lborkowski | September 14, 2015A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Sara Rosenbaum at the Health Affairs Blog: Planned Parenthood, Community Health Centers, And Women’s Health: Getting The Facts Right
Laura Ungar at USA Today: Study: Needle exchange policy prevented HIV
Maryn McKenna at Phenomena: Germination: Tickborne Diseases: Widespread, Serious, and Taking us by Surprise
Elissa Strauss at Longreads: The Lost Summer
Oliver Sacks's opinion piece "My Periodic Table" appeared in the New York Times in July, just weeks before he died of cancer. Since then, past writing by and about him has gained attention. I enjoyed…
cmonforton | September 11, 2015This week’s recap of "The Year in US Occupational Health and Safety" concludes with the section dedicated to national reporting on worker health and safety topics.
When Kim and I looked back over the past 12 months and brainstormed topics to include in the report, on the top of our list was the contributions of investigative journalists. The stories we profile in Section IV the report include the following:
The New York Times’ Sarah Maslin Nir exposed the “price of pretty nails” in her investigation of working conditions for nail salon workers in the New York City area. In the May 2015 series…
kkrisberg | September 10, 2015When 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…
kkrisberg | September 9, 2015Paid 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…
cmonforton | September 8, 2015In the fourth edition of “The Year in US Occupational Health & Safety,” which we released on Labor Day, we recap some of the key activities that occurred at the federal level in the previous 12 months. One of the most noteworthy events was the Ebola virus epidemic, which brought worldwide attention to the need for appropriate equipment and training for health care workers. We devote a section of the report to recapping the government’s response following transmission of the virus to nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson. We describe some of the efforts by National Nurses United, the…
cmonforton | September 7, 2015The fourth edition of “The Year in US Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2014 – Summer 2015” was released today, Labor Day 2015. The yearbook recaps key policy changes and research on worker safety and health at the federal, state, and local levels. Our goal is for the report to be a resource for activists, researchers, regulators and anyone else who wants to refresh their memory about the highlights in the previous 12 months on worker health and safety topics. I wrote this fourth edition of the yearbook with my colleagues from The Pump Handle. Kim Krisberg is the report’s co-author, and…
kkrisberg | September 4, 2015The ride-hailing mobile app Uber is desperate to prove it’s nothing more than a technology platform that connects drivers and passengers. As long as it can classify its workers as independent contractors, it can sidestep a whole host of labor and wage laws. But a court ruling issued earlier this week could open the door to change all that.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in San Francisco granted class action status to a lawsuit challenging Uber’s classification of workers as independent contractors. The decision doesn’t rule on the question of whether Uber drivers should be classified as…
cmonforton | September 3, 2015For part of this summer, I escaped the sweltering heat of central Texas and took refuge in Leamington, Ontario, Canada. It's a lovely place in southern Ontario on the banks of Lake Erie. From my sister's cottage, I could see Pelee Island on the horizon.
On a morning walk, the nose of my golden retriever Laredo drew me to a small, smashed cardboard package. It was an empty pack of DK's Full Flavor Premium Canadian Blend cigarettes. But the product and brand on the label were dwarfed by the graphic warnings on four of the six sides of the box.
A cigarette pack I found on the side of the road…
kkrisberg | September 2, 2015It’s perhaps not surprising that single parents face a higher risk of living in poverty. However, a new study finds that such risk is much higher for single mothers than for single fathers, even when they both have similar jobs and education levels and work the same number of hours.
Recently published in an edition of Gender Issues, the study found that single mothers make significantly less than single fathers. In addition, single mothers seem to be financially penalized for each additional child they have, while income for single fathers remains the same or even increases with each…
cmonforton | September 1, 2015Norberto Galicia Romero’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, Thomas Concrete.
The 49-year-old was working in February 2015 at the company’s plant in Marietta, GA. The initial press reports indicated that “someone was trapped inside a concrete silo.” I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press.
Inspectors with federal OSHA conducted an inspection at the workplace following the fatal incident. The agency recently issued citations to the firm for two serious…
lborkowski | August 31, 2015The Colorado Family Planning Initiative is a public-health success story. With funds from an anonymous foundation, Title X family planning clinics serving low-income women were able to offer IUDs and other highly effective forms of contraception for free. Rates of teen pregnancy and abortion both plummeted. When the foundation funding came to an end as scheduled, though, the state's legislature refused to pick up the tab for this demonstrably successful program.
Now, reports Katie Kerwin McCrimmon of Health News Colorado, a group of foundations (11 are listed so far) has pledged funds to…
kkrisberg | August 28, 2015Sociologist Jennifer Laird was researching unemployment among Mexican immigrants when she came upon some interesting numbers on black workers in the public sector and employment effects of the Great Recession. It piqued her interest and so she decided to keep digging.
She found that while public sector employment had long served as a source of stable employment among black Americans, often enabling mobility into the middle class, downsizing during the Great Recession disproportionately hurt black workers and resulted in greater racial disparities in the public sector. Specifically, Laird, a…
cmonforton | August 28, 2015I’ve heard a lot of myths over the years about OSHA. Some people think, for example, that OSHA is motivated to assess penalties because it needs the money to operate. (Truth: OSHA penalties go to the US Treasury and OSHA doesn’t get any share of them.) There have been times when misinformation or truth-stretching is perpetuated by law firms, probably trying to drum up business from anxious employers.
Here’s an example from the law firm Fisher & Phillips LLP. It’s a blog post on the site JDSUPRA Business Advisor. The lead sentences set the tone with phrases such as “a multiple front…
cmonforton | August 26, 2015It was paltry. It was a pittance. It was pathetic. That’s what I thought of OSHA’s proposed $99,000 penalty to DuPont for safety violations related to the November 2014 death of four of its employees. OSHA dinged the company for one repeat and nine serious violations. Wade Baker, 60, Gibby Tisnado, 48, Robert Tisnado, 39, and Crystal Wise, 53 were asphyxiated by methyl mercaptan because of gross failures in DuPont’s systems to manage highly hazardous chemicals.
The penalty amount is so insignificant it wouldn’t even appear on a DuPont financial statement. $99,000 is less than 0.0003% of…
kkrisberg | August 25, 2015Reporter 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:…
lborkowski | August 24, 2015Last week, an In These Times piece by Sharon Lerner presented an alarming statistics: Nearly one in four employed US mothers return to work within two weeks after giving birth. In "The Real War on Families: Why the U.S. Needs Paid Leave Now," Lerner reports that an Abt Associates analysis of survey data for In These Times found that nearly 12% of women took off a week or less, while another 11% took off for between one and two weeks. Women with less education and lower incomes are especially likely to have to return to work soon after a new baby's arrival. Lerner shares the stories of several…
cmonforton | August 22, 2015On August 6, two unrelated events got my attention. The first was OSHA’s announcement of a long overdue regulatory proposal. The agency released a proposed rule to protect the health of about 35,000 US workers who are exposed to beryllium. The lightweight, super-strong metal can cause a disabling respiratory disorder called chronic beryllium disease, as well as lung cancer. There is no safe level of exposure to it. The second event was the Fox News debate featuring ten Republicans vying to be the party’s 2016 Presidential candidate.
With the OSHA proposed rule fresh on my mind, I watched the…
kkrisberg | August 21, 2015With national school nutrition standards up for reauthorization in Congress, a new survey finds that most Americans support healthier school meals.
Earlier this week, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation released the findings of a national survey in which 86 percent of respondents said they support today’s school nutrition standards and 88 percent support government-funded farm-to-school programs that provide schools with fresh, local produce. In 2010, the signing of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act ushered in the first update of school food and drink nutrition standards in 15 years, and as of June…
kkrisberg | August 20, 2015More 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…
cmonforton | August 19, 2015Davide Nascimento, 28, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, July 31, 2015 while working at a construction site in Longmeadow, MA. WFSB.com reports:
The incident happened at a sewer project on Hazardville Road around 7:45 a.m.
Nascimento “…was trapped inside a trench that began rapidly filling with water.”
“The man was employed by Ludlow-based construction company A. Martins and Sons. They were contracted by the town for the project. “
Masslive.com notes:
The trench was part of an ongoing sewer-line replacement project in Longmeadow.
The incident occurred at the corner of Tedford…