City of Houston

Maquiladora workers (manufacturing workers) in Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, are at the center of a growing worker rebellion in border factories, which employ more than 69,000 people, are nearly all foreign-owned, and pay some of the lowest wages along the border, reports David Bacon in The Nation. In fact, manufacturing workers in Juárez typically make 18 percent less than the average manufacturing worker in one of Mexico’s border cities. Bacon reports: Ali Lopez, a single mother at the planton outside the ADC CommScope factory, describes grinding poverty. “…
How is it that a construction firm that specializes in underground utility work and excavation can be so dense when it comes to knowing the fundamentals of protecting workers from cave-ins?  Or is it that they know the fundamentals but just choose not to apply them. The Houston-area excavation firm SER Construction Partners was cited last month by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for willfully failing to comply with standards for safe excavation practices.  The OSHA news release announcing the sanction appropriately, noting: "A cave-in can turn into a grave in a matter…