safety

Terry Leon Lakey, 51, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, September 16, 2015 while working at Terex Services in Waco, TX.  KCEN reports: *The incident occurred at 5:40 am when “the victim was crushed by a piece of hydraulic equipment.” The CSB affiliate in Waco was more specific, reporting: *Mr. Lakey “was crushed by the hydraulic aerial lift that he was servicing.” The Waco Tribune indicates: *"Terex officials did not answer the phone Wednesday and did not return phone messages." Terex is multinational firm that manufacturers and services industrial machinery and equipment. Its…
Investigative reporter Mark Collette at the Houston Chronicle interviewed more than a dozen former employees with a combined 213 years of experience on the production lines of Blue Bell’s flagship ice cream plant in Brenham, Texas, finding stories of routine food safety lapses and failures to protect worker safety. The company made headlines over the summer after a national listeria outbreak was traced back to the well-known ice cream manufacturer. Among the former workers interviewed was Sabien Colvin, who lost parts of three of his fingers after a machine he was cleaning unexpectedly turned…
When it comes to protecting workers, advocates often turn to science. Whether it’s research on the effectiveness of an intervention, new injury surveillance data or novel methods for pinpointing particularly vulnerable workers, science is key to advancing workplace safety. In our fourth edition of “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety,” we highlight some of the most interesting and noteworthy research of the past year. On the topic of occupational asthma, researchers examined state-based trends and if patients talk with their doctors about whether their asthma is related to work…
Paid sick leave, new rights for temp workers, and extending OSHA protections to public sector employees were among the many victories that unfolded at the state and local levels in the last 12 months and that we highlight in this year’s edition of “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety.” In California, a number of new worker safety laws went into effect. Among them, a new law that holds companies responsible if they contract with staffing agencies that engage in wage theft and fail to maintain workers’ compensation insurance. California health care workers gained new protections…
Reporter Anna Merlan at Jezebel chronicles the stories of women truck drivers who experienced severe sexual harassment and rape after enrolling in a training program. Her story begins with Tracy (who asked Merlan not to use her last name), who attended a driving school that contracts with Cedar Rapids Steel Transport Van Expedited (CRST), which is among the largest trucking companies in the country. During her training, Tracy was matched with a seasoned trucker who was supposed to help her safely accrue the training hours she needed before she could drive a truck on her own. Merlan reports:…
More than 1,000 U.S. workers have died due to job-related events in the first seven months of 2015, according to new data from the U.S. Worker Fatality Database. Researchers estimate that total fatalities will likely reach 4,500 by the end of the year, which would mean that the nation’s occupational death rate experienced little, if no, improvement over previous years. The database, which launched last year and represents the largest open-access data set of individual workplace fatalities ever collected in the U.S., also breaks down 2015 data by state. So far, Texas leads the pack, followed…
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is no stranger to budget cuts — the agency is already so underfunded that it would take its inspectors nearly a century, on average, to visit every U.S. workplace at least once. In some states, it would take two centuries. Unfortunately, appropriations bills now making their way through Congress don’t bode much better for OSHA. Earlier this month, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) and Public Citizen, along with 74 fellow organizations that care about worker health and safety, sent a letter to…
A Republican-led plan to ban unions at the Internal Revenue Service could leave agency workers without union representation and make all federal unions susceptible to similar tactics, according to Joe Davidson writing in the Washington Post. Davidson reports that the plan, which was released earlier this month, was included in a bipartisan report on accusations of political interference at the IRS, though no evidence was presented that union members took part in political favoritism. The anti-union proposal, put forth by Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, came just days before…
My husband and I (along with our 70 pound golden retriever) recently spent 26 hours in our car driving from Texas to Michigan. That’s lots of time to kibitz on all sorts of topics. He heard me rant about four workers killed on the job last fall at DuPont’s LaPorte, TX plant because of gross safety violations. At the same time, the corporate giant earns millions selling its safety “expertise” to other companies. My husband heard me repeat my complaints about the small financial sanctions imposed on companies for violating fundamental safety regulations, even in cases of a worker's death. The…
Ascencion Molina Medina, 44, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, July 30, 2015 while working at a construction site in Greenville, SC. Greenville On-line reports: Medina “lost his footing” and fell about 30 feet, according to the county coroner. He died several hours later at the local hospital. The construction project is a new mixed use development called Main + Stone which will house residential and retail properties. The Beach Company is the developer and the project broke ground in late 2014. The general contractor of the Main + Stone development is Yeargin Potter Shackelford…
Timothy Winding’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of federal OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer KCI Inc and Ford Motor Company. The 50 year-old was working in December 2014 at the Ford Motor Company’s Kansas City assembly plant in Claycomo, MO, when he was killed on the job. The initial press reports indicated that Winding was part of a crew of contractors who were working to retool the plant for a new line of Ford trucks. While working on a body marriage machine, a safety rod broke and Winding was crushed. I wrote about the…
Thousands of foreign workers in the U.S. — workers here legally through a visa program that allows employers to import workers from abroad — are abused, imprisoned and exploited. And the government does little to stop it, according to an investigation by BuzzFeed News. Reporters Jessica Garrison and Ken Besinger and data editor Jeremy Singer-Vine began their investigation with the story of Marisela Valdez and Isy Gonzalez, two H-2 visa workers who peeled crawfish at L.T. West Inc. in Louisiana, where they say their employer took away their passports, sexually harassed them, forced them to…
[Updated 7/24/15 below] I heard very troubling remarks yesterday from a member of the Chemical Safety Board. Mr. Manny Ehrlich said that he has a “fundamental philosophical disagreement” with the staff about making recommendations for new safety regulations. Mr. Ehrlich accepted a job and was confirmed by the Senate to make recommendations to prevent catastrophic chemical incidents. Now he tells us that he is taking an entire category of fixes off the table? The Chemical Safety Board is modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). I know I’d be concerned if I heard members…
A physician from the Houston area taught me a new phrase: “Code Silver.” Dr. Stella Fitzgibbons had an op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman yesterday about assaults and other violence in US hospitals to healthcare workers. She begins: “You’ve been waiting in your hospital bed for pain medicine or some ice water, and are starting to get cranky about the nurse’s delay. Then you find out that it happened because another patient tried to strangle her with her stethoscope. Or you hear ‘Code Silver’ on the overhead speakers, and a nursing assistant comes in, wedges the door shut, and helps you…
Every day in the U.S., more than 40 people die after overdosing on prescription painkillers. Deaths from a more notorious form of opiates — heroin — increased five-fold between 2001 and 2013. Addressing this problem — one that’s often described as a public health crisis — requires action on many fronts, from preventing abuse in the first place to getting those addicted into treatment. But when it comes to overdoses, there’s one answer we know works: naloxone. Naloxone is a safe prescription medicine that’s highly effective in reversing an otherwise deadly opioid overdose. Typically, emergency…
Jason Strycharz’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of federal OSHA in the agency's citations against his employer Kloeckner Metals. The 40 year-old was working in January 2015 at the company’s warehouse in Middletown, CT. The initial press reports indicated that Strycharz was struck by a piece of steel swinging from a crane. I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press. OSHA inspectors conducted an inspection at the facility following Jason Strycharz’s death. The agency recently issued a citation to the firm. The agency…
At The Nation, leaders in the domestic workers movement write about what’s next in their efforts to improve conditions for the thousands who work in people’s homes, often with no rights or recourse. Authored by Ai-jen Poo and Andrea Cristina Mercado, both with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the article chronicles the “legacy of exclusion” that domestic workers have experienced, such as their exemption from federal labor protections, as well as the day-to-day conditions they often face in people’s homes — conditions that can result in serious and long-term injuries. The authors write…
Gerald Lyle Thompson, 51, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, June 30, 2015 while working in Lakeville, Minnesota for DSM Excavating. KSTP reports: His employer, DSM Excavating was hired by Ryland Homes for the excavation project. The trench in which Thompson was working caved in on him. The Star-Tribune reports: Thompson and his brother were “installing drain tile on the perimeter of a lot…when the trench collapsed ...” The trench was 6 to 8 feet deep and Thompson was trapped at the bottom of it when the soil collapsed onto him. The Dakota County Special Operations team recovered…
A key argument in the movement to expand sick leave to all workers is that such policies help curb the spread of contagious diseases. And there are few workplaces where that concept is more important than in health care settings, where common diseases can be especially dangerous for patients with compromised immune systems. However, a new study finds that despite such risks, doctors and nurses still feel pressured to report to work while sick. Published earlier this week in JAMA Pediatrics, the study is based on anonymous surveys conducted in a large children’s hospital in Philadelphia and…
Recycling our garbage is good for the planet, but a new report finds that the workers who process our recyclable materials often face dangerous and unnecessary conditions that put their health and safety at serious risk. Released in late June, “Sustainable and Safe Recycling: Protecting Workers Who Protect the Planet” chronicles the many hazards that recycling workers encounter on the job as well as ways the recycling industry and local officials can collaborate to improve and ensure worker safety. The report — a collaboration between the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, the…