The AFL-CIO’s annual “Death on the Job” report presents the painful truth that the penalty for employers who violate safety rules that lead to worker fatalities, is woefully inadequate. Our nation’s rhetoric about respect for life seems not to apply to working people who face serious hazards on-the-job.
National Police Week honors law enforcement officers who’ve been killed in the line of duty; OSHA tells Hyatt Hotels that housekeeping workers are at risk of ergonomic injuries; and a fire in a Phiippines clothing factory kills 17.
During a recent visit to Dallas, TX, family members who’ve lost loved ones from fatal work-related injuries heard something shocking from major U.S. corporation’s vice president for safety.
Advocates react to the Obama administration’s unexpected decision to drop proposed revisions to rules on children working in agriculture — an industry with a high fatality rate for young workers.
It was bad enough when the Obama Administration withdrew a proposed rule to protect the most vulnerable workers in our country—children employed on farms—-but somebody told the Labor Department staff to delete all evidence of the proposal from the Labor Department’s website.
UCLA Professor Rick Brown was a champion of public health who passed away suddenly last month. His colleagues, former students and friends are remembering and celebrating his tremendous contributions to improve occupational health, children’s health, and families’ access to health care services.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report on the snail’s pace of the OSHA process of issuing new rules to protect workers from health and safety hazards on-the-job. One telling table in the document showed the agency issued about 20 new major regulations in each of the previous two decades (i.e., […]
By Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPRBlog Yesterday evening, when press coverage had ebbed for the day, the Department of Labor issued a short, four-paragraph press release announcing it was withdrawing a rule on child labor on farms. The withdrawal came after energetic attacks by the American Farm Bureau, Republicans in Congress, Sarah Palin, and–shockingly–Al Franken […]
Gabriel Thompson writes today in The Nation about a summer job he had a few years back, working on the assembly line at a Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant in Alabama. The chickens flew by on hooks at 90 birds-per-minute as he sliced and cut the meat non-stop. It didn’t take long for him to meet […]
by Elizabeth Grossman One might assume that when a government agency awards a private company a contract to do construction work – for bridge or sewer work or other public utility repairs, for example – evaluating the company’s safety and health record would be a prerequisite. This is, however, not the case. As the government […]