For the seventh consecutive year, we present The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety. It’s a yearbook that highlights some of the most significant policy changes, advocacy activities, journalism and research over the past 12 months.
Throughout the year, we tuck away photos, news stories, peer-reviewed papers, press releases, and reports from organizations. Like high school students creating their yearbook, we make hard choices about what to include or omit. One goal this year was to include as many photos as possible that were contributed by state and local COSH groups. They capture better than anything the spirit and vibrancy of the OHS movement.
We consider The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety (OHS Yearbook 2018) the other bookend to the AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job report. Their publication—now in its 27th year and prepared by its Safety and Health Department— is published in April to correspond with Worker Memorial Day. The Death on the Job report is a robust compendium of year-by-year injury and illness statistics and other useful data going back to 1970. Our yearbook is written to complement the Death on the Job report with our choices of the most notable events, successes, challenges, journalism and research in U.S. occupational health and safety.
The OHS Yearbook 2018 has five sections:
- Activities at the federal level, including those involving OSHA and EPA;
- Activities at the state and local level, including campaigns and events by COSH groups;
- News coverage on OHS issues by national and regional reporters, including the Me Too movement;
- Research on OHS topics published in the peer-reviewed literature and by labor rights organizations; and
- A bibliography of our picks for the 60 best papers from the peer-reviewed literature published in the last 12 months.
The OHS Yearbook 2018 also features more than 100 photos, including dozens showing COSH group activities and Worker Memorial Week events.
Throughout this week on The Pump Handle, we’ll be providing a snapshot from each section of the yearbook. We hope you’ll leave us a comment below detailing your own experiences from the past year or letting us know what we might have missed. We also hope you’ll help share the OHS Yearbook 2018 far and wide. We want it to be a source of inspiration and motivation to advance workers’ rights—something we need more than ever.
The 1st through 6th editions of the OHS Yearbooks can be found here.
Wow! -Thanks to Celeste and all the contributors that made this yearbook happen, especially for this year! What an inspiring assortment of stories, people, organizations and campaigns that highlight our safety movement in times that are so challenging for so many workers and their allies. This work is so important to the movement to remind us of what we can achieve by working together for worker rights to a safe workplace. Now, it’s obvious what comes next – we build on this to make this year even more exciting and historical to meet the current challenge:)