Congressional lawmakers propose protections for undocumented farmworkers; the Trump administration takes aim at workplace civil rights enforcement; federal legislation would provide benefits for gig economy workers; and poultry workers get nearly $600,000 in back wages.
CBO releases the numbers that House Republicans couldn’t wait for before passing the amended version of the American Health Care Act.
Affordable Care Act
More research that defunding Planned Parenthood simply leaves women without needed health care
To the surprise of literally no one, President Trump’s 2018 budget proposed stripping all federal funds, including Medicaid dollars, from Planned Parenthood. Proponents of this argue that if Planned Parenthood clinics end up shuttered, women can simply access care elsewhere. But growing research shows that’s the opposite of what actually happens.
Food Safety & Nutrition
Georgia congressman resurrects bad idea, poultry workers threatened with faster line speeds
A Georgia congressman thinks poultry plants should be able to increase line speeds to 175 birds per minute. That was a bad idea from Obama’s USDA. It was nixed, but now it’s resurrected.
Environmental Health
The PRIDE Study is open for enrollment: People are ‘hungry to be heard and represented’
Last week, researchers officially opened enrollment in the nation’s first decades-long study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer health — an effort they hope will transform our understanding of the health challenges LGBTQ people face and begin narrowing a giant data gap on their physical, mental and social well-being.
Environmental justice and labor groups in California were relentless in their demand to make refineries safer. Their years of effort paid off with an announcement last week by the state of new refinery safety regulations.
A Zika attack rate of just 1 percent across the six states most at risk for the mosquito-borne disease could result in $1.2 billion in medical costs and lost productivity, a new study finds. That’s more than the $1.1 billion in emergency Zika funding that Congress approved last year after months of delay and which is expected to run out this summer.
Former coal executive Don Blankenship is appealing to President Trump to get to “the truth” about the Upper Big Branch disaster. He’s holding tight to his alternative facts in lieu of bearing responsibility for the death of 29 coal miners.
A historical look at the ‘radium girls’ and their legacy of worker justice; OSHA’s website for receiving injury and illness logs not accepting submissions; California farmworkers sickened by pesticide after Trump’s EPA reverses course on a probable ban; and former Walmart employees file class-action lawsuit for pregnancy discrimination.
A complaint from National COSH and an investigation by the Arizona Daily Star led federal OSHA to examine the Industrial Commission of Arizona’s discounting of safety inspectors’ findings.