. I thought these optimistic projections meant President Obama's second term would be a more productive one than his first. With the Presidential election behind them, the…
lborkowski | May 14, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Earlier this month, Florida lawmakers wrapped up their latest legislative session. And nearly 500 miles south of Tallahassee in Miami-Dade County, workers' rights advocates breathed yet another sigh of relief.
Ever since Miami-Dade adopted the nation's first countywide wage theft ordinance in 2010, it's been under attack. For the first two years after its passage, state legislators tried to pass legislation to pre-empt local communities from passing their own wage theft laws; this last legislative session, they tried again but included a carve out for Miami-Dade and for…
lborkowski | May 13, 2013While the official death toll from the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh was still rising (it has now passed 1,100), a fire at another garment factory in Dhaka killed eight people. (If you haven't yet seen Elizabeth Grossman's post from Friday, she explores the reaction from the Asian Network for the Rigths of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV).) In the Los Angeles Times, Mark Magnier notes that although this latest disaster has spurred additional calls for reform, change will be a challenge:
The Bangladesh garment industry, a national golden goose, is…
“Enough is enough” – Asian labor rights advocates call for change as death toll mounts in Bangladesh
egrossman | May 10, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman, reporting from Bangkok, Thailand
As bodies of workers continued to be pulled from the wreckage of the collapsed Rana Plaza factory complex outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, pushing the death toll past 900, and news was breaking of at least seven deaths in a garment factory fire in Bangladesh on May 9, labor rights advocates meeting in Bangkok called for changes in the system that has led to disasters that have killed more than 1300 workers in the past eight months. “Events of the last 8 months have clearly demonstrated a complete failure of the CSR [corporate social…
cmonforton | May 8, 2013The rate of work-related fatal injuries in some States is more than three times the national rate of 3.5 deaths per 100,000 workers. That's just one disturbing fact contained in the AFL-CIO's annual Death on the Job report which was released this week. In Wyoming, for example, the rate of fatal work-related injuries is 11.6 per 100,000, based on 32 deaths in the State in 2011 (the year for which the most recent data is available.) North Dakota's and Montana's rate is 11.2, based on 44 and 49 deaths, respectively. The rate in Alaska is 11.1, based on 39 deaths. In total, 4,693 workers…
cmonforton | May 7, 2013"Snazzy safety glasses," I said to the dental hygienist who was just about to ask me to open wide. Something about the pink rims caught my eye and led me to a remark that showed my age:
"I remember when dentists didn't wear gloves, or masks, or eye protection."
I not only recall the bare hands of my dentist circa 1970-1980, I also remember the hullabaloo from dentists when new federal regulations were proposed in 1989 requiring them to provide such protection for their hygienists. At the time, the term "AIDS' was less than 10 years old, and exposure to HIV in the U.S. was considered a…
cmonforton | April 30, 2013I take mine black, but millions of U.S. coffee drinkers love their java beans flavored to taste like hazelnut, buttered toffee, french toast and amaretto. One supplier in Florida boasts of 47 different flavors. Fans of flavored coffee beans pay a premium for them, but some workers in the bean processing plants are paying a steeper price: their health.
This week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report describes cases of obliterative bronchiolitis diagnosed in two individuals who worked at a Texas coffee-processing company. Bronchiolitis obliterans is a rare and serious obstructive lung…
cmonforton | April 25, 2013USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack seems determined to implement a new poultry slaughter inspection system, despite strong calls from the food safety and public health communities for him to withdraw it. At an April 17 congressional hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittees on Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA and Related Agencies, Vilsack indicated that the new regulation would be completed soon, according to Congressional Quarterly.
Opponents say the proposal will do little to improve food safety, at the same time reducing USDA's ranks of poultry inspectors and shifting their food-…
lborkowski | April 24, 2013For this Workers' Memorial Week, the National Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) has released "Preventable Deaths: The Tragedy of Workplace Fatalities," a report that tells the stories of six workers killed on the job and promotes solutions to prevent other workers from sharing similar fates. The report notes that in 2011, 4,609 workers were killed, and construction was the deadliest industry sector, with 721 worker fatalities. The report tells the story of one construction worker killed on the job:
One day in April 2009, Orestes Martinez (29) and two co-workers…
cmonforton | April 23, 2013The funeral services are beginning this week for the 10 volunteer firefighters and the five other individuals who were fatally injured by the horrific explosion at West Fertilizer. The initial call about the fire at the plant was made to the West Volunteer fire department at 8:30 pm. The explosion occurred 21 minutes later. The Dallas Morning News is reporting that the firefighters knew the plant stored chemicals used in explosives, "but whether that knowledge factored into the attempts to put out the fatal blaze near the plant remained unclear." The Texas State Fire Marshall's Office…
lborkowski | April 22, 2013This week is Workers' Memorial Week, when we remember the thousands of men and women who die on the job each year and work to prevent future deaths by improving workplace health and safety. Workers' Memorial Day is recognized worldwide on April 28, and more than a dozen US communities are holding local Workers' Memorial Week events. In the US, nearly 5,000 workers are killed on the job each year and, as the AFL-CIO notes in its annual Death on the Job report, an estimated 50,000 die from occupational diseases.
This week begins in the shadow of a tragedy in Texas, where a massive fire and…
lborkowski | April 19, 2013by Kim Krisberg
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 during the morning hours are hired to work construction at residential housing sites. Work arrangements are hardly formal, to say the least, 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.
For years, Rodriguez, who started as an organizer and is now the union's…
US industrial sand production increases dramatically, yet industry says worker protection too costly
egrossman | April 18, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
Since the White House Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) began reviewing the Labor Department’s proposed rule to reduce by one-half the permissible workplace exposure to respirable crystalline silica more than two year ago, the US has seen a dramatic increase in industrial sand mining, a major route of workers’ exposure to silica dust. As Celeste Monforton reported for The Pump Handle on March 20th, OIRA’s review of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) draft proposed rule crystalline silica…
cmonforton | April 17, 2013A comprehensive, bi-partisan immigration reform bill was filed today by the "gang of eight" U.S. Senators. We've written previously about the abuses endured by many workers under the existing guest worker programs (here, here, here, here) and I am particularly curious to see the remedies proposed in the bill. It will take me a few weeks to digest the 844-page bill, but I took a quick peek for provisions related to labor' rights and workplace safety. Here is some of what I read:
(1) The bill would create a new visa program (a W-visa) for low-skilled immigrant workers. (See Subtitle G at…
cmonforton | April 16, 2013An analysis by Mine Safety and Health News (MSHN) finds that nearly $70 million in delinquent penalties are owed to the U.S. Treasury by mining companies for violations of federal mine safety and health regulations. One of the top offenders is James C. Justice II, the owner of the Greenbriar Resort in White Sulphur Springs, WV. He owes more than $1.33 million in delinquent penalties.
MSHN notes that his net worth is estimated by Forbes magazine to be $1.7 billion. MSHN's analysis shows 60 mine operators have racked up more than $100,000 in delinquent penalties, and there are seven who each…
Cracking down on deadbeat bosses: Wage theft victory a milestone in Chicago's worker center movement
lborkowski | April 15, 2013by Kim Krisberg
For Angel Nava, Chicago's newly adopted wage theft ordinance is particularly personal.
Until recently, Nava had worked at the same car wash business in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood for 14 years. The 55-year-old employee did it all — washing, detailing, buffing — for about 50 hours each week. Then, his boss decided to stop paying overtime.
In fact, Nava didn't receive the overtime he was owed for the last four years he worked at the car wash. He told me (though a translator) that none of his co-workers were receiving overtime either — "everyone was very upset." Nava said he…
lborkowski | April 12, 2013Yesterday, the Philadelphia City Council fell one vote short of overriding Mayor Michael Nutter's veto of legislation that would have required businesses with more than five employees to let workers earn paid sick leave. This was the second time the Council had passed a paid sick leave bill, only to have it vetoed.
The news for workers was better in New York City late last month, when legislators reached a compromise: a paid sick leave law that will only apply to businesses with at least 15 employees, but that nonetheless will provide this important benefit to an estimated one million workers…