Cal/OSHA
garrettbrown | September 14, 2017Starting in July 2015, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) was authorized to hire several dozen more field compliance officers to protect the state’s 19 million workers. Because Cal/OSHA’s hiring has not filled all new positions or kept up with retirements, there has been an average of 34 vacancies of these fully-funded positions since then, resulting in $11 million in unused resources through August 2017. Not only is this a missed worker protection opportunity, no one knows what’s happened to these funds and where they are.
Another mystery is the whereabouts…
kkrisberg | July 26, 2017At 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,…
cmonforton | July 19, 2017I spend most of my time these summer days in cool air-conditioned (AC) environments. I feel the 100 degree heat when I’m going from one AC-cooled building to another. For me, the intense central Texas heat is something that is “out there” not "in here." But I was reminded today of people whose jobs cause them to say “it’s an oven in there.” An acquaintance's husband works as an auto mechanic. The garage where he works normally has a couple of large fans to circulate the air. Today one of the fans broke down. Temperatures inside the garage matched the outdoor temperature of nearly 100 degrees…
garrettbrown | July 11, 2017At the end of two complete years when dozens of fully-funded field compliance positions went empty, reported workplace fatalities and injuries in California are on the rise. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has had a monthly average of 34 vacant field enforcement positions since July 2015, which means that more than $10 million in state-authorized funding was left unused.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest available data shows that 388 workers were fatally injured on the job in California in 2015. On average, that is more than one worker a…
cmonforton | June 22, 2017Tesla held its annual stockholder meeting this month, and co-founder/CEO Elon Musk was asked to speak about worker safety problems at their plants. He briefly mentioned the topic in his prepared remarks, but was probed later about it by a stockholder. The question came from @sunabeepdeep who asked:
"What changes are being made to address worker safety?"
Public attention on working conditions at Tesla’s manufacturing plant in Fremont, CA was prompted most recently by a May 18 story in The Guardian. Reporter Julia Carrie Wong spoke to current and former employees who described intense…
cmonforton | May 22, 2017Former Mayor Gayle McLaughlin remembers the phone calls from that evening. It was August 6, 2012. Constituents were calling McLaughlin at home to describe a huge cloud of black smoke infiltrated their neighborhoods. The cloud of pollution was coming from the Chevron refinery. A corroded pipe at the Chevron refinery failed, causing a massive cloud of hydrocarbon and steam that ignited.
Next was the shelter-in-place warning. It covered the mayor's town of Richmond, CA town and neighboring San Pablo. The warning lasted lasted five hours. Four transit line stations were closed.
Residents of…
garrettbrown | March 3, 2017by Garrett Brown
On February 10th, California’s Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) proposed revised and stronger regulations for oil refineries in the state after a 4½-year joint campaign by labor unions, environmental and community organizations to protect both refinery workers and nearby communities. The regulatory proposal now goes to the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board for consideration and final approval.
This successful “blue-green” coalition held off industry pressure and reversed earlier back-door revisions to the proposal by DIR to benefit the oil…
kkrisberg | February 21, 2017At Reveal, Jennifer Gollan reports on how the Navy and other federal agencies give lucrative contracts to shipbuilders with troublesome worker safety records. In fact, Gollan reports that since 2008, the Navy and Coast Guard’s seven major shipbuilders have received more than $100 billion in public funds despite serious — and sometimes fatal — safety gaps. She noted that in his first days in office, President Trump announced plans for a massive Navy fleet expansion, which could mean even more workers will be at risk.
Gollan writes:
With extra business comes more risks for workers. But there is…
garrettbrown | February 8, 2017By Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH and Deeg Gold, MPH CIH
In late January, Donald Trump’s press secretary described his immigration and refugee Executive Order as “ripping off the Band-Aid” to get at immigrants. The next week, Trump issued another Executive Order on regulations and is preparing other measures to “rip off the Band-Aid” to get at worker health and safety. Our strategic response has to be more than simply defending the status quo ante; we have to rebuild the social movement that was powerful enough 50 years ago to force another right-wing Republican president, Richard Nixon, to…
cmonforton | January 18, 2017There’s a thriving garment industry in Los Angeles which specializes in small volume production. The employers, who supply the trendy casual sportswear for companies such as Forever 21, Charlotte Russe, Papaya, and Wet Seal, employ about 45,000 workers in Los Angeles. A survey of more than 300 of those workers describes the dirty, dangerous and unhealthy conditions of their jobs. The survey results and companion findings from focus groups are reported in Dirty Threads, Dangerous Factories: Health and Safety in Los Angeles’ Fashion Industry.
Nearly 72 percent of the workers indicated that…
kkrisberg | November 23, 2016At In These Times, Elizabeth Grossman writes about whether workplace safety will survive a Trump presidency, noting that “Trump’s transition team has said he will introduce a moratorium on new regulations and cancel executive orders and regulations ‘that kill jobs and bloat government.’” In interviewing labor, health and safety advocates, Grossman writes that a number of federal protections could land on the chopping block, including the new overtime rule, proposed beryllium rule and fall protections. Grossman writes:
How does Trump’s promise to reduce and eliminate regulations square with…
egrossman | October 12, 2016Four years ago, in August 2012, a corroded pipe at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California ruptured, resulting in a catastrophic fire and a toxic vapor plume that engulfed, not only the refinery, but also spread over the northeastern San Francisco Bay area. Nineteen Chevron employees were caught up in the vapor cloud and one was trapped by a fireball. Remarkably, all survived. In the next several days, some 15,000 people in communities surrounding the refinery sought medical attention for symptoms related to smoke exposure. According to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, among the reported…
lborkowski | August 31, 2016by Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH
If there is one thing that Christine Baker, Director of California’s Department of Industrial Relations (DIR), and Juliann Sum, Chief of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH or Cal/OSHA), cannot stand – it is criticism, no matter how constructive or gently offered it may be.
With a “thin skin” sensitivity and an aggressive impulse to counter-attack that rivals Donald Trump’s, Baker and Sum tend to go crazy about the annual report by Federal OSHA on the state of Cal/OSHA. In July 2015, DIR/DOSH wrote two tart letters to federal OSHA (here, here)…
kkrisberg | August 30, 2016At KCRW (an NPR member station), Karen Foshay reports on occupational injuries among low-wage restaurant workers in California and the retaliatory barriers that often keep them from speaking up. She cited a 2011 Restaurant Opportunities Center survey of Los Angeles restaurant workers that found 42 percent experienced cuts, 43 percent experienced burns and more than half reported working while sick. Foshay writes:
At a recent meeting in Azusa (in eastern Los Angeles County), several workers showed off their appointment cards for clinics like Santa Adelina. Three men lifted their pant legs to…
lborkowski | August 17, 2016by Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH
A frequent official response to concerns that California workplace health and safety agency – Cal/OSHA or DOSH – does not have enough field enforcement compliance officers is that “California’s statistics are better that the national stats and other states.” This turns out not to be true, and cannot be used to downplay the fact that California’s Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) has not filled three dozen compliance officer vacancies at Cal/OSHA despite full funding for these positions since July 2015.
The May 13, 2016, issue of the Cal/OSHA Reporter (COR), …
cmonforton | June 14, 2016Kenneth Schultz work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) in the agency’s recent citations against his employer, Labor Ready.
The 56 year-old was working in October 2015 at a construction project in Oceanside, CA. It’s the site of a new FedEx distribution facility. The initial press reports indicated that Schultz
‘…was using a hand-held hydraulic machine to compact dirt in a drainage channel’ when a retaining wall ‘fell on him.’
I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press.
A Cal/OSHA spokesperson…
cmonforton | December 23, 2015The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) deserves credit for standing with worker safety and victims of egregious safety violations. The group’s Section on Chemistry voted not to move forward with the nomination of UCLA professor Patrick Harran as an AAAS fellow. They made the announcement yesterday. Harran has four criminal felony charges pending against him for willfully violating workplace safety standards at his UCLA laboratory. Those charges were brought by the Los Angeles County District Attorney (DA) following a criminal investigation into the 2009 death of lab…
kkrisberg | December 14, 2015In 2010, Donna Gross, a psychiatric technician at Napa State Hospital for more than a decade, was strangled to death at work by a mentally ill patient. While on-the-job violence in the health care sector was certainly nothing new at the time, the shocking and preventable circumstances surrounding Gross’ death helped ignite a new and coordinated movement for change. Now, just a handful of years later, California is set to become the only state with an enforceable occupational standard aimed at preventing workplace violence against health care workers.
“Honestly, this (proposed rule) wouldn’t…
cmonforton | October 20, 2015Kenneth Schultz, 56, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, October 13 while working on a commercial construction project in Oceanside, CA. The Seaside Courier reports:
The construction site will be the site of a new FedEx distribution center.
The deceased worker “…was using a hand-held hydraulic machine to compact dirt in a drainage channel” at about 9 am local time.
A retaining wall “fell on him." It was a 3 X 12 foot slab of concrete.
NBC San Diego quotes a police spokesperson who said
"Workers moved a crane near the worker and lifted the cube off of him."
Construction of the $50…
cmonforton | June 23, 2014The June 2014 news on UCLA chemistry professor Patrick G. Harran’s website announces his lab’s award of an NIH grant. I wonder if it will be updated with his other news for the month?
Last week, Harran settled criminal charges with the Los Angeles County district attorney (DA) for the work-related death of Sheri Sangji, 23. Sangji was a research assistant in Harran’s lab. She'd only been on the job a few months. She was hired primarily to set up lab equipment, but on Dec. 29, 2008 she was assigned to use tert-butyllithium (tBuLi). The highly reactive liquid ignites spontaneously when exposed…