Firefighter in charge of worker safety at ground zero dies from blood cancer; whistleblowers at the Department of Veterans Affairs chronicle retaliation and abuse; Oregon adopts new pesticide safety rules for farmworkers; and Massachusetts celebrates passages of $15 minimum wage and paid leave.
McDonald’s ruling could be a major turning point for the fast food worker movement; federal commission clarifies rules for pregnant workers; miners with black lung may have been wrongly denied benefits; and a new OSHA whistleblower partnership is launched to support commercial carrier workers.
Tony Schick of Oregon Public Broadcasting profiles the experience of BNSF railway employees who blow the whistle on safety problems.
When President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law in 2011, it was described as the most sweeping reform of the nation’s food safety laws in nearly a century. Public health advocates hailed the law for shifting regulatory authority from reaction to prevention. What received less attention was a first-of-its-kind provision that protects workers who expose food safety lawbreakers.
Environmental Health
Reporting workplace hazards: “If people are afraid to report, things don’t get fixed”
According to a new report from the Center for Effective Government, American workplace health and safety is suffering from – and as a result of – a serious lack of resources. While the number of US workplaces doubled between 1981 and 2011 and the number of US workers increased from 73 million to 129 million […]
As immigration legislation passes the Senate Judiciary Committee, a report demonstrates why agricultural employers consider a guest worker program to be so important; Bangladesh garment workers win important improvements; and OSHA penalizes an energy company for firing an employee who raised safety concerns about a nuclear-energy project.