The agenda for the Immigrant Worker Center’s recent leadership training session in Boston was straight-forward enough — a presentation on the economy and public policy. Then, a woman from El Salvador began to cry.
Need evidence that there’s justice in this world? “I have mad respect for my teachers now,” says Josiah Ramirez, 15, of Boston. Having been trained in worker safety and health so they can teach their classmates, Ramirez and his fellow participants in a Massachusetts teen leadership and advocacy program now know what it’s like to keep teenagers engaged in a classroom.
Labor Rights
“Hazards of the gig economy” – Temp workers at greater risk for workplace injury but poorly protected, say labor advocates
During the week when OSHA renewed its alliance with the American Staffing Association, National COSH held a press call to draw attention to the temp industry’s failure to adequately address health and safety problems faced by temp workers.
Government
Massachusetts extends OSHA protections to state workers: It’s about ‘creating an infrastructure that supports health and safety’
Back in 1970 when the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration was established, local policymakers could choose whether or not to extend OSHA protections to state employees. Unfortunately, Massachusetts took a pass. But decades later — and after years of advocacy, organizing and research on the part of worker advocates — employees of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts can now look forward to safer and healthier workplaces.
Community organizations in Massachusetts, Knoxville, Houston and elsewhere issued reports this week to commemorate International Workers’ Memorial Day. All of the reports featured the names, faces and stories of victims of work-related fatalities.
In the final section of our new report “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety,” we end on a high note. We profile a number of new laws at the state and local levels to improve working conditions for Americans and protect them from serious health and safety hazards.
Massachusetts’ Temporary Workers’ Right to Know Act, just passed by the state’s legislature, aims to end the all-too-common exploitation of temporary workers.
by Elizabeth Grossman The news of increased hiring in the January jobs report has been greeted as a sign that the US might finally be emerging from the Great Recession. But a look at the kind of hiring that’s been on the rise over the past few years raises important questions about the changing nature […]