right to know
kkrisberg | March 24, 2014Thanks to a unanimous vote of California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board last Thursday, workers get to hold on to a robust chemical right-to-know rule that puts their health and safety first. The vote also means that California workers will reap the benefits of more meaningful right-to-know rules than those at the federal level.
“It’s a human right to know about the hazards of the work you’re doing,” said Dorothy Wigmore, occupational health specialist at Worksafe, a state-based organization dedicated to eliminating workplace hazards. “If employers don’t know about the…
egrossman | March 21, 2012by Elizabeth Grossman
His job, the Metalworkers Alliance of the Philippines union leader told us, was assembling the electronics - the wire- or cable-harnesses - that go into cars. The work involved soldering, using flux, along with epoxies, and various degreasers or solvents. He and his co-workers didn't know the actual names of the substances they were working with or what was in those products. They also didn't know if it was a coincidence, but two co-workers had become seriously ill and the union leader and other co-workers had begun to worry that these diseases might have been caused by…