Occup Health News Roundup
lborkowski | October 10, 2013Over the course of three days, three miners were killed on the job in West Virginia, Illinois, and Wyoming. Ken Ward Jr. describes their deaths in the Charleston Gazette:
In the recent incidents, 62-year-old Roger R. King of Moundsville was killed Friday when he was hit in the head by part of a chain being used during a longwall machine move at CONSOL Energy's McElroy Mine in Marshall County.
On Saturday, a miner at Alliance Coal's Pattiki Mine in White County, Ill., was killed when an underground cart rolled over and he was pinned underneath it. Local media identified the miner as Robert…
lborkowski | September 24, 2013At the Center for Public Integrity, Sasha Chavkin has the latest news on a mystifying occupational health problem: chronic kidney disease (CKD) in young, previously healthy agricultural workers in Central America, India, and Sri Lanka. Since 2011, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has been following CKD in agricultural workers, which researchers estimate has killed 20,000 people in Central America alone.
Chavkin reports that El Salvador's Legislative Assembly has approved a ban on 53 agrochemicals (some of which have been banned for years in most other countries),…
lborkowski | September 13, 2013Days before the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the New York Times published an article about respirators. This protective equipment was intended to protect response and recovery workers at Ground Zero, but often failed to do so because of discomfort, inadequate training, or unsuitable equipment. Thousands were exposed to airborne contaminants, and many have become sick.
In the years since, federal agencies and equipment manufacturers have been working on developing new certification standards for respirator masks and assuring they can be used by workers responding to…
lborkowski | August 19, 2013Wage theft – when employers fail to pay workers what they’ve earned – has been in the news lately:
In a lawsuit that could become a class-action suit, two former Apple store employees allege that the company failed to pay employees for time spent waiting for bag searches – time they say the employer required them to spend at the worksite, but for which they were off the clock and not paid.
In California, a joint enforcement action by the California Labor Commissioner’s office and CalOSHA (part of the multi-agency Labor Enforcement Task Force) at a Holiday Inn Express construction site has…
lborkowski | August 5, 2013Fast-food workers in several Midwestern cities and New York held one-day strikes last week to protest poverty wages. Jeff Schuhrke reports for In These Times, with a focus on the Chicago protests:
Hundreds of fast-food and retail workers in Chicago are on strike today and tomorrow, joining thousands of other workers walking off the job this week in at least seven cities across the country, including New York, Detroit and St. Louis. For most of these cities, this is the second time in recent months that low-wage employees—primarily in the fast-food industry—have staged single-day walkouts…
lborkowski | July 22, 2013Many of us have been complaining about the heat that’s blanketed much of the country for the past couple of weeks, but the situation is especially severe for those who work outdoors or in spaces without adequate cooling.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death of James Baldassarre, a 45-year-old postal worker who collapsed on the job and died in Massachusetts last week. Baldassare had worked for the US Postal Service for 24 years; his wife, Cathy, told WCVB News, “"I have a bunch of texts from Jimmy all day long, saying, 'I'm going to die out here today.…
lborkowski | July 8, 2013Chemical Safety Board Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso testified before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee regarding its preliminary findings on the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people in April. Ramit Plushnick-Masti reports for the Associated Press:
"The safety of ammonium nitrate fertilizer storage falls under a patchwork of U.S. regulatory standards and guidance — a patchwork that has many large holes," according to the report presented to the panel by Rafael Moure-Eraso, the board's chairman.
The board, which has no regulatory authority, recommended in…
lborkowski | June 24, 2013Back in January, the Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson reported on the case of Reuben Shemwell, a Kentucky mineworker who'd been fired from his welding job with an affiliate of Armstrong Coal. Shemwell filed a discrimination complaint saying he'd been fired because he had complained about safety conditions. The Mine Safety and Health Administration decided not to pursue Shemwell's discrimination complaint, and then Armstrong did something shocking: The company sued Shemwell, claiming a "wrongful use of civil proceedings," which Jamieson explained is akin to a frivolous lawsuit. Jamieson wrote…
lborkowski | June 13, 2013A fire at a poultry plant in Dehui, China last week killed at least 120 people and injured many others. Some state media reports attribute the fire to an ammonia leak, and medical workers reported that many victims had swollen respiratory tracts consistent with ammonia poisoning. Workers who escaped and victims' relatives cited narrow hallways and locked exits as factors in the alarmingly high death toll.
One report from the BBC describes the factory:
Family members were quoted as saying the factory doors were always kept locked during working hours.
The plant is owned by Jilin Baoyuanfeng…
lborkowski | May 28, 2013Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved immigration legislation that would overhaul US immigration laws. Alan Gomez reports in USA Today:
The bill was produced by a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight. With four of those members on the committee, the bill survived 212 amendments over five lengthy hearings.
Left intact was the core of the bill, which will allow the nation's 11 million unauthorized immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship, add significant investments in border security and fundamentally alter the legal immigration system of the future.
The…
lborkowski | May 13, 2013While 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 the Asian Network for the Rigths of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV).) In the Los Angeles Times, Mark Magnier notes that although this latest disaster has spurred additional calls for reform, change will be a challenge:
The Bangladesh garment industry, a national golden goose, is…
lborkowski | May 2, 2013Last 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 La Opinion
Illinois: The Telegraph
Nebraska: Lincoln Journal Star
New York: The Daily Gazette (subscription required)
North Carolina: News & Observer
Massachusetts: The Dedham Transcript, EHS Today, Worcester Mag, MetroWest Daily News (all articles are posted on the MassCOSH site)
Tennessee:…
lborkowski | April 11, 2013In 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-foot, five-bedroom home can be had for $160,000 -- but oftentimes that low price tag comes at a high cost for the workers who built it. The Austin-based Workers Defense Project co-authored a report with the University of Texas, Austin on Texas construction-industry working conditions, and their…
lborkowski | March 19, 2013On Monday, President Obama nominated Thomas E. Perez to be the next Secretary of Labor. He introduced Perez by saying:
Like so many Americans, Tom knows what it’s like to climb the ladder of opportunity. He is the son of Dominican immigrants. He helped pay his way through college as a garbage collector and working at a warehouse. He went on to become the first lawyer in his family. So his story reminds us of this country’s promise, that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what your last name is -- you can make it if you try.
And Tom has made…
lborkowski | March 11, 2013In the Washington Post, Sari Horwitz and Lena H. Sun report that President Obama will likely nominate Thomas E. Perez to be the next Secretary of Labor, following the departure of Secretary Hilda Solis. Perez is currently assistant US attorney general for civil rights.
The article mentions work by Perez on issues important to workers' health and safety. In 2005, Perez served as president of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Council, and one of the laws he pushed for was a domestic workers' "bill of rights." In 2007, Governor Martin O'Malley appointed him the state's secretary of labor, and in…
lborkowski | February 25, 2013The two-year anniversary of OSHA's proposed silica rule being stuck at the White House Office of Management & Budget (which Celeste wrote about here) attracted some media attention. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce did an in-depth story on the hazards of airborne silica exposure, which increases the risk of lung cancer and the lung disease silicosis, and the lengthy White House inaction on OSHA's proposal. Her piece includes a story from one worker who saw the damage of silica exposure firsthand:
Tom Ward, a 44-year-old mason who lives and works in Michigan, knows just how bad silicosis is.…
lborkowski | February 5, 2013Twenty years ago, President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which many workers still rely on to assure that they can return to their jobs after taking unpaid time off for a new baby or to deal with a serious illness - their own or a family member's. But, NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports, 40% of the workforce is ineligible for the leave, including those working fewer than 25 hours per week with an employer (even if they have multiple part-time jobs), workers at businesses with fewer than 50 employees, and those who want to care for a family member who doesn't meet the official "…
lborkowski | January 24, 2013On April 5, 2010, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia killed 29 miners. Four different investigative bodies reached the same conclusion about the causes of the blast: that mine owner Massey Energy disregarded fundamental safety practices while pursuing profit. (Celeste describes these findings and more in a post published on the second anniversary of the disaster.)
The office of US Attorney Booth Goodwin is prosecuting individuals they found to be involved in criminal mine safety violations at Upper Big Branch. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr.…
lborkowski | January 10, 2013Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis has announced that she is resigning her position in the Obama administration. Chris Hamby of the Center for Public Integrity looks back at Solis's tenure at the Department of Labor:
Labor advocates credit her with restoring the department’s commitment to protecting workers, particularly vulnerable populations, and bringing stronger enforcement of worker safety laws. During her tenure, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration expanded initiatives to crack down on repeat violators of safety and health laws –…
lborkowski | December 21, 2012The Center for Public Integrity's excellent Hard Labor series continues with two more stories about workers killed on the job. In "'They were not thinking of him as a human being,'" Jim Morris writes about Carlos Centeno, who died after suffering from burns to 80% of his body. Centeno had been assigned by a temporary staffing agency to the Raani Corp. plant in Bedford Park, Illinois, and he was scalded by an eruption of of a citric acid solution. According to federal investigators, factory bosses refused to call an ambulance, even as Centeno screamed in pain. More than 90 minutes after being…