worker fatality

occupational fatalities

Pres Trump

World Trade Center Health Program

Labor Day yearbook: All workers deserve safety, dignity, respect and justice on the job

kkrisberg — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 15:55:44 +0000

Labor Day yearbook: All workers deserve safety, dignity, respect and justice on the job

Typically, we like to end the annual “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety” on an uplifting note. But this time around — to be honest — that was a hard sell.

Take a quick look through the 2017 yearbook and you’ll quickly glean that worker health and safety is very much at risk under the new administration and from lawmakers in the states. From the attempted rollback of a new federal beryllium exposure standard to state efforts to weaken workers’ compensation systems, the view from 2017 does not seem terribly promising. On the other hand, the fight for workers’ rights has never been easy — it’s always been a movement defined by taking on the powerful by giving voice to the powerless. In that way, organizers and advocates are well prepared for the fight ahead — and they have a long history of labor accomplishments from which to draw strength.

On that note, we leave you with an excerpt from the 2017 yearbook — a section called “The Year Ahead”:

Let’s be frank, the year ahead does not look great. It looks hard and disappointing and upsetting. Beyond the politics and talking points and arguments, the cold, hard fact on the ground is that weakening key mechanisms that create safe and fair working conditions — like data collection, transparency, research and enforcement — emboldens unscrupulous employers and puts workers in harm’s way. This is a fact.

Just as this yearbook was going to press in August, worker safety advocates noticed that OSHA has scrubbed its worker fatality list from its home page and buried the link on an internal page. Now, the list only contains incidents for which a citation was issued and removes the names of deceased workers. A Department of Labor spokesperson told reporters the change was meant to protect the privacy of workers’ families. The truth is that OSHA leadership decided to weaken one its most useful enforcement tools. The truth is that removing workers’ names only protects the privacy of employers who may have needlessly put them at mortal risk. A decision like this dehumanizes workplace fatalities, erasing from the raw data the real people and families behind the numbers.

Word of OSHA’s website change began circulating around worker advocate listservs and on occupational safety and health sites. By that afternoon, the news had popped up in Politico. Just as quickly as advocates had spread word about the problem, they began discussing ways to ensure that the names and stories of fallen workers would not be washed from public view.

No one is surprised that the Trump administration is hostile toward OSHA, an agency whose mission is to hold employers accountable to the law. After all, it’s also a fact that private citizen Trump had a sizeable history of ﬂouting labor laws and practicing ethically questionable behaviors in his own business ventures. Still, watching those inclinations manifest into public policy is hard to stomach.

All that said, we know worker advocates in communities across the country won’t be deterred. They’ll just work harder. They face anti-worker sentiment every day, working hand in hand with some of the most powerless people in the U.S. They know that the collective power of informed workers is greater than those who conspire to deny workers their rights and erase their names from view. Labor history is full of such stories. For example, just this year, farm workers in Washington state ofﬁcially formed America’s ﬁrst new farm worker union in 25 years. The union is aptly named Familias Unidas por la Justicia — or Families United for Justice.

With the future so uncertain and federal commitment to worker safety so unclear, it seems like a critical moment to support organizers on the ground and stand with workers in the streets. Let next year’s Workers’ Memorial Week be a forceful reminder that all workers, regardless of immigration status, deserve safety, dignity, respect, and justice on the job. To borrow a phrase from another social justice movement, workers’ lives matter. Keep telling their stories.

Like we wrote earlier this week, we also hope you’ll help share the 2017 yearbook far and wide — not only is the yearbook a call to action, it’s a source of inspiration and motivation. Download the 2017 yearbook here and find previous editions here.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Fri, 09/08/2017 - 11:55

Tags

government

labor rights

OHS Yearbook

Pres Trump

The Year in US Occupational Health and Safety

A Labor Day tradition: Sixth annual yearbook on worker health and safety released today

kkrisberg — Mon, 04 Sep 2017 12:42:41 +0000

A Labor Day tradition: Sixth annual yearbook on worker health and safety released today

For the sixth year in a row, we present “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety,” our attempt to document the year’s highs and lows as well as the challenges ahead.

Like previous editions, the 2017 yearbook highlights policies, appointments and activities at the federal, state and local levels; outstanding news reporting on workers’ rights, safety and health; and the latest research from public health agencies and worker groups on the ground. Of course, you can’t ignore the giant elephant (no pun intended) in the room in 2017 — a new president and a Republican-controlled Congress that seem intent on rolling back worker protections and making it harder to access the very information that’s used to prevent future injuries and illnesses in the workplace.

To give you a better sense of our 2017 yearbook, released appropriately on Labor Day, below is a passage from its “Introduction and Overview”:

Protecting worker health and safety is always a challenge, no matter the administration in charge. OSHA is and has always been the little agency that could — there is perhaps no other federal agency whose mission is more stacked against the odds. And yet OSHA has made huge gains in its more than four-decade history.

Today, after eight years of steady and hard-fought progress, advocates are watching in dismay as the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory agenda goes to work inside OSHA. Just a couple of examples from the first eight months: elimination of the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which required those bidding for federal contracts to disclose prior labor violations; proposed elimination of OSHA’s new beryllium exposure standards for the maritime and construction industries; and moves to roll back an Obama-era rule expanding overtime eligibility to millions more workers.

Beyond the regulatory rollbacks, OSHA under Trump has quietly made itself less transparent, changing its everyday practices to make  it harder for advocates to access worker safety data and easier for negligent employers to break the law with little public notice. For instance, in the first four months of the Trump administration, OSHA issued just two enforcement-related news releases, even though the agency had issued more than 200 citations exceeding $40,000. The shift was a big deal, as the resource-strapped agency has typically used public notices as a low-cost, but potentially persuasive, enforcement tool.

Most recently in late August, worker safety advocates noticed and quickly spread word about changes on OSHA’s website, where a link to “Workplace Fatalities” had disappeared from the agency’s home page. The fatality list had also been scaled back to only include workplace deaths in which a citation was issued. Both changes make it more burdensome to access health and safety data, which in turn makes it harder to protect workers and hold employers accountable. On top of all that, the Trump administration is proposing elimination of the Chemical Safety Board and big funding cuts to the Department of Labor and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

At the end of the day, it’s worrisome, but oddly familiar territory for safeguarding workers’ rights, safety, and health.

We’ll be providing brief snapshots of the 2017 yearbook here at The Pump Handle every day this week. We hope you’ll write to us in the comments section detailing your own experiences from the past year and letting us know what we might have missed. We also hope you’ll help share the 2017 yearbook far and wide — not only is the yearbook a call to action, it’s a source of inspiration and motivation. Something we could all use this Labor Day.

Download the 2017 yearbook here and find previous editions here.

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Mon, 09/04/2017 - 08:42

Terrific work as always, Celeste and Kim! It's a grimmer picture this year, but great to see important progress in some states and in research.

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 18:30:36 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Tampa Bay Times, Neil Bedi, Jonathan Capriel, Anastasia Dawson and Kathleen McGrory investigate a June 29 incident at Tampa Electric in which molten ash — commonly referred to as “slag” — escaped from a boiler and poured downed on workers below. Five workers died.

A similar incident occurred at Tampa Electric two decades earlier. If the company had followed the guidelines it devised after that 1997 incident, the five men who died in June would still be alive, the newspaper reported. In particular, the five deaths could have been avoided if the boiler had been turned off before workers attempted maintenance. Tampa Electric says cost wasn’t a factor in deciding to leave the boiler on; however, experts say it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars each time a boiler is shut down. Bedi, Capriel, Dawson and McGrory write:

Tampa Electric officials said they had done similar work hundreds of times, including six maintenance jobs on slag tanks this year.

But experts told the Times the June 29 procedure — removing a blockage from the bottom of a slag tank while the boiler is running — is always risky.

Randy Barnett, a program manager at industrial training company National Technology Transfer Inc., who worked in coal-fired power plants for decades, called the practice “obviously unsafe” because it exposes workers to a trio of hazards: slag, high temperatures and extreme pressure.

Said Charlie Breeding, a retired engineer who worked for the boiler manufacturer Clyde Bergemann: “It does not take a genius to figure out that it is dangerous. Common sense tells you that when you’re dealing with molten ash well above 1,000 degrees in temperature, it’s dangerous.”

There is no guarantee the slag building up in the boiler will stay there.

Even the smallest change in conditions inside the boiler — a slightly different composition of coal feeding its fire, for example — can cause a plug to melt, sending the molten lava rushing into the tank below.

“All of a sudden, you’ve opened up the hole,” said George Galanes, who spent decades working in power plants in Illinois before becoming a consultant for Diamond Technical Services.

Galanes said the plants he worked at would never do that. “Too much risk,” he said.

Read the entire investigation at the Tampa Bay Times.

In other news:

Politico: Ian Kullgren reports that OSHA has erased data on worker fatalities from its home page and replaced it with how companies can voluntarily cooperate with the agency. The worker fatalities didn’t only get buried on an internal web page, the list was also narrowed to only include workplace fatalities for which a citation was issued. Previously, OSHA had a running list of worker deaths on its home page that included the date, name and cause of death and included all deaths reported to the agency, regardless of any citations issued. A Department of Labor spokesperson told Politico that the change was to ensure the public data was more accurate. However, worker advocates disagree. Kullgren quoted Debbie Berkowitz, senior fellow at the National Employment Law Project, who said: “It’s a conscious decision to bury the fact that workers are getting killed on the job. That is totally what it is, so that [Labor Secretary Alexander] Acosta can say, 'Hey, industry is doing a great job and we’re going to help them.'"

Wisconsin Public Radio: Danielle Kaeding reports that three new lawsuits have been filed against Fraser Shipyards in northern Wisconsin for failing to protect workers from unsafe lead exposures. The suits mean the company is now facing four lawsuits on behalf of 44 workers. Earlier this year, Fraser agreed to OSHA fines of $700,000 for exposing workers to lead. Now, workers are seeking compensation for injury, illness, medical care and lost work. Last year’s OSHA investigation, which revealed that Fraser Shipyards was aware of the lead risk, also found that 75 percent of 120 workers tested had elevated blood lead levels. Fourteen workers had blood lead levels up to 20 times the legal exposure limit. Kaeding quoted attorney Matt Sims: "A gentleman who could speak fluidly and without hesitation before this toxic exposure now stutters when he speaks. He’s had changes in his personality. He finds it difficult to focus on everyday mundane tasks that any person wouldn’t have trouble with, and he experiences tremors to the extent that he’s unable to hold a welding torch anymore."

CNN: Wage theft at the White House? Daniella Diaz reports that the Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents to protect President Trump and his family, with more than 1,000 agents already having hit federally mandated caps for salary and overtime. The caps and salaries were initially devised to last the entire year. Secret Service Director Randolph Alles told CNN the budget problem isn’t just related to the Trump family, but has been going on for many years. Diaz reported: “According to the report, Alles has met with congressional lawmakers to discuss planned legislation to increase the combined salary and overtime cap for agents — from $160,000 per year to $187,000. He told USA Today this would be at least for Trump's first term. But he added that even if this were approved, about 130 agents still wouldn't be able to be paid for hundreds of hours already worked.”

ProPublica & NPR: In response to Michael Grabell’s and Howard Berkes’ investigation into a Florida law that allows employers to escape workers’ compensation costs for injuries to undocumented immigrant workers, the second-highest ranking member of the Florida Senate has pledged a legislative review of the law in question. During their investigation, the reporters found that nearly 800 undocumented workers in Florida had been charged with workers comp fraud for using fake identification during the hiring process or in filing for workers’ comp. Some of those injured workers were detained and deported. Grabell and Berkes write: “(Republican state Sen. Anitere) Flores said she is especially concerned about companies who may hire undocumented workers knowing that the threat of prosecution and deportation may keep them from pursuing workers’ comp claims if they are injured at work. ‘That’s borderline unconscionable,’ Flores said, adding that she’ll seek the legislature’s review of this use of Florida law as part of a planned broader look at the state’s workers’ compensation law.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Fri, 08/25/2017 - 14:30

This is scary as hell.

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 23:35:05 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At The New York Times, Elizabeth Olson writes about the challenges that older workers face in proving workplace bias. She begins the story with Donetta Raymond, a longtime manufacturing worker laid off, along with hundreds of others, by Spirit AeroSystems Holdings. Now, some of those workers are bringing a lawsuit after discovering that nearly half of the laid-off workers were 40 or older, the age when federal age discrimination protections kick in. Olson writes:

Such lawsuits are popping up as the nation’s work force ages and as many longtime workers claim that they are being deliberately targeted for such reductions. As manufacturing has contracted, more experienced workers feel they have limited options for re-employment if they are discarded at older ages.

“Once layoffs were done by reverse seniority. It was last in, first out, so the more senior workers kept their jobs,” said Robert J. Gordon, an economics professor at Northwestern University, who studies the country’s growth and work force productivity.

“Now we’re seeing a transition from the age of favoritism to that of age discrimination,” Mr. Gordon said, “because newer workers are allowed to stay on while more costly, older workers are let go.”

Olson noted that lawmakers in Congress have introduced the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, though past efforts to enhance older worker protections have found little traction in Congress and opposition from big business.

While long-term workers are better off than they were a half-century ago when employers flatly blocked applicants over 55 years old and ran help-wanted ads that said “only workers under 35 need apply,” older employees still can encounter different kinds of age bias.

Age-related harassment complaints, especially remarks that belittle or demean longtime workers’ skills or contributions, are up noticeably. They rose to 4,185 last year, an increase of almost 14 percent since 2011, according to E.E.O.C. data.

Read the full story at The New York Times.

In other news:

Minneapolis Star Tribune: Dylan Lovan (Associated Press) reports that this year’s coal miner fatalities have surged ahead of last year’s with new miners particularly vulnerable to fatal incidents. Ten coal miners have died on the job this year, compared to eight last year. The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration says it’s responding with new training, but the United Mine Workers of America says the agency’s effort isn’t enough. Right now, inspectors who conduct the trainings are prohibited from punishing the mine is any safety violations are detected. Lovan writes: “A former MSHA official said the agency would be ‘tying the hands’ of inspectors if they don't allow them to write citations on the training visits. ‘The record low fatal injury rate among coal miners in recent years is because of strong enforcement of the law,’ said Celeste Monforton, who served on a governor-appointed panel that investigated West Virginia's 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster that killed 29 miners. There were 12 coal mining deaths in 2015 and 16 in 2014.”

EHS Today: Stefanie Valentic reports that farm workers are protesting in Suma, Washington, after a fellow farmworker, Honesto Silva Ibarra, a temporary worker on a H-2A visa working for Sarbanand Farms, died after becoming sick on the job. Workers are alleging mistreatment and unsafe conditions in the death — one said supervisors repeatedly ignored Ibarra’s complaints about feeling sick. At a hospital, Ibarra was treated for dehydration and suffered cardiac arrest. The farm denied they knew about Ibarra’s illness. Valentic writes: “Since then, more than 70 workers for the blueberry grower were fired for insubordination after refusing to return to work and also currently are displaced from their living quarters. The employees protested, saying Ibarra did complain, and they were exposed to long work hours and unsafe conditions.”

The Guardian: Sam Levin reports that more than 60 current and former Google employees are considering a class-action suit against the technology company for sexism and pay disparities against women. If filed, the suit would build on a case brought by the U.S. Department of Labor, which is claiming Google systematically underpays women. Google denies the claim, though a judge recently forced the company to hand over salary records. Levin writes: “One former senior manager who recently left Google told the Guardian she repeatedly learned of men at the same level as her earning tens of thousands of dollars more than her, and in one case, she said she had a male employee join her team with a higher salary despite the fact that she was his superior.”

Detroit News: Keith Laing reports on what’s next for the United Auto Workers after the recent defeat at a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi, where workers voted nearly 2 to 1 against forming a union. The vote marked the third time in nearly three decades that Nissan workers in the U.S. South had decided not to join the labor union. Shortly before the Canton vote, the union had filed seven claims that Nissan broke labor law; the National Labor Relations Board will consider the charges alongside a series of other allegations. Laing writes the labor board could order another election if it sides with the auto workers union. He writes: “Nissan has dismissed the UAW’s accusations of labor law violations as sour grapes that were part of a ‘desperate, last-minute attempt to undermine the integrity of the secret ballot voting process’ from the union.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Wed, 08/09/2017 - 19:35

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 16:40:20 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At PBS Newhour, Aubrey Aden-Buie reports on the shipbuilders that receive billions in federal contracts despite histories of serious safety lapses. In a review of federal contracts, Aden-Buie and colleagues found that since 2008, the federal government has awarded more than $100 billion to companies with records of safety incidents that injured and killed workers.

In a transcript of the broadcast (which you can also watch at the link above), Aden-Buie interviews Martin Osborn, a welder at shipbuilder Austal USA in Alabama:

MARTIN OSBORN: I was up in a boom lift, as we call it, or a man lift, up in the air about 40 feet, cutting a lifting lug off the side of a module, and had a violent kickback. It kicked out of my hands and went across my left hand, cutting me pretty bad. I didn’t take my glove off, because, I knew if I did that, I would have blood everywhere.

AUBREY ADEN-BUIE: Before Osborn’s accident, Austal modified the Metabo grinder by replacing the standard disc with a sawtooth blade made by an outside company. This made the tool more versatile, able to cut through aluminum more quickly.

But the manufacturer of the grinder specifically warned against using these blades, saying they cause frequent kickback and loss of control.

MARTIN OSBORN: I have seen pictures of people getting cut in their face, in their necks, in their thighs. It’s the most dangerous tool I have ever put in my hands.

AUBREY ADEN-BUIE: Does Austal know that the tool is as dangerous as it is?

MARTIN OSBORN: Yes, ma’am, they do.

AUBREY ADEN-BUIE: Company e-mails among Austal’s managers obtained by Reveal show that, even before Osborn’s accident, they called the modification lethal, and the grinders an accident waiting to happen.

Yet, according to Osborn, Austal workers still use the grinder daily.

MARTIN OSBORN: I have had numerous supervisors tell me that, you know, if you don’t want to use the tool, go get a job at Burger King.

To read or view the full story, visit PBS Newshour.

In other news:

Texas Tribune: Andy Duehren reports that Texas legislators are considering a measure that would kill regulations in the capital city of Austin that expedite the permitting process for large construction projects that agree to pay construction workers a living wage, follow worker safety standards, and offer worker training and workers’ comp insurance. The measure being considered in the state legislature would accelerate permitting across the state, while prohibiting cities from enacting measures like the one in Austin. In particular, Republican state Rep. Paul Workman, who helped author the legislation, seems to dislike the Austin-based worker center, the Workers Defense Project, that helped craft the Austin regulations, calling the group a “union front.” Duehren writes: “Workman is one of many lawmakers who have received financial support from real estate and construction interests, according to the data from Texans for Public Justice. Gifts to lawmakers from those two industries totaled more than $23 million between 2013 and 2016, the group found.”

The Hill: Timothy Cama reports that congressional Democrats have introduced legislation that would ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos. That’s the same pesticide that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt decided not to ban, despite the recommendations of EPA’s scientific advisors. The pesticide was recently involved in sickening farmworkers in California, and research shows it can cause neurological problems in children and fetuses. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said of the legislation: “Administrator Pruitt may choose to put aside science, public health and environmental protection in favor of big chemical profits, but Congress should not.”

Bloomberg BNA: David McAfee reports that Chevron has settled with Cal/OSHA officials to pay more than $1 million in fines and make comprehensive safety changes at its refinery in Richmond, California, after a 2012 fire at the refinery sent a cloud of gas and smoke over the nearby community. Cal/OSHA issued 17 workplace safety and health violations following the incident. As part of the new agreement, Chevron will make safety upgrades to the refinery’s equipment, provide training in hazard recognition and continue working with the United Steelworkers. McAfee quoted Clyde Trombettas, statewide manager and policy adviser for Cal/OSHA’s process safety management unit: “The penalty, $1,010,000, was the highest penalty assessed on any employer in Cal/OSHA history, which I think is very significant.”

Reveal: Sinduja Rangarajan reports that the House Appropriations Committee has approved a budget amendment to defund an initiative designed to narrow wage disparities and that required some employers to disclose pay data by gender, race and job category. In particular, the House amendment would prohibit the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from using funds to collect such data. Among those opposing the initiative was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which argued that collecting such data was a burden for employers and that it would reveal sensitive information. Rangarajan reports: “The data would help the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission benchmark pay patterns within industries, occupations and localities and take a closer look at firms that fall outside those patterns, said Emily Martin, general counsel and vice president of workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Wed, 07/26/2017 - 12:40

Tags

agriculture

Cal/OSHA

california

Chemical facility safety

Pesticides

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 17:12:17 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Center for Public Integrity, a five-part investigative series on safety at the nation’s nuclear facilities finds that workers can and do suffer serious injuries, yet the Department of Energy typically imposes only minimal fines for safety incidents and companies get to keep a majority of their profits, which does little to improve working conditions. Reporters estimated that the number of safety incidents has tripled since 2013.

For example, in 2009, the chair of a safety committee at Idaho National Laboratory told high-ranking managers that damaged plutonium plates could put workers at serious risk. However, managers ignored his warnings. Then an incident occurred in which 16 workers inhaled plutonium dust particles.

In Part 5 of the series, Patrick Malone and Peter Cary write:

Ted Lewis knew the plutonium plates at the government lab where he worked could leak potentially lethal radioactive dust.

He had seen it occur in the 1970s, when he was helping load some of those plates into a nuclear reactor at the lab near Idaho Falls, Idaho. A steel jacket enclosing one of the plates somehow cracked, spilling plutonium oxide particles into the air. But Lewis and his colleagues were lucky — they were wearing respirators and given cleansing showers, so their lives weren’t endangered.

Three decades later, Lewis, an electrical engineer who had become chairman of the lab’s safety committee, had a bad feeling this could happen again, with a worse outcome. And he turned out to be right.

He tried to head it off. In 2009, Lewis wrote a pointed warning memo — he called it a White Paper — and gave it to the official in charge of all nuclear operations at the Idaho National Laboratory, which is run by a consortium of private companies and universities under contract to the Energy Department.

The memo said the chance of encountering a plutonium plate that disintegrated, as Lewis had previously witnessed, was “greater than facility and senior management realizes,” according to a copy. Although Lewis said that a workplace manual published by the contractor — Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (BEA) — called the risk of an accidental spill of such radioactive dust “negligible,” he wanted his superiors to expect it and prepare for it.

He said in a sworn court deposition in January 2016 that he shared his concerns with at least 19 others at the laboratory, which holds one of the world’s largest stockpiles of plutonium, the explosive at the heart of modern nuclear weapons. But they didn’t respond, he said, and some of the precautions he urged — checking the plates more carefully before they were unwrapped and repackaged for shipment and setting up a decontamination shower — were ignored.

Read the full (and amazing) investigative series at the Center for Public Integrity.

In other news:

USA Today: Brett Murphy reports on a year-long investigation into port trucking companies in Southern California, finding that such companies often treat their workers like little more than indentured servants, forcing drivers to take on huge debt to finance their own trucks and then using that debt against them to “trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute.” When drivers quit, the companies seize their trucks, keeping all the money the workers had paid toward ownership. Drivers also reported being physically barred from going home, being forced to work against their will, and being forced to break safety laws that limit the hours they drive each day. The investigative piece is based on accounts from more than 300 drivers, hundreds of hours of sworn testimony and contracts never seen by the public. Murphy writes: “Retailers could refuse to allow companies with labor violations to truck their goods. Instead they’ve let shipping and logistics contractors hire the lowest bidder, while lobbying on behalf of trucking companies in Sacramento and Washington D.C. Walmart, Target and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies have paid lobbyists up to $12.6 million to fight bills that would have held companies liable or given drivers a minimum wage and other protections that most U.S. workers already enjoy.”

Huffington Post: Jesselyn Cook reports that seven journalists have been murdered in Mexico this year, which means Mexico is now among the most dangerous places to be a reporter. The most recent victim was Salvador Adame, a veteran TV reporter who covered regional news and politics. Months before Adame’s death, reporter Miroslava Breach Velducea, a reporter for La Jornada, was shot eight times outside her home in front of her children. Unfortunately, the killing of journalists in Mexico often goes unpunished. Cook writes: ‘“Fear and self-censorship by journalists remains very, very strong,’ Emmanuel Colombié, Latin America director for Reporters Without Borders (or Reporters sans frontières), told HuffPost. Some reporters have fled Mexico and others have quit the industry as a result of targeted threats and violence against members of the Mexican press, he noted. In the border state of Tamaulipas, for example, ‘there are very few journalists remaining,’ Colombié said.”

High Plains Public Radio: Grant Gerlock reports that a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report finds that the safety data collected by federal officials doesn’t accurately reflect all the dangers that meat and poultry workers face on the job. According to the GAO report, 151 meat and poultry workers died from on-the-job injuries between 2004 and 2013, which means such workers experience a higher injury rate than their peers in the rest of the manufacturing industry. However, the GAO also found that such injuries are under-reported. For example, injuries among sanitary workers who clean meat plant machinery aren’t always counted as official meat and poultry workers. In addition, some injured workers are simply encouraged to return to work without seeing a doctor. Gerlock writes: “Worker advocates say they have long been suspicious of reported injury rates from meat companies. For instance, a recent study at a Maryland poultry plant by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found one-third of workers had injuries that meet the definition of carpal tunnel, but only a handful of injuries had been reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”

American Prospect: David Bacon reports that after four years of strikes and boycotts, the first new U.S. farmworker union in 25 years has officially launched: Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) in Washington state. The union’s origins go back to 2013, when workers at Sakuma Brothers Farms grew angry about low piece rates and poor conditions in the labor camps. Workers then discovered that employers had begun recruiting workers via the H2A visa program and paying them nearly $3 more an hour than local workers, even though the visa program is supposed to be for employers unable to find workers locally. Eventually, the employers attempted to fire the entire workforce and replace them with H2A workers. The plan backfired after workers exposed the scheme, paving the way for a union. Bacon reports: “’We are part of a movement of indigenous people,’ says Felimon Pineda, FUJ vice president. An immigrant from Jicaral Cocoyan de las Flores in Oaxaca, he says organizing the union is part of a fight against the discrimination indigenous people face in both Mexico and the United States: ‘Sometimes people see us as being very low. They think we have no rights. They're wrong. The right to be human is the same.’”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Fri, 06/30/2017 - 13:12

Tags

agriculture

Chemical facility safety

nuclear facility safety

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 10:17:29 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Guardian, Krithika Varagur interviewed workers inside the Indonesian factory that manufactures clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, finding poverty wages, anti-union intimidation and unreasonably high production targets. The story includes interviews with more than a dozen workers, who asked that details about their identities be changed to avoid being fired. Varagur writes:

Alia is nothing if not industrious. She has worked in factories on and off since leaving her provincial high school, through the birth of two children, leading up to her current job making clothes for brands including Ivanka Trump at the PT Buma Apparel Industry factory in Subang, West Java.

Throughout her marriage to her husband, Ahmad, one or both of them has always worked. And yet, says Alia, the couple can never think about clearing their debts. Instead, what she has to show for years of work at PT Buma is two rooms in a dusty boarding house, rented for $30 a month and decorated with dozens of photos of their children because the couple can’t dream of having enough money to have them at home. The children live, instead, with their grandmother, hours away by motorcycle, and see their parents just one weekend a month, when they can afford the gasoline.

Alia makes the legal minimum wage for her job in her province: 2.3 million rupiah, or about $173 a month – but that legal minimum is among the lowest in Indonesia as a whole, and as much as 40% lower than in Chinese factories, another labour source for the Ivanka Trump brand.

PT Buma, a Korean-owned garment company started in Indonesia in 1999, is one of the suppliers of G-III Apparel Group, the wholesale manufacturer for prominent fashion brands including Trump’s clothing.

Many Buma workers know who Ivanka Trump is. Alia noticed her labels popping up on the clothes about a year ago.

Read the full story at the Guardian.

In other news:

Denver Post: Ethan Millman reports that Colorado’s newly adopted Uninsured Employer Act will creates a fund for injured workers whose employers lack insurance. Under the law, the state will still be able to fine employers who don’t have proper workers’ comp insurance, however the fines will now go toward injured employees. A spokesman for the state’s department of labor said: “Essentially in the past, if a worker was to be injured, the worker was left in a very precarious position. If an employer didn’t have insurance, a number of problems would come up for the employee. Unpaid medical bills and other complications arose. With the signing of this bill, employees can get what is needed even if the employer doesn’t have it.”

BuzzFeed News: Cora Lewis reports that the Trump administration is withdrawing Obama-era labor guidance that defined parent companies as “joint employers” alongside their franchisees, making them liable for unfair working conditions at franchise locations. Also being withdrawn is guidance that said gig economy workers should be considered employees of the corporations they work for, as opposed to independent contractors. Lewis reports: “While there are few immediate consequences of the change, it will almost certainly affect the outcome of cases now before the National Labor Relations Board, which concern whether parent companies like McDonald's are responsible for labor conditions at franchise locations, and what rights and benefits companies like Uber owe their drivers.”

Huffington Post: Emily Peck reports that Walmart’s sick leave policy is especially difficult for women, who typically serve as the main caregivers for their families. Walmart workers accrue points every time they have to miss a scheduled shift — accrue a certain number of points and a worker can be fired. A company spokesman said points aren’t mandatory if an employee has a good reason for missing work, but a new report from the legal advocacy group A Better Balance found that the giant retailer “regularly punishes people for taking time off because of a disability or serious illness.” According to the Better Balance report, Walmart has a policy of not keeping or even looking at a worker’s doctor’s note. Peck reports: “Employees say the system effectively scares them from taking sick time and adds stress to already stressful situations. Women, who are often responsible for children at home, are in a particularly tight spot. You can’t always plan in advance for when your child gets an ear infection or needs to be picked up early from school.”

CNBC: Ester Bloom reports that no full-time minimum wage worker in the U.S. can afford a two-bedroom apartment in any state. Reporting on research from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Bloom reported that workers in a number of states would have to make between $20 and $35 an hour to afford such housing. In fact, an American worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 would have to work more than 94 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom rental. At the same time, federal housing assistance funds have been declining. Bloom writes: “Some business owners argue that raising the minimum wage will lead to higher prices for consumers, and some economists argue that it could depress job growth or even end up eliminating positions as it leads to more automation. A comprehensive 2016 study from the National Employment Law Project, however, found that the economists' fears aren't justified.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Wed, 06/14/2017 - 06:17

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 30 May 2017 19:46:49 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

At Eater, Elizabeth Grossman reports that Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that would protect undocumented agricultural workers from deportation and provide them and their families with a path to long-term residence and citizenship.

The bill proposes that farmworkers who can prove at least 100 days of agricultural work in the last two years could apply for a “blue card” that grants temporary residency and the ability to work. Farmworkers with a blue card and who work for 100 days a year for five years or 150 days a year for three years would then be eligible for a green card or permanent legal resident status. The spouses and children of blue-card holders would also be eligible for the program. Grossman writes that the proposal has the support of both workers and employers. She writes:

Undocumented farmworkers are the backbone of the United States’ agriculture industry, a situation that has long posed numerous challenges for these workers, their families, and employers. But the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies and aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action — which has detained farm workers in New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere — has created a climate of fear among workers. And that’s already resulting in labor shortages that are prompting some growers to curtail harvest plans.

On call with reporters, Monterey Mushrooms president and owner Shah Kazemi confirmed the labor situation. “We’re currently short hundreds of workers,” he said. “We have been forced to cut back our production because people are not showing up to work out of fear. “If we don’t have a way to fix our broken immigration system, I don’t think agriculture can survive in this country,” said Kazemi.

Continue reading at Eater.

In other news:

Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin, Emma Brown and Darryl Fears report that the Trump administration is planning to gut the U.S. Department of Labor division that ensures federal contractors abide by nondiscrimination laws as “part of wider efforts to rein in government programs that promote civil rights.” In particular, the plan would fold the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs into the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), even though the two units have very different roles. The reporters writes: “Unlike the EEOC, which investigates complaints it receives, the compliance office audits contractors in a more systematic fashion and verifies that they ‘take affirmative action’ to promote equal opportunity among their employees. Patricia A. Shiu, who led the compliance office from 2009 to 2016, said the audits are crucial because most workers don’t know they have grounds to file a complaint. ‘Most people do not know why they don’t get hired. Most people do not know why they do not get paid the same as somebody else,’ she said.”

Denver Post: In the wake of an oil tank explosion that killed one worker and injured three others, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper says he will “take any necessary action to ensure this doesn’t happen again.” John Ingold reports that state oil and gas regulators have asked oil company Anadarko to conduct a “root cause” analysis of the explosion — a request that state regulators rarely make. OSHA says it’s investigating the explosion. Anadarko already faces lawsuits related to a different explosion earlier this year. That explosion was the result of gas seeping from a cut underground flowline, killing two people and seriously injuring another. Ingold writes: “At least 51 other workers have died in the state’s oil and gas fields since 2003, a Denver Post investigation last year found. When those deaths occur, an interlocking set of laws and regulations often keep companies from facing severe penalties, the Post found.”

BuzzFeed News: Caroline O’Donovan reports that Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., has introduced the first piece of federal legislation addressing the lack of benefits for on-demand workers. More specifically, the bill would create a $20 million fund that organizations could use to build portable benefits programs — benefits that independent contractors could ideally bring with them from gig to gig. The article notes that some states have proposed similar legislation. For example, Washington state lawmakers are considering a bill that would require on-demand employers contribute a certain percentage of profits toward a benefits fund. O’Donovan writes: “Warner, who estimates that currently a third of the US workforce falls outside traditional employment and predicts that figure will increase to 50% by 2020, said his goal is to get people to break out of the ‘mindset that...the only way you got benefits was if you're a full-time, permanent employee.’”

Charlotte Observer: In some good news for workers, Joe Marusak reports that North Carolina’s Unicon Inc. has paid nearly $600,000 in back wages and an equal amount in damages to more than 800 workers who round up and transport chickens to poultry processors. The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division had previously found the company violated federal overtime and record-keeping rules, automatically deducting pay for lunch breaks that workers didn’t actually take and failing to pay workers for the prep and cleanup involved in rounding up chickens. Marusak reported that Mark Watson, a regional administrator with the Wage and Hour Division, said: “This agreement goes a long way to ensure that Unicon’s workers are made whole by providing the wages they earned. It also levels the playing field for other employers in this industry.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for 15 years. Follow me on Twitter — @kkrisberg.

kkrisberg Tue, 05/30/2017 - 15:46

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