workers' compensation
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…
lborkowski | July 9, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Last month, more than 70 ironworkers walked off an ExxonMobil construction site near Houston, Texas. The workers, known as rodbusters in the industry, weren't members of a union or backed by powerful organizers; they decided amongst themselves to unite in protest of unsafe working conditions in a state that has the highest construction worker fatality rate in the country.
The workers reported multiple problems with the ExxonMobil subcontractor who hired them, including not being paid on time, not having enough water on site and no access to medical care in the event of an…
lborkowski | July 6, 2012By Anthony Robbins
On 19 June, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and other Federal agencies and private sector groups concerned with worker health convened a two-day workshop at the Department of Labor’s Frances Perkins Building in Washington. About 100 researchers gathered to discuss how workers compensation data could be analyzed and used to study worker safety and health. NIOSH asked me to moderate the first session. I was flattered, but for all my roles in public health since leaving NIOSH’s directorship in 1981, I was surely not an expert in workers’ compensation…
lborkowski | June 18, 2012by Kim Krisberg
When most of us think of sustainability and construction, the usual suspects probably come to mind: efficient cooling and heating, using nontoxic building materials, minimizing environmental degradation — in other words, being green. But in Austin, Texas, a new effort is working to expand the definition of sustainability from the buildings themselves to the hands that put them together.
Launched about a year ago, the Workers Defense Project's Premier Community Builders program certifies major new developments as sustainable for workers. That means making sure construction…
cmonforton | January 20, 2012Money talks, as the saying goes, and a recently published paper on the annual cost of work-related injuries and illnesses should get policymakers to listen up. The number is staggering: $250 Billion, and it's a figure on par with health conditions like cancer, coronary heart disease, and diabetes that attract much more attention and research funding.
The author, J. Paul Leigh, PhD, a professor of health economics at University of California Davis, assembled data from more than a dozen sources to estimate the annual economic burden of occupational injuries and illnesses. Using data from 2007…
cmonforton | September 22, 2011At a recent congressional hearing called "Workforce challenges facing the agricultural industry," one Minnesota employer explained why he relies on "guest workers" to fill his seasonal jobs:
"...few Americans who are seriously seeking work will apply for, accept, and remain in seasonal and intermittent employment, especially in the agricultural sector. Many who are hired do not last long as they find the work too physically demanding or repetitive, are not willing to work in unfavorable weather conditions, or find the work schedule too demanding."
Under the U.S. Labor Department's H-2A…
cmonforton | September 16, 2011[Update (10/11/2011) below]
Phyllis Zorn of the Enid (OK) News and Eagle reports that the employer of the two teenage workers who lost legs last month in a grain auger failed to maintain workers' compensation insurance. She writes:
"Oklahoma Department of Labor has fined the company $750 for failing to comply with workers' compensation law, the maximum fine allowed in the scenario under current law. 'Zaloudek Grain Co. had not carried workers' compensation insurance for the five months prior to the accident,' Labor Commissioner Mark Costello said. 'Zaloudek had obtained workers'…
cmonforton | August 29, 2011When OSHA proposed penalties in January 2011 totaling nearly $1.4 million against two Illinois grain handling companies, I noticed the agency's news release mentioned the employers' workers compensation insurance carrier. It was the first time that I'd see this in an OSHA news release, and I wondered if it was the start of something new. Apparently, not.
I reviewed the 280+ news releases on enforcement cases issued by OSHA between February 2011 and August 24, and only identified two in which the agency mentioned the employers' work comp insurance carrier.
One appeared in an April 2011…
cmonforton | January 25, 2011OSHA proposed penalties totaling nearly $1.4 million against two Illinois companies for violations of safety standards that led to the deaths of three workers last summer in grain elevators. Haasbach LLC received 24 violations, including 12 classified as willful, for failing to take steps to workers from engulfed 30 feet deep in corn. Alex Pacas, 19, and Wyatt Whitebread, 14, died at Haasbach's Mt. Carroll site on July 28. Two other young workers escaped, but one of them suffered serious injuries. In addition to the OSHA proposed penalty of $550,000, Haasbach was also fined $68,125 from…
sb admin | June 17, 2009The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. reports that one of West Virginia's oldest and largest law firms, Jackson Kelly PLLC, is being sued for hiding evidence of coal miners' black lung disease. Ward writes:
"Earlier this year, an investigative panel of the state's Lawyer Disciplinary Board filed misconduct charges against Douglas A. Smoot. Smoot hid a key portion of coal miner Elmer Daugherty's medical examination report during a 2001 case, a board investigative panel alleged. A hearing on those allegations is scheduled to start June 18. And two lawsuits filed last month in Raleigh…
sb admin | March 31, 2009The New York Times' R.N. Kleinfield and Steven Greenhouse offer us a glimpse of the nightmare known as the workers' compensation system. In their article A World of Hurt: For Injured Workers, a Costly Legal Swamp,* they report from the Queens NY office of the NY State Workers' Compensation Board and explain that injured workers:
"come to the board seeking authorization for medical treatment and replacement wages...what they find instead is...a $ 5.5 billion-a-year state-run bureaucracy that struggles to treat workers with due speed, protect employers from fraud or mute tensions in the…
sb admin | January 7, 2009What do the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Migrant Clinicians Network, Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, and 65 other organizations have in common? They've all endorsed the "Protecting Workers on the Job Agenda", a collaborative product of the American Public Health Association's Occupational Health and Safety Section and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. The platform, released just in time for Labor Secretary-Designee Hilda Solis' confirmation hearing on Friday, outlines seven goals for improving our nationâs programs for preventing work-…
sb admin | June 5, 2008Set your wristwatch alarms or your VCR for this Sunday (June 7) at 7:00 pm (EST) to watch CBS's 60 Minutes and a hard-hitting story on OSHA and its failure to protect workers and communities from combustible dust explosions. CBS's correspondent Scott Pelley  interviews Carolyn Merritt (former Member of the US Chemical Safety Board), Tammy Miser (whose brother Shawn was killed in an aluminum dust explosion), Edwin Foulke (OSHA Asst. Secretary), and at least one EXPERIENCED but UNDISCLOSED speaker. Â
Many thanks to the CBS crew who pursued and persisted with this story: David…
sb admin | March 7, 2008The scene was an icy morning in western Maryland, along the Garrett County and Allegany County lines. Mr. Dwight Samuel Colmer, 41, a truck driver with Western Maryland Lumber Company was hauling a load of coal just before 11:00 AM when his truck began to slide. The State of Maryland's "Motor Vehicle Accident Report" says:
"...hit guard rail, and overturned to the passenger side. Driver was ejected and crushed under the dump truck and died from the injuries."
The report indicates the incident occurred on a public road called Bartlett Street. Is this a work-related fatality?Â
Well, it…
sb admin | March 3, 2008OSHA's Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke is expected to travel to Port Wentworth, Georgia today, more than 3 weeks after a horrific combustible dust explosion at Imperial Sugar took 12 workers' lives. Another 11 workers remain in critical condition at a burn treatment center in Augusta. Apparently, pressure from Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) and Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) convinced Mr. Foulke that a trip to the Dixie Crystals' community is appropriate. It is, afterall, a workplace disaster on par with the January 2006 Sago disaster which also claimed the lives of 12 men, and…
sb admin | November 9, 2007Tyler Kahle, 19, (photo) and Craig Bagley, 27 (photo) were killed four months ago at the NovaGold Resources' Rock Creek mine near Nome, Alaska. MSHA is completing its investigation; so far, all the Kahle family has been told is that the lift basket was 90 feet off the ground and "it tipped over." Sadly, what the Kahle family has learned, is that mothers, fathers and other family-member victims of workplace fatalities have few if any rights, the exclusive liability provision of state workers' compensation laws is a cruel joke, and families are excluded from the fatality…
sb admin | September 10, 2007By David Michaels
It is time for Congress to enlist the nationâs science and policy experts to help develop a federal workers' compensation program for 9/11 rescue, recovery, and cleanup workers. The inadequacy of state worker programs led Congress to legislate special compensation programs for uranium miners, and civilian workers in nuclear weapons facilities. We did not require the families of those killed in the terrorist attacks to rely on state workers' compensation programs. The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (pdf) provided more than $7 billion to families of the victims. Â…
sb admin | July 10, 2007If you have a job, do you know who your employer is? The answer isnât always straightforward, César Cuauhtémoc GarcÃa Hernández points out in a recent Boston College Third World Law Journal article, and the implications can be profound.
In âFeeble, Circular, and Unpredictable: OSHAâs Failure to Protect Temporary Workers,â GarcÃa details the disadvantages temporary workers face. Temporary work is unstable, and few of the workers â who tend to be women, blacks, and Latinos â receive health insurance, paid vacation days, sick leave, or pension plans. The fact that many temporary workers are…
sb admin | June 21, 2007by Les Boden
Iâm going to answer this question. But before I do, Iâm going to have to explain a few things about (ugh!) insurance.
If something bad happens to an insured person or company, the insurer is supposed to help soften the financial blow. You need a $50,000 operation and your medical insurer is supposed to cover most, if not all, the cost. A restaurant burns to the ground and the property/casualty insurer is supposed to cover much of the cost of the damages.
But insurers also are investment institutions. We pay the premium, they invest it, and then they pay it back to those of us who…
sb admin | May 21, 2007The sub-headline in Andrew Wolfson's story tells it all about the perils of workers' compensation for injured and ill workers:
"It's either meager benefits or nearly impossible suit."Â
The Louisville-Courier Journal reporter's May 19 article describes both the physical and economic challenges faced by William D. "Billy" Parker, who lost both arms four months ago in a drywall shedding machine while working at Six Sigma Inc. in Jeffersontown, KY.  Mr. Parker, 39, is a single father, raising his 15-year old son (who now cooks the meals at home and, every morning, applies deodorant under…