Liz Borkowski
lborkowski
Posts by this author
May 17, 2013
It's Bike to Work Day! Here in DC 14,000 people signed up to participate, and volunteers staffed 72 pit stops to offer refreshments and prizes to cyclists. Between 2006 and 2011, the number of DC residents who commute by bike jumped from 5,667 to 9,669 (accounting for 2% of commuters in 2006 and 3.…
May 14, 2013
by Kim Krisberg
Earlier this month, Florida lawmakers wrapped up their latest legislative session. And nearly 500 miles south of Tallahassee in Miami-Dade County, workers' rights advocates breathed yet another sigh of relief.
Ever since Miami-Dade adopted the nation's first countywide wage theft…
May 13, 2013
While the official death toll from the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh was still rising (it has now passed 1,100), a fire at another garment factory in Dhaka killed eight people. (If you haven't yet seen Elizabeth Grossman's post from Friday, she explores the reaction from…
May 9, 2013
Earlier this week, a UN official told AFP that a child in North Waziristan, Pakistan had contracted polio -- the first reported case since tribesman in North Waziristan stopped authorities from conducted a vaccination campaign in June last year. AFP explains:
The Taliban alleged that the campaign…
May 6, 2013
This week is Public Service Recognition Week, when we celebrate and thank the many public servants who work to make life better for all of us. Here’s more on this year’s Week from the Partnership for Public Service:
Celebrated the first week of May since 1985, Public Service Recognition Week (PSRW…
May 3, 2013
by Kim Krisberg
On Feb. 13, 2012, Honey Stecken gave birth to her daughter Maren. Everything appeared perfectly fine — she ate and slept and did all the things a baby does. Even after a couple weeks at home in South Fork. Colo., with her newborn little girl, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.…
May 2, 2013
Last week, Workers' Memorial Week events and reports from around the country drew media attention. Dorry Samuels at National COSH has a great writeup of the hugely successful week, including links to several newspapers that covered Worker Memorial Week stories:
California: ABC News/ Univision and…
May 1, 2013
Yesterday, FDA announced that it has approved Teva Women's Health, Inc.'s application to market its Plan B One-Step emergency contraceptive for women ages 15 and up. The press release notes that this application was pending before a federal judge ordered the agency to make Plan B available without…
April 29, 2013
by Elizabeth Grossman
On April 24th, hundreds of workers at fast-food restaurants in Chicago staged a one-day walk-out to demonstrate for a raise to $15 an hour and the right to form a union. Striking workers included employees of Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, Subway, Popeyes Chicken, Macy’s,…
April 26, 2013
by Kim Krisberg
Another day, another study that shows investing in public health interventions can make a serious dent in health care spending.
A new study recently published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that banning smoking in all U.S. subsidized housing could yield cost…
April 25, 2013
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Mike Elk in the Washington Post: The Texas fertilizer plant explosion cannot be forgotten
Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy: The Big One? Is China covering up another flu pandemic -- or getting it right this time? (About the H7N9 flu, which has been confirmed…
April 24, 2013
For this Workers' Memorial Week, the National Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) has released "Preventable Deaths: The Tragedy of Workplace Fatalities," a report that tells the stories of six workers killed on the job and promotes solutions to prevent other workers from…
April 22, 2013
This week is Workers' Memorial Week, when we remember the thousands of men and women who die on the job each year and work to prevent future deaths by improving workplace health and safety. Workers' Memorial Day is recognized worldwide on April 28, and more than a dozen US communities are holding…
April 19, 2013
by Kim Krisberg
Eric Rodriguez and his colleagues at the Latino Union of Chicago quite literally meet workers where they're at — on the city's street corners. Many of the day laborers who gather there during the morning hours are hired to work construction at residential housing sites. Work…
April 18, 2013
The New Yorker's News Desk blog features an excellent piece by Atul Gawande called "Why Boston's Hospitals Were Ready." It's a riveting read about how emergency medical teams, the city's emergency command center, and hospital staff all responded immediately and with admirable coordination to the…
Cracking down on deadbeat bosses: Wage theft victory a milestone in Chicago's worker center movement
April 15, 2013
by Kim Krisberg
For Angel Nava, Chicago's newly adopted wage theft ordinance is particularly personal.
Until recently, Nava had worked at the same car wash business in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood for 14 years. The 55-year-old employee did it all — washing, detailing, buffing — for about 50 hours…
April 12, 2013
Yesterday, the Philadelphia City Council fell one vote short of overriding Mayor Michael Nutter's veto of legislation that would have required businesses with more than five employees to let workers earn paid sick leave. This was the second time the Council had passed a paid sick leave bill, only…
April 11, 2013
In an excellent story about wage theft and unsafe conditions in the Texas construction industry, NPR's Wade Goodwyn observes, "working Texas construction is a good way to die while not making a good living."
Goodwyn notes that a Texas home might not cost the buyer much money -- a new 3,000 square-…
April 9, 2013
Last week, Judge Edward Korman of the District Court of Eastern New York overturned the Obama administration's restrictions on the over-the-counter sale of the emergency contraceptive Plan B to young women under age 17. This is good news for public health, and I hope it will be the end of a long…
April 5, 2013
by Kim Krisberg
If you serve it, they will eat it. That's one of the many lessons gleaned from a new report on the national Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program.
In the first really rigorous study of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP), researchers…
April 2, 2013
The only job 45-year-old Sheri Farley can hold is one where she doesn't have to sit or stand for more than 20 minutes at a time. She's racked by shooting pain in her legs and spine; doctors trace her neurological problems to five years of breathing glue fumes at the North Carolina furniture plant…
April 1, 2013
By Sara Gorman
In the late 1940s and 1950s, it became increasingly evident that mortality rates were falling rapidly worldwide, including in the developing world. In a 1965 analysis, economics professor George J. Stolnitz surmised that survival in the “underdeveloped world” was on the rise in part…
March 29, 2013
by Kim Krisberg
In California, a minimum wage worker has to work at least 98 hours in a week to afford a two-bedroom unit at fair market rental prices. In Texas, that worker would have to work between 81 and 97 hours in a week, and in North Carolina it's upward of 80 hours per week. In fact, in no…
March 28, 2013
I wrote earlier this week about the excellent work NPR and the Center for Public Integrity did for an in-depth series on worker deaths in grain bins. Now there are even more stories on the subject, including a PBS segment and several pieces in the Kansas City Star. Plus, Salon has published "When…
March 27, 2013
By Elizabeth Grossman
While commercially manufactured polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1979 due to concern about their extreme environmental persistence and toxicity – including potential to cause cancer – current EPA regulations allow…
March 26, 2013
NPR and the Center for Public Integrity have teamed up to produce an excellent and chilling series of stories about workers suffocated to death in grain bins -- a major and well-known hazard in agriculture. Howard Berkes and Jim Morris introduce the series with the story of 14-year-old Wyatt…
March 26, 2013
by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
Can we really consider "end game strategies" for tobacco? An Op-Ed in the New York Times makes a strong case for ending tobacco use. Let me begin with some history.
The World Health Organization's (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adopted in 2003, was…
March 25, 2013
By Polly Hoppin, Dick Clapp, Molly Jacobs, Margaret Quinn and David Kriebel
We all know a woman who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, whether she’s our mother, sister, close friend or neighbor. It’s the most common invasive cancer in women in this country, and we need to get more serious…
March 22, 2013
Today is World Water Day, and this year the celebration focuses on The Year of International Water Cooperation. UN Water reminds us that rivers often flow through multiple countries, and actions by one country or community can affect their neighbors’ ability to meet their water needs. Consuming too…
March 21, 2013
Last week, Portland, Oregon, became the fifth US jurisdiction to require employers to let workers earn paid sick leave. (The state of Connecticut and the cities of San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC also have paid sick leave laws; Milwaukee voters also approved one, but then the state…