Legal
cmonforton | December 4, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship concluded this week with jurors finding him guilty of conspiring to violate mine safety standards. Blankenship's Upper Big Branch coal mine was the scene of the worst US mine disaster in 40 years when 29 men were killed in a massive coal dust explosion on April 5, 2010.
US Attorney Booth Goodwin---who managed the team of investigators and lawyers who brought the successful case---said:
“The evidence overwhelmingly showed an enterprise that embraced safety crimes as a business strategy. It was reprehensible, and the jury saw it for…
cmonforton | November 27, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is in its eighth week. Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette continues to provide updates from the courtroom, but far fewer now that most of the action is behind closed doors where the jury is deliberating.
Ward explains that Blankenship’s attorneys have yet again asked “the judge to declare the jurors deadlocked and order a mistrial.” Judge Irene Berger disagreed. Ward writes:
“Noting that the trial was lengthy and involved complicated charges, Berger said that the jury’s deliberation time to date was not unreasonable. ‘I think…
kkrisberg | November 24, 2015Maquiladora 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. “…
cmonforton | November 20, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship went into its seventh week. The jurors listened to the prosecution’s 27th (and final witness) and heard the defense team rest its case. Thanks to the reporting from the federal courthouse in Charleston, WV by Ken Ward Jr. and Joel Ebert of the Charleston Gazette, I can share some of my favorite quotes from the week.
The week started with a bang when Blankenship’s lead defense attorney--without calling a single witnesses--- announced: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defense rests.”
Ward talked with legal scholars to shed…
7-Eleven workers organize against workplace violence: ‘Convenience store workers deserve to be safe’
kkrisberg | November 20, 2015In February 2015, a group of 7-Eleven night shift workers in Buffalo, New York, filed a complaint with OSHA. Sick of enduring regular bouts of verbal harassment, racial slurs and even death threats from customers — threats they often experienced while working alone with no security guard — they hoped OSHA could help bring about safer working conditions. Unfortunately, the agency decided not to investigate.
With no help from OSHA, the workers sought out guidance at the Western New York Worker Center, a project of the Western New York Council on Occupational Safety and Health (WNYCOSH). There…
cmonforton | November 13, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship went into its sixth week. Jurors heard from a financial expert and an FBI special agent. Thanks to the reporting from the federal courthouse by Ken Ward Jr. and Joel Ebert of the Charleston Gazette, I can share some of my favorite quotes from the week.
The prosecution called Frank Torchio, an expert at analyzing changes in stock prices in response to favorable and unfavorable public information. Torchio examined Massey Energy’s financial performance, in particular, following the April 5, 2010 disaster at the company’s Upper Big…
kkrisberg | November 10, 2015Workers who get injured on the job already face significant challenges when trying to access the workers’ compensation system. But for workers who suffer from occupational illnesses related to chemical exposures — illnesses that can develop over long periods of time — the workers’ comp system is nearly useless, according to reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins at the Center for Public Integrity.
In another installment of the center’s eye-opening investigative series “Unequal Risk,” Hopkins explores the often insurmountable barriers that sick workers face — barriers so insurmountable that most people…
cmonforton | November 6, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship went into its fifth week. Among others, the jurors heard from a veteran federal mine safety inspector, and a former Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) ventilation expert who went to work for Blankenship at Massey Energy following his retirement from the agency.
Thanks to the reporting by the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. and Joel Ebert, I present some of my favorite quotes from this week’s proceeding in the federal courtroom:
The prosecution put veteran mine safety inspector Harold Hayhurst on the witness stand to…
kkrisberg | October 28, 2015The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the first nationally representative estimates of electronic cigarette use among U.S. adults, finding that more than 12 percent had ever tried the aerosol nicotine products in 2014. So, as is the unfortunate case with many emerging and potential public health threats, it seems like e-cigarette use is outpacing the ability of regulatory bodies to protect the public’s health and educate consumers about possible risks.
The new data is from CDC’s National Health Interview Survey, which first began collecting data on e-cigarette use…
kkrisberg | October 23, 2015When Mirella Nava began her new job at Rock Wool Manufacturing Company in Houston, Texas, she had no intentions of becoming an advocate for worker safety. But when she witnessed how fellow workers were being treated and the dangerous work conditions they faced on a daily basis, she felt compelled to speak up.
Eventually, Nava and a group of Rock Wool workers — with the help of the Houston-based Fe y Justicia Worker Center — got the attention of local OSHA officials, who earlier this year cited Rock Wool Manufacturing for seven serious and two repeat violations for exposing workers to a…
cmonforton | October 16, 2015The second week of the criminal trial against former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship continued in Charleston, WV. The US attorneys called eight former employees to the witness stand. They included Blankenship’s executive assistant and five miners who worked at the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine just prior to the April 2010 coal dust explosion that killed 29 workers. Transcripts of the trial are not publicly available, but the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. is providing daily recaps direct from the courtroom.
Ward reports, for example, on the testimony of one of the former UBB miners, Brent…
kkrisberg | October 14, 2015At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, reporter Jeffrey Meitrodt authored an outstanding four-part series on one of the nation’s deadliest occupations: farm work. In “Tragic Harvest,” Meitrodt chronicles the impact of lax farmworker safety rules and the rise in worker fatalities in Minnesota. He begins his series with the story of farmworker Richard Rosetter:
Richard Rosetter stood inside his 28-foot grain bin and smashed a shovel into the thick layer of ice that covered his corn.
He was in a foul mood. His wife and a neighbor were pestering him, upset that he was working by himself, with no…
cmonforton | October 10, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship began this week in Charleston, WV. The company’s Upper Big Branch mine was the site of the massive coal dust explosion in April 2010 which killed 29 coal miners. The Justice Department’s case against Blankenship involves conspiring to violate mine safety regulations and making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the company’s compliance with safety regulations.
The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. and his colleagues have a website dedicated to the Blankenship trial. It offers readers regular…
kkrisberg | October 9, 2015Earlier this week, the White House hosted a Summit on Worker Voice, welcoming organizers from more traditional labor groups, such as unions, as well as voices from new worker movements, such as Fight for $15. At the summit, President Obama spoke about wages, the power of collective action and the growing “gig” economy.
Many of the summit remarks weren’t necessarily groundbreaking or even entirely surprising. But as the right to organize is increasingly under fire in Congress and in state legislatures — while at the same time, low-wage workers are finding new ways to band together and demand…
kkrisberg | September 29, 2015Collective bargaining and the fair-share fees that enable unions to negotiate for better working conditions that ultimately benefit all workers in a particular sector or workplace may truly be in peril, writes Lily Eskelsen García in The Nation.
In “Unions in Jeopardy,” García writes about the legal precedent upholding fair-share agreements and recent legal threats threatening to dismantle a core tenet of labor relations. She begins the article with the 2012 case Knox v. SEIU, in which she said the Supreme Court “went out of its way to cast doubt” on fair share representation fees. In…
kkrisberg | September 16, 2015Investigative reporter Mark Collette at the Houston Chronicle interviewed more than a dozen former employees with a combined 213 years of experience on the production lines of Blue Bell’s flagship ice cream plant in Brenham, Texas, finding stories of routine food safety lapses and failures to protect worker safety. The company made headlines over the summer after a national listeria outbreak was traced back to the well-known ice cream manufacturer.
Among the former workers interviewed was Sabien Colvin, who lost parts of three of his fingers after a machine he was cleaning unexpectedly turned…
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…
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 | 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…
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:…