safety
cmonforton | December 7, 2016Bud Wesley, 65, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, November 30, while working at Spectrum Industries in Belding, Michigan. The Daily News reports:
The incident occurred at about 5 a.m.
The city’s police chief said that Mr. Wesley “was a part of the night maintenance crew at the facility. They were doing some high-level work and he fell from his working position.”
The company’s president said that Mr. Wesley was employed by the firm since 1998.
Spectrum Industries is a privately-held firm with 400 employees. Its business involves “the application of functional and decorative…
garrettbrown | November 9, 2016By Garrett Brown and Bob Jeffcott
A group of brave women’s rights and labor activists in San Pedro Sula, Honduras were the recipients of the 2016 International Award of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). The distinction was formally announced at the association's annual meeting. Lynda Yanz, Executive Director of the Maquila Solidarity Network, based in Toronto, Canada, traveled to Denver, Colorado to accept the award on behalf of the Honduras Independent Monitoring Team (EMIH) at the November 1st awards luncheon.
EMIH team (L to R):…
kkrisberg | October 21, 2016In September 2015, New York farmworker Crispin Hernandez was fired after his employers saw him talking with local workers’ rights advocates. But instead of backing down, Hernandez filed suit against the state. And if he prevails, it could help transform the often dangerous and unjust workplace conditions that farmworkers face to put food on all of our tables.
Officially filed May 10, 2016, Hernandez v. State of New York demands that the state provide the same constitutional protections to farmworkers as it does for other workers. Right now, according to the New York state constitution, all…
kkrisberg | October 11, 2016At the Denver Post, John Ingold and Monte Whaley authored a year-long investigative series into the dangerous conditions facing Colorado’s oil and gas workers, the role of subcontracting in heightening worker safety risks, and the lack of employer accountability and oversight. The series, “Drilling through danger,” noted that 1,333 workers died in the nation’s oil and gas fields between 2003 and 2014, with 2014 being the second-most lethal year for oil and gas workers in Colorado in a decade. According to the newspaper’s analysis, there was about one oil and gas worker death per every 12 rigs…
kkrisberg | September 30, 2016Just 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been possible to bring leading physicians, scientists and advocates together in a consensus on toxic chemicals and neurological disorders in children, says Maureen Swanson. But with the science increasing “exponentially,” she said the time was ripe for a concerted call to action.
Swanson is co-director of Project TENDR (Targeting Environmental Neuro-Developmental Risks), a coalition of doctors, public health scientists and environmental health advocates who joined forces in 2015 to call for reducing chemical exposures that interfere with fetal and child…
cmonforton | September 16, 2016Emilio Dodd, 55, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, September 6, while working at the Waste Management landfill on Railroad Street. The Lewisville Texan reports:
the incident occurred at about 3:30 pm
according to Lewisville police, “a resident with an F-350 pickup and dual-axle trailer had brought in a load of demolition debris to dump. Dodd was directing the driver as he backed the trailer up in the dumping area”
”a handle protruding from the trailer became entangled in Dodd’s clothing, causing Dodd to be pulled down. The 9,000 pound trailer drove over Dodd’s chest.”
Federal and…
kkrisberg | September 14, 2016In a big win for workers, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court has ruled that state law allowing businesses to opt out of traditional workers’ compensation is unconstitutional.
At ProPublica, Michael Grabell writes that the ruling now leaves Texas as the only state that lets employers pull out of workers’ comp in favor of creating their own alternative plans. Last year, Grabell, along with Howard Berkes at NPR, investigated the new opt-out trend, finding that such workers’ comp alternatives typically come with fewer employee benefits, more restrictions and no independent oversight.
In reporting on the…
cmonforton | September 8, 2016Harold Felton’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from Washington State-OSHA in the agency’s recent citations against Alki Construction.
The 36 year-old was working in January 2016 on a sewer repair project in a West Seattle neighborhood. The initial press reports indicated that Mr. Felton was working inside a 10-foot deep trench which was situated between two homes. King5.com reported: “…the walls of the trench gave way and buried the man under several feet of soil.”
I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred. The State of Washington's…
cmonforton | August 19, 2016Rick Simer, 64 suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Tuesday, August 9 while working at KBP Coil Coaters. The Denver Post reports:
"he was caught in an aluminum splitter machine."
The company’s website says:
“KBP Coil Coaters, Inc. is a leader in supplying pre-painted aluminum and steel coil, using state of the art coil coating equipment and methods. KBP rigorously tests and certifies every coil before it leaves our coil coating facility.”
Using OSHA’s on-line database, I did not find a record of an OSHA inspections at the KBP Coil Coaters, at least dating back to 2006.
The AFL-CIO’s 2016…
kkrisberg | August 16, 2016At NPR, John Burnett reports on the conditions facing farmworkers in south Texas 50 years after a landmark strike in which farmworkers walked 400 miles to the capital city of Austin to demand fair working conditions. He writes:
A lot has changed since 1966, when watermelon workers in the South Texas borderlands walked out of the melon fields in a historic strike to protest poor wages and appalling working conditions.
They marched 400 miles to the state capital of Austin; California labor activist and union leader Cesar Chavez joined them.
The farmworkers succeeded in publicizing their cause…
cmonforton | August 9, 2016When I heard the news about the 10 year old who died on Sunday at the Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, I couldn't help but remember Nico Benavides, 20.
Benavides died in March 2013 while a lifeguard at Schlitterbahn's park on San Padre Island, TX. Benavides and a co-worker were assigned to do maintenance on the park's wave pool. They were struck and pinned underneath a mechanical door. Benavides family kept him on life support for several days until his organs could be donated.
OSHA investigators found that the company did not have an effective lock-out/tag-out program. It is a basic…
kkrisberg | August 3, 2016At Slate, Gabriel Thompson writes about a little-used legal provision that could go far in helping farmworkers fight wage theft and other labor abuses. A part of the Great Depression-era Fair Labor Standards Act, the statute is known as the “hot goods provision” and it gives the U.S. Department of Labor the authority block products made in violation of labor laws from being shipped across state lines.
Thompson’s story begins with Felix Vasquez, who works in the strawberry fields of Oxnard, California, and had successfully worked with legal advocates to recover owed wages from his employer,…
kkrisberg | July 19, 2016At Mary Review, Mary Pilon writes about the experiences of women in the trucking industry, highlighting stories of sexual harassment and threats of violence that often get brushed to the wayside by industry employers and supervisors. The article notes that many women who seek out trucking jobs are in their 40s and 50s, are re-entering the workforce after a period away, and are attracted to a career that doesn’t require a higher education but can potentially yield a six-figure salary. Pilon begins the story with Cathy Sellars, who sought out a trucking job at age 55 after her divorce:
Cathy…
kkrisberg | July 15, 2016In a new national survey, about one in every four U.S. workers rates their workplace as just “fair” or “poor” in providing a healthy working environment. And employees in low-paying jobs typically report worse working conditions than those in higher-paying jobs — in fact, nearly half of workers in low-paying jobs say they face “potentially dangerous” conditions on the job.
Released earlier this month, results from the new Workplace and Health survey are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of more than 1,600 adult workers who were interviewed via phone during the first…
kkrisberg | July 12, 2016Mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, with more than 600 workers dying in fatal workplace incidents between 2004 and the beginning of July. And many more miners die long after they’ve left the mines from occupational illnesses such as black lung disease, while others live with the debilitating aftermath of workplace injuries. Today, researchers know a great deal about the health risks miners face on the job, but some pretty big gaps remain.
Kristin Yeoman and her colleagues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) hope to begin closing that knowledge…
lborkowski | July 5, 2016[Updated below 7/5/16 (6:30 pm)]
by Andrea Hricko
Last week, three railroad workers were killed in Texas when two BNSF locomotives crashed head-on into each other; one other worker was hospitalized but released. Due to heavy smoke, the bodies of the three workers with fatal injuries were unable to be located for many hours/even several days after the crash because of heavy smoke from the ensuing fire.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
"The railroad has said that a new safety technology known as positive train control was slated for installation later this year along the area of track…
kkrisberg | July 5, 2016At the Detroit Free Press, Jennifer Dixon and Kristi Tanner investigate Michigan’s workplace safety and oversight system and talk to the families of victims who say there’s no justice for workers who’ve been injured or killed on the job. During the year-long investigation, the reporters looked into more than 400 workplace deaths across the state, finding “a flawed system of oversight with penalties against employers so low they're not a deterrent.”
The article began with the story of Mary Potter, who worked at a group home for people with developmental disabilities. Dixon and Tanner write:…
cmonforton | June 28, 2016Eric McClellan’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from Virginia-OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer Reynolds Metals, a subsidiary of Alcoa.
The 55 year-old was working in November 2015 at the company’s plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia. The initial press reports indicated that McClellan got “caught in a machine.” I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred.
Virginia-OSHA issued a citation to Reynolds Metals for one serious violation related to machine guarding. Specifically, a guard
“designed and constructed as to…
kkrisberg | June 21, 2016At Reveal, Will Evans investigates how lobbyists for the temporary staffing industry squashed a legislative effort in Illinois to reform the industry’s widespread discriminatory hiring practices. Evans has previously reported on how the temp industry discriminates against workers of color, particularly black workers, using code words, symbols and gestures to illegally hire workers according to sex, race and age.
In Illinois, the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative developed legislation to confront such hiring practices. Illinois Senate Bill 47 would have required temp agencies to track the race…
kkrisberg | June 16, 2016The road toward eliminating the threat of asbestos has been long, slow-moving, incredibly frustrating and littered with significant hurdles. Thankfully, advocates like Linda Reinstein, who lost her husband to asbestos-related disease in 2003, refuse to get discouraged.
As co-founder and CEO of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), Reinstein works to unite those who’ve been personally impacted by asbestos-related illness, raise awareness about the continuing threat of asbestos, and advocate for policies that reduce exposures among workers, their families and the public.…