In California, a minimum wage worker has to work at least 98 hours in a week to afford a two-bedroom unit at fair market rental prices. In Texas, that worker would have to work between 81 and 97 hours in a week, and in North Carolina it’s upward of 80 hours per week.
Reporters from the Center for Public Integrity, NPR, and WBEZ are producing excellent, in-depth stories on the circumstances and aftermaths of worker deaths in grain bins and at temporary worksites.
Government
All-time high migrant death rate along US-Mexico border: prevention in immigration reform?
The death rate among individuals crossing illegally the U.S.-Mexico border reached an all-time high in 2012. Focusing on labor law enforcement, rather than border enforcement, could be a solution to the death toll.
Although EPA banned commercially manufactured PCBs in 1979, it still allows PCBs that occur as manufacturing by-products. Recent research has found these by-product PCBs in air and water samples from across the US. Are workers at risk from exposure to these substances?
Worker Health & Safety
“The one kid who survived actually saw his friends die”: Report on grain bin deaths
NPR and the Center for Public Integrity have teamed up to produce an excellent and chilling series of stories about workers suffocated to death in grain bins — a major and well-known hazard in agriculture.
A recent Op-Ed in the New York Times proposes an end game strategy for ending tobacco use in the U.S.
The Interagency Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Coordinating Committee called for an urgent acceleration in environmental research on cancer prevention – identifying which chemicals and physical factors cause breast cancer. We agree, and we urge one more step in breast cancer prevention research: figuring out how to wean our economy from dependence on cancer-causing chemicals.
Today is World Water Day, and this year the celebration focuses on The Year of International Water Cooperation. UN Water reminds us that rivers often flow through multiple countries, and actions by one country or community can affect their neighbors’ ability to meet their water needs.
As the list of US jurisdictions with paid sick leave laws gets longer, members of Congress introduce a bill that would require paid sick leave nationwide.
Representatives of U.S. foundries met with White House officials behind closed doors to complain about a not-yet-proposed OSHA regulation. It was the group’s second such meeting. But they wouldn’t be necessary if the White House would simply allow OSHA’s public hearing process to take place.