regulation
cmonforton | December 18, 2012McClatchy Newspapers' Lindsay Wise reports in two stories today (here and here) on the USDA's proposal to "modernize" the poultry inspection process. The proposal, part of the Obama Administration's offerings in the name of eliminating burdensome regulations, will eliminate hundreds of Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) inspectors, allow line speeds to increase to 175 birds per minute, and cede to the poultry companies the task of spotting diseased and defective birds. USDA estimates the financial benefits to the poultry industry will exceed $250 million annually. Without those pesky…
cmonforton | December 10, 2012[Updated 1/5/2013]
[Updated 8/25/2013]
The world's largest labor organization for airline flight attendants--- the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) ---says it took four decades of work, but now its members working in airplane cabins will finally have rights and protections provided by federal OSHA. In an on-line letter to members, the AFA-CWA calls the victory: "OSHA extended to our cabins."
For decades AFA has pursued legal and regulatory solutions to extend OSHA safety and health protections to workers in the airline industry. The roadblocks have been enormous, but our union…
lborkowski | December 7, 2012by Kim Krisberg
The collective experience of domestic workers — house cleaners, nannies and caregivers — often remains hidden from view. For all practical purposes, they work in regulation-free environments without the benefits of labor, wage and health protections or oversight. There are no HR departments in people's homes.
But a new survey released in November has pulled back the curtain on the conditions and experiences domestic workers face, documenting issues such as wage exploitation, preventable on-the-job injuries and the little — if any — power domestic workers have in improving…
lborkowski | November 30, 2012This is the last in a series exploring the intersections between effectively caring for people living with chronic pain and the rise in unintentional poisoning deaths due to prescription painkillers. This week's story looks at the role of public health in curbing the opioid abuse and overdose problem. Read the previous stories in the series here and here. (We'll be publishing a bonus addition to the series next week — a discussion with Dr. Daniel Carr, director of the Pain Research, Education and Policy Program at Tufts University.)
by Kim Krisberg
A decade ago, only about 10 percent of the…
cmonforton | November 21, 2012It's become a Thanksgiving tradition: The President of the United States appearing in the White House Rose Garden to pardon a live turkey so the bird is spared from being part of the feast. This year, the Obama White House really got into the tradition. They created a Facebook page to allow all of us to decide whether a 40 pound turkey named Cobbler or one named Gobbler would forever avoid the butcher's knife.
But, this silly PR stunt isn't fooling food safety advocates. Cobbler and Gobbler were donated by the corporate giant Cargill from a grower in Rockingham County, Virginia. These two…
cmonforton | November 20, 2012
Shortly after taking office, the head of the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) acknowledged the troubling slow pace at which new worker safety regulations are put in place. In a February 2010 speech, David Michaels, PhD, MPH said:
"Some standards have taken more than a decade to establish, and that's not an acceptable response when workers are in danger."
In a March 2010 speech the OSHA chief added:
"Clearly the current system for issuing standards doesn't work well for those it's supposed to benefit - workers. When rulemaking takes years and even…
lborkowski | November 16, 2012This is the second in a series exploring the intersections between effectively caring for people living with chronic pain and the rise in unintentional poisoning deaths due to prescription painkillers. (The first post is here.) The series will explore the science and policy of balancing the need for treatment as well as the need to prevent abuse and diversion. This week's story looks at clinical efforts to reduce the risk of opioid abuse and overdose while still caring for patients; the next story will explore the role of public health officials in curbing opioid abuse.
by Kim Krisberg
Since…
Worker loses scalp in unguarded machine, her first week on-the-job, employer contests OSHA violation
cmonforton | November 13, 2012In late July, David Moye of the Huffington Post reported on a horrific incident at JR Engineering of Barberton, Ohio in which Monica Thayer, 25, was pulled by the hair into a piece of machinery.
"She was in the Barberton factory cleaning a machine that cuts steel tubing when her long brown hair, which was pulled back, got caught and yanked her face first into the device. 'My biggest fear was that I would be moments away from getting rescued, and then it would start-up and kill me,' she said in a report that aired on Fox affiliate WDAF-TV. 'The next thing I realized, it had sucked me up and…
lborkowski | November 9, 2012by Kim Krisberg
This is the first in a series exploring the intersections between effectively caring for people living with chronic pain and the rise in unintentional poisoning deaths due to prescription painkillers. The series will explore the science and policy of balancing the need for treatment as well as the need to prevent abuse and diversion. This week's story provides a look at the field of pain medicine and the patients it cares for; next week's story will look at the educational and risk reduction approaches physicians are employing to address opioid addiction and overdose.
It took…
cmonforton | November 7, 2012Hurray! The Presidential election is over. Let's hope this means that Obama Administration officials will come out from under their beds and embrace their regulatory authority to issue some strong public health and environmental regulations. At the Labor Department (DOL) there's much work to do to expand workers' rights, ensure workers' lives and health are protected, and improve the information provided by its agencies. Leave a comment with your ideas for immediate action by the Labor Department.
Here's my short version of my wish list for major DOL activities for the next 6 months:
MSHA…
cmonforton | November 2, 2012I was eight years old on the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. "Give a hoot, don't pollute!" was the slogan for us kids. When we'd see a newscast with factory stacks spewing thick gray smoke we'd say "yuck." We'd hold our noses when tailpipes of junker cars belched exhaust. In our minds, air pollution was a bad thing because of what we could see and smell. We sure didn't think about it as something that was cutting short people's lives.
One of the first prospective U.S. studies to demonstrate an association between air pollutants and premature mortality was published in the New England…
lborkowski | October 19, 2012by Kim Krisberg
At Palm Beach Groves in Lantana, Fla., a small, seasonal business that ships fresh citrus nationwide, employees have regularly voted between getting a raise or keeping their employer-based health insurance. Health coverage always wins, as many employees' ages and pre-existing conditions would have made it nearly impossible to get coverage on their own.
In her 12 years with Palm Beach Groves, general manager Louisa McQueeney has seen insurance premiums go up anywhere from 12 percent to 32 percent a year. Coverage for her family alone — herself, her husband and daughter — was $1…
cmonforton | October 16, 2012For some reason the news story stuck in my memory. The headline read:
"Oil rig explosion near Marshall in north central Oklahoma was caused by blowout, company attorney said."
Maybe it was because I'd been reading so many stories about the natural gas boom, that a news story about an oil rig caught my attention. It happened January 20, 2012 at the Logan Rig #7, operated by El Dorado Drilling, an affiliate of Kirkpatrick Oil. Maybe it was the news headline's word "blowout" which stirred memories of the Deepwater Horizon Maconda rig's infamous "blowout preventers." Maybe it was the lead…
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 | September 24, 2012[Update below, 9/26/2012]
When Secretary of Agricultural Tom Vilsack announced in January the USDA's proposal to modernize the poultry slaughter inspection system, he promised several things. He said the new system would save taxpayers and poultry producers money while improving food safety. (In "The Age of Greed," law professor Rena Steinzor explains on whose backs those savings are borne.) Secretary Vilsack also insisted that USDA inspectors
"will continue to conduct on-line carcass-by-carcass inspection as mandated by law."
That requirement is a long-standing provision of the Poultry…
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 (…
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…
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…
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…