regulation
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…
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 | October 5, 2015Anyone who’s lived in a big, dense city is familiar with the sight of bicycle messengers weaving their way in between metro buses and taxi cabs, down side streets and around packed crosswalks, pedaling at impressive speeds and often with remarkable agility. Surprisingly, however, there’s little data on these workers, even though it seems they’d be particularly susceptible to injuries on the job.
To fill in that knowledge gap, a group of researchers from New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital Center decided to take a deeper look. Hypothesizing that those commercial…
cmonforton | October 2, 2015More than 1.5 million US farmworkers will be better protected in the years ahead because of a new regulations issued this week by the EPA. The agency’s Worker Protection Standard (WPS) addresses the hazards related to pesticide exposure for farmworkers. The WPS was initially adopted by EPA in 1992, but considered inadequate by many affected workers and public health experts.
“In my experience as a farmworker, I have seen many people affected by exposure to chemicals,”
explained Miguel, who provided comments to EPA during the agency’s rulemaking process.
“I have heard of [people needing] liver…
cmonforton | September 30, 2015I’m still shaking my head and asking out loud, “what were they thinking?” Am I getting this right?: Volkswagen installed software so its diesel-polluting vehicles would deceive EPA-mandated emissions tests. And buyers of the vehicles were deceived by Volkswagen. The company led them to believe they could get a car with power, performance, high miles per gallon, and “clean diesel,” while not suffering from sticker shock.
What those owners and the rest of us didn’t know was the price we were paying in terms of public health. Brad Plumer at Vox offers a back-of-the-envelope estimate on the air…
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…
cmonforton | September 25, 2015The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to push a bill in Congress to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA). We’ve written previously (e.g., here, here, here) about this flawed legislation (S.697). Regrettably, it has 55 Republicans and Democrats supporting it and the full Senate will likely be voting on the bill in the coming weeks.
Although EDF and ACC assert broad support for the legislation, I wish the Senators would pay attention to the 450 health, environmental and labor groups that oppose S.697. Their coalition is…
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 | 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…
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:…
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 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…
kkrisberg | August 18, 2015The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is no stranger to budget cuts — the agency is already so underfunded that it would take its inspectors nearly a century, on average, to visit every U.S. workplace at least once. In some states, it would take two centuries. Unfortunately, appropriations bills now making their way through Congress don’t bode much better for OSHA.
Earlier this month, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) and Public Citizen, along with 74 fellow organizations that care about worker health and safety, sent a letter to…
cmonforton | August 7, 2015My husband and I (along with our 70 pound golden retriever) recently spent 26 hours in our car driving from Texas to Michigan. That’s lots of time to kibitz on all sorts of topics.
He heard me rant about four workers killed on the job last fall at DuPont’s LaPorte, TX plant because of gross safety violations. At the same time, the corporate giant earns millions selling its safety “expertise” to other companies. My husband heard me repeat my complaints about the small financial sanctions imposed on companies for violating fundamental safety regulations, even in cases of a worker's death. The…
cmonforton | August 6, 2015OSHA announced today that it is proposing a health standard to protect workers who are exposed to beryllium. Exposure to the lightweight but super strong metal causes a debilitating illness called chronic beryllium disease (CBD) and lung cancer.
The proposed rule is coming about, in part, because of an effort by those who will be most affected by an OSHA beryllium regulation: the nation’s primary beryllium manufacturer, Materion, and the United Steelworkers (USW). They engaged in two years of negotiations to agree on key provisions of a regulation. In February 2012, they submitted their…
cmonforton | August 4, 2015Ascencion Molina Medina, 44, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Thursday, July 30, 2015 while working at a construction site in Greenville, SC. Greenville On-line reports:
Medina “lost his footing” and fell about 30 feet, according to the county coroner. He died several hours later at the local hospital.
The construction project is a new mixed use development called Main + Stone which will house residential and retail properties. The Beach Company is the developer and the project broke ground in late 2014.
The general contractor of the Main + Stone development is Yeargin Potter Shackelford…
cmonforton | July 29, 2015Timothy Winding’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 KCI Inc and Ford Motor Company. The 50 year-old was working in December 2014 at the Ford Motor Company’s Kansas City assembly plant in Claycomo, MO, when he was killed on the job.
The initial press reports indicated that Winding was part of a crew of contractors who were working to retool the plant for a new line of Ford trucks. While working on a body marriage machine, a safety rod broke and Winding was crushed. I wrote about the…