Occupational Health & Safety
lborkowski | October 12, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Researchers studying workers’ compensation claims have found that almost one in 12 injured workers who begin using opioids were still using the prescription drugs three to six months later. It's a trend that, not surprisingly, can lead to addiction, increased disability and more work loss – but few doctors are acting to prevent it, explains a new report from the Massachusetts-based Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI).
Report researchers looked at longer-term opioid use in 21 states and how often doctors followed recommended treatment guidelines for monitoring…
cmonforton | October 10, 2012Planning a conference is a pain in the neck. There are loads of details to attend to and the only time you get a little relief is when you can cross tasks off that long, long to-do list. Now imagine learning that clergy, women's groups, labor organizations, immigrants' rights networks and others are urging individuals to boycott the venue where your conference is scheduled. You signed that hotel contract ages ago, paid that hefty deposit and crossed that item off your list. What a dilemma. It's the exact one faced in the last few weeks by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO…
lborkowski | October 8, 2012With the help of a University of Missouri School of Journalism fellowship and Investigative Reporters and Editors, The Oregonian's Anthony Schick spent the summer investigating child labor in Oregon, where agriculture plays a major role in the economy. After visiting fields and interviewing farmworkers, he reports that child labor is "far more widespread than statistics show." He describes Diana and Elvin Mendoza Sanchez, ages 12 and 9, whose typical summer days involve picking fruit from 6 or 7am until 5pm, and submitting their buckets under their father's name. Schick writes:
Nearly…
lborkowski | October 1, 2012California Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed two bills that worker advocates promoted. The Humane Treatment for Farm Workers Act, AB 2676, required that farmworkers' supervisors ensure the workers have continuous access to shade and enough cool water to drink one quart per hour during each shift; failing to provide water or shade under high heat conditions would be a misdemeanor punishable by fines or jail time.
The governor stated that instead of a new crime applying to one group of employers, the state should "continue to enforce our stringent standards for the benefit of all workers." But…
lborkowski | September 28, 2012by Kim Krisberg
It's not news that unemployment is bad for a person's health. But it turns out that just the threat of unemployment is bad as well.
A recent study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, found that perceived job insecurity is also linked to poor health outcomes, even among those who had jobs during the recession. Researchers found that perceived job insecurity was linked with "significantly higher odds" of fair or poor self-reported health as well as recent symptoms suggesting depression and anxiety attacks. The findings…
lborkowski | September 27, 2012Last week, warehouse workers from California's Inland Empire concluded a six-day, 50-mile march from Ontario, CA to Los Angeles with a rally at the LA City Hall. The workers are employed by NFI and Warestaff, which are contractors for Walmart. The Huffington Post's Kathleen Miles reports:
"The march, walking in the heat, was very easy compared to working in the warehouse," Raymond Castillo, a 23-year-old warehouse worker who marched with the group, told The Huffington Post.
Castillo is one of about 30 warehouse workers who walked out of the large warehousewhere they were employed in Mira…
lborkowski | September 21, 2012by Kim Krisberg
It really is a chemical world, which is bad news for people with asthma.
According to a recent report released in August, at this very moment from where I write, I'm fairly surrounded by objects and materials that contain chemicals that are known or suspected asthmagens — substances that can act as asthma triggers if inhaled. There's formaldehyde (it's in office furniture, wood flooring, curtains and drapes); maleic anhydride (it's in interior paint and tile flooring); hexamethylene diisocyanate (it's in metal storage shelving and decorative metal); and diisodecyl phthalate (…
lborkowski | September 20, 2012Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the preliminary results of the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries: 4,609 fatal work injuries were recorded in 2011, down from 4,690 in 2010 (note that the 2010 number is the revised final total, though, while the 2011 figure is preliminary). This works out to a rate of 3.5 deaths per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2011, vs. 3.6 per 100,000 in 2010.
BLS notes that fatal work injuries declined in the construction sector and private mining industry (which includes oil and gas extraction) and increased in private truck transportation. The…
lborkowski | September 13, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
“Organic, schmorganic,” wrote New York Times foreign editor and International Herald Tribune editor-at-large Roger Cohen, summing up his “takeaway” from the study by Stanford University researchers that examined studies comparing the nutritional value and pesticide residues in organic and “conventionally” grown food. The study concluded that evidence was lacking to show that organic food is more nutritious than conventionally grown food, but that organic food did have about 30 percent fewer pesticide residues. “I’d rather be against nature and have more people better fed…
cmonforton | September 12, 2012A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the number of major regulatory actions taken by OSHA during the Presidential election years 1984 to 2012. I was exploring the popular notion that OSHA's regulatory activities always slow down during a Presidential election year. I learned that the number of final rules, proposed rules, and advanced notices of proposed rules issued by OSHA slowed substantially over the last 28 years, but I needed more data to discern whether the number of these actions actually slowed during Presidential election years. The chart below provides that data.
In five of the…
lborkowski | September 10, 2012Both houses of California's legislature have now passed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights (AB 889), which extends the rights to overtime pay and rest and meal breaks to domestic employees such as nannies and housekeepers. If Governor Jerry Brown signs the bill into law, California will become the second state in the nation to extend these basic workplace protections to domestic employees, who have long been exempted from legislation that protects most of the rest of us. (New York passed a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010, and provided a model for the California bill.) Ai-Jen Poo,…
cmonforton | September 7, 2012"Going to work sick or losing pay" is not a choice that Seattle workers should be forced to make. That's how Seattle City Council member Nick Licata why he sponsored the City's paid sick leave legislation. The new law took effect September 1. It is just one of the new State and local laws profiled in our new report The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2011 - Summer 2012.
Earlier this week, Liz wrote about the report's first section on new research on worker health and safety, and I wrote about the accomplishments and setbacks on the federal scene. The report's final…
cmonforton | September 6, 2012As Liz Borkowski noted on Tuesday, we started a new tradition this year to mark Labor Day in the U.S. We published The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2011 - Summer 2012. The 42-page report highlights some of the key research and activities in the U.S. on worker health and safety topics.
We know that many advocates, reporters and researchers look forward every April to the AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job report with its compilation of data on work-related injuries reported, number of federal and state inspections, violations cited, and penalties assessed. We set out to…
egrossman | September 4, 2012By Elizabeth Grossman
We’ve heard repeatedly throughout this political season and throughout this Congress that environmental regulations stifle economic growth and destroy jobs. Yet a new economic analysis shows that in recent years, environmental restoration projects have created significantly more jobs per million dollars of investment than other industries, including coal, gas, and nuclear energy. The study, conducted by Peter Edwards, a natural resource economist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and colleagues, examined job creation resulting from American…
lborkowski | September 4, 2012In honor of (US) Labor Day, Celeste Monforton and I have started what we intend to be a new Labor Day tradition: publication of a report that highlights some of the important research and activities in occupational health in the US over the past year. The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2011 - Summer 2012 is now available online. We want it to be a resource for activists, regulators, researchers, and anyone else who values safe and healthy workplaces. Much as the AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job report focuses attention on workplace injury and illness statistics each…
lborkowski | August 31, 2012by Kim Krisberg
It's Tuesday evening and as usual, the small parking lot outside the Workers Defense Project on Austin's eastside is packed. The dusty lot is strewn with cars and pick-up trucks parked wherever they can fit and get in off the road. I've arrived well before the night's activities begin, so I easily secure a spot. But my gracious guide and translator, a college intern named Alan Garcia, warns me that I might get blocked in. It happens all the time, he says.
It was the first of two August evenings I'd spend observing the project in action and meeting the workers who help lead its…
lborkowski | August 29, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
What industry employs approximately 20 million Americans, or one out of five US private-sector workers, but whose median wage has workers taking home less than $20,000 a year? Clue: It’s the same industry in which it’s actually legal to pay $2.13 an hour, for workers who qualify as “tipped” employees. Answer: The food service industry, which includes agricultural and farmworkers, food processing and slaughterhouse employees, as well as those working in food distribution, retail, restaurants, and other food service businesses.
In a survey for a report released earlier…
cmonforton | August 28, 2012I'll be the first to admit I've criticized the Obama Administration's OSHA for failing to issue or even propose many new worker safety and health standards. As I wrote earlier this month, under President Obama and Secretary Solis, OSHA has only issued three new worker safety rules, two of which were safety standards affecting discrete industries and the third, a rule broadly endorsed by big business. Some colleagues and commentators attribute this mediocre record to regulatory resistance in the White House, pressure from Republicans on Capitol Hill, too few staff in the OSHA standards…
'An issue that affects all of us': Young workers center takes on wage theft in the Rio Grande Valley
lborkowski | August 27, 2012by Kim Krisberg
For six months, Jorge Rubio worked at a local chain of tortilla bakeries and taquerias in the cities of Brownsville and San Benito, both in the very southern tip of Texas. Rubio, 42, prepared the food, cleaned equipment, served customers. Eventually, he decided to quit after being overworked for months.
On his last day of work this past January, his employer refused to pay him the usual $50 for an 11-hour workday. The employer told Rubio that sales were too low to pay him. A couple months later, Rubio was referred to Fuerza del Valle, a young workers center in Texas' Rio…
lborkowski | August 23, 2012North Carolina's News & Observer has published a terrific in-depth series on “ghost policies” – inadequate workers’ compensation policies that save employers money but leave injured workers without the safety net they’re supposed to have. North Carolina requires employers with three or more employees to have workers’ compensation coverage, and general contractors often require coverage even for smaller firms. But a News & Observer investigation found that more than 30,000 businesses in the state lack the required coverage. Mandy Locke writes about one injured worker whose employer’s…