December 20, 2017 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH

An OSHA news release about a $545,000 settlement with Marshall Pottery was strange to me. The agency hadn’t previously announced the willful violations and $830,000 proposed penalty to the firm related to the death earlier this year of employee Arturo Tovar.

November 1, 2017 Kim Krisberg

At BuzzFeed News, Zahra Hirji and Jason Leopold report that the news organization has obtained internal emails, recordings and interviews from oil company BP showing that executives are struggling to “reset” its Alaska operations after a string of incidents that threatened workers’ lives. For example, on Sept. 10, two workers inadvertently triggered a leak of […]

September 27, 2017 Kim Krisberg

A reporter goes undercover to expose the conditions facing temp workers; West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin comes out against Trump’s MSHA pick; carpenters union confronts Industrial Commission of Arizona on leniency toward violators; and a Philadelphia union joins an opioid lawsuit against drug companies.

September 14, 2017 Garrett Brown 2Comment

In the last two years, the California Legislature has provided the Department of Industrial Relations with significantly increased financial resources to enhance the effectiveness of Cal/OSHA and better protect the 19 million workers in the state. DIR has failed to take full advantage of these resources to strengthen Cal/OSHA while at the same time it has provided refunds to employers who have paid the fees that generate these unused resources. The net effect is a Cal/OSHA that is weaker and less effective than it could be if all available resources were put to work. The people who pay the cost of these resources “left on the table” are the workers of California and their families and communities.