Legal
lborkowski | January 14, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Dr. Paul Demers says he frequently finds himself having to make the case for why studying workplace exposures to carcinogens is important. Oftentimes, he says, people believe such occupational dangers are a thing of the past.
"A lot of people are still developing cancer and dying from cancer due to workplace exposures, but only a small fraction of those are compensated, so people may think the magnitude of this problem is small," said Demers, director of the Occupational Cancer Research Centre in Ontario, Canada. "I wanted to have better data."
And in just a few years, he will…
lborkowski | December 14, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Workers in Travis County, Texas, are celebrating what advocates are calling a landmark victory, after local leaders voted to ensure that economic incentive deals benefit both big business and workers.
In late November, Travis County commissioners approved a new living wage requirement for companies wanting to move into the county and take advantage of the generous tax breaks the region offers to lure new business. The requirement creates a new wage floor of $11 an hour for all employees, including construction workers. On the same day as the county vote, a committee of the…
lborkowski | December 7, 2012by Kim Krisberg
The collective experience of domestic workers — house cleaners, nannies and caregivers — often remains hidden from view. For all practical purposes, they work in regulation-free environments without the benefits of labor, wage and health protections or oversight. There are no HR departments in people's homes.
But a new survey released in November has pulled back the curtain on the conditions and experiences domestic workers face, documenting issues such as wage exploitation, preventable on-the-job injuries and the little — if any — power domestic workers have in improving…
lborkowski | November 16, 2012This is the second in a series exploring the intersections between effectively caring for people living with chronic pain and the rise in unintentional poisoning deaths due to prescription painkillers. (The first post is here.) The series will explore the science and policy of balancing the need for treatment as well as the need to prevent abuse and diversion. This week's story looks at clinical efforts to reduce the risk of opioid abuse and overdose while still caring for patients; the next story will explore the role of public health officials in curbing opioid abuse.
by Kim Krisberg
Since…
lborkowski | October 5, 2012by Kim Krisberg
In the west Texas city of San Angelo, Planned Parenthood has been serving local women since 1938. It was one of the very first places in Texas to have a family planning clinic.
"We have grandmas bringing their granddaughters in," Carla Holeva, interim CEO of Planned Parenthood of West Texas, told me. "We're very much part of the community."
Today, the San Angelo clinic is preparing for some big, and unfortunate, changes. Last year, Texas lawmakers voted to exclude Planned Parenthood and other organizations affiliated with abortion providers from the state's Women's Health…
lborkowski | August 31, 2012by Kim Krisberg
It's Tuesday evening and as usual, the small parking lot outside the Workers Defense Project on Austin's eastside is packed. The dusty lot is strewn with cars and pick-up trucks parked wherever they can fit and get in off the road. I've arrived well before the night's activities begin, so I easily secure a spot. But my gracious guide and translator, a college intern named Alan Garcia, warns me that I might get blocked in. It happens all the time, he says.
It was the first of two August evenings I'd spend observing the project in action and meeting the workers who help lead its…
'An issue that affects all of us': Young workers center takes on wage theft in the Rio Grande Valley
lborkowski | August 27, 2012by Kim Krisberg
For six months, Jorge Rubio worked at a local chain of tortilla bakeries and taquerias in the cities of Brownsville and San Benito, both in the very southern tip of Texas. Rubio, 42, prepared the food, cleaned equipment, served customers. Eventually, he decided to quit after being overworked for months.
On his last day of work this past January, his employer refused to pay him the usual $50 for an 11-hour workday. The employer told Rubio that sales were too low to pay him. A couple months later, Rubio was referred to Fuerza del Valle, a young workers center in Texas' Rio…
cmonforton | July 3, 2012[Updated (July 5, 2012) below]
"We're still in the dark," explained one family whose son was killed 27 months ago at Alpha Natural Resources (formerly Massey Energy's) Upper Big Branch mine (UBB). That comment came two weeks ago after learning that Alpha, one of the world's largest coal companies, provided its first progress report to U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin as required by the December 2011 Non-Prosecution Agreement. The report was dated June 4, 2012. The progress report is supposed to describe the firm's compliance with the agreement, which settled the U.S. Department of Justice's…
cmonforton | June 8, 2012The Pump Handle reported on May 4, 2012 that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) had scrubbed clean its website of documents on an abruptly withdrawn proposed regulation to protect young workers from being injured or killed in agricultural jobs. Two weeks later, a group of organizations dedicated to government transparency and accountability wrote to Obama Administration officials asking them to
"re-post the documents online relating to now-withdrawn proposed rules concerning child labor in agriculture."
The DOL's Wage & Hour Division proposed in August 2011 a rule to prohibit children…
lborkowski | May 17, 2012by Dick Clapp
Judge Louis H. Pollak, who died on May 8, has been revered for his role as a civil rights lawyer, a volunteer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, dean of two law schools, and respected jurist. As my colleague Sheldon Krimsky, PhD of Tufts University observed,
Pollak was one of those practical idealists who understood the role of law for public purpose. In his place we find new libertarian jurists who see the law for private purpose.
In addition to these well-deserved accolades, I wanted to add a personal recollection of him that took place in the course of our work on the Project…
lborkowski | March 30, 2012Unless they've deviated from their normal procedure, the Supreme Court justices have now decided on how they'll rule on the Affordable Care Act - but, as the Washington Post's Robert Barnes points out, we'll have to wait until late June to hear their verdict. In the meantime, this is a good opportunity to recap the key issues in the case and highlight some of the more insightful commentary about them.
The first issue on which the Court heard arguments was whether it could rule on this case to begin with, since it involves a tax on people who don't have health insurance coverage (or a hardship…
cmonforton | February 8, 2012The Boston Globe's Megan Woolhouse reported earlier this week on a civil lawsuit against construction contractors and Walmart for the wrongful death of Romulo de Oliveira Santos, 47. The Brazilian immigrant and a crew of other workers were assigned to tear down the ceilings and walls on the night of September 8, 2008 at a Walmart in Walpole, Massachusetts. The workers weren't made aware of the live electrical wires, and Santos was electrocuted and fatally burned. Woolhouse writes the victim's family seeks: "$5 million in damages from Walmart and two subcontractors, alleging the conditions…
cmonforton | January 6, 2012Sheri Sangji, 23, earned a bachelors degree in chemistry from Pomona College in 2008, and dreamed of being an attorney. While awaiting word on her admission to law school, Sangji took a job in October 2008 as a research assistant in the laboratory of UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran. Three months later, Sangji was dead. She suffered severe burns on December 29 while working in Harran's lab with tert-butyllithium (tBuLi), a substance that will spontaneously ignite when exposed to air. Despite expert care provided at the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks, Sangji succumb to her…
cmonforton | October 6, 2011It's been 8 weeks now since two 17 year-old workers lost legs in an industrial auger while employed at a grain handling facility in Kremlin, Oklahoma. One of the young men remains in the hospital, but may be released soon to a rehabilitation facility. When I first wrote about this horrible incident, I noted that the safety rules governing young agricultural workers were more than 40 years old, the Labor Department was trying to update them, but proposed revisions were stalled (for 9 months) at the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
The young worker and farm safety…
lborkowski | August 4, 2011By Anthony Robbins
Natural gas producers are battling public concerns over the public-health effects of their extraction techniques. Does injection of water and toxic chemicals deep into the ground to release natural gas contaminate ground water, potentially drinking water? Now it appears that a strategy we have discussed before, settled lawsuits and confidentiality agreements, has prevented almost everyone from learning about the instances where serious contamination has been caused by fracking.
Today's New York Times reports that an EPA report by Carla Greathouse that described…
cmonforton | June 17, 2011NPR's Howard Berkes reported this week on the disposition of criminal and civil charges stemming from the disaster nearly four years ago at the Crandal Canyon mine in Utah. The makings of the catastrophe began months earlier, (previous posts here, here, here) but came to a deadly denouement in the early morning hours of August 6, 2007. An explosive outburst of rock and coal, related to the retreat-mining method in use at the mine, struck (killed) and buried six coal miners: Kerry "Flash" Allred, 57; Don Erickson, 50; Jose Luis Hernandez, 23; Juan Carlos Payan, 22; Brandon Phillips, 24; and…
cmonforton | May 27, 2011[June 3, 2011: Update below][May 31, 2011: Update below]
The West Virginia Supreme Court has taken up the case by Massey Energy shareholders to block the $8.5 Billon sale of the firm to Alpha Natural Resources. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr., and National Public Radio's (NPR) Howard Berkes have followed the day-to-day event on the suits (here, here, here, here.) Now, their organizations are part of the action.
The two news outlets filed a motion today before the WV Supreme Court, urging the judges to reject the request by the California State Teachers Retirement System (a…
stoat | March 3, 2011Neither of which has anything to do with climate change. They are:
* Foster parent ban: 'extreme distress' of 'anti-gay' Christians' over ruling courtesy of the Torygraph; and
* ECJ gender ruling hits insurance costs
God hates fags
I was going to rant about the first one but I won't (err, other than my mildly provocative headline). Instead, I'll ask you to compare the Torygraph and the Beeb to the actual judgement, which helpfully contains a summary of the case.
From which I quote a bit of background: The claimants are members of the Pentecostalist Church and believe that sexual relations…
cmonforton | November 12, 2010Steven Lillicrap, 21, started his shift at about 7:30 am on a cold Feb 3, 2009 at a construction site near St. Louis, Missouri. He was an apprentice Operating Engineer and this was his first big assignment. He would be working with more experienced men to dismantle a 100-ton crawler crane. The crew was in a hurry because the company, Ben Hur Construction, Inc., needed the crane that day at another job site. (The firm runs 15-20 projects at a time.) Within a couple of hours, Steven Lillicrap was dead. He suffered chest crushing injuries when the safety lanyard he was wearing got caught…
lborkowski | May 15, 2010Elizabeth Weise's USA Today article about potential health effects of the Gulf oil disaster and its cleanup notes that we don't have a whole lot of research to draw on about this kind of exposure. Residents and cleanup workers alike will be exposed both to the oil itself and to cleanup agents, particularly the chemical dispersants.
Weise references a Korean study conducted following the 2007 sinking of an oil tanker of the Korean coast, which found that residents had an increased risk of headaches, nauseau, and neurological and respiratory symptoms. With regards to the dispersants, she…