The collective experience of domestic workers — house cleaners, nannies and caregivers — often remains hidden from view. But a new survey has pulled back the curtain on the conditions and experiences domestic workers face, documenting issues such as wage exploitation, preventable on-the-job injuries and the little — if any — power domestic workers have in improving their work environments.
Seven new worker safety regulations–both proposed and final rules—are stuck in the Obama White House. One proposed rule has been “under review” for 645 days.
Monica Thayer, 25, nearly lost her life when she was pulled hair-first into a machine at JR Engineering. She lost her scalp and spent three weeks in the hospital. Her employer doesn’t think it is responsible and is challenging OSHA’s $7,000 penalty.
Now that the Presidential election is over, it’s time for the Labor Department to kick into high gear expand workers’ rights and ensuring workers’ lives and health are protected. Here’s my wish list of tasks for the Labor Department to accomplish in the next 6 months:
Several workers were injured when a January explosion rocked El Dorado Drilling’s Logan Rig #7 in Logan County, Oklahoma. The company said “these things happen,” but accident investigators know otherwise.
Since 2000, major regulatory activities by OSHA do indeed slow down during a Presidential election year compared to the year preceding it.
In our new report “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety,” we devote one section to key activities by the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress.
It’s Tuesday evening and as usual, the small parking lot outside the Workers Defense Project on Austin’s eastside is packed. The dusty lot is strewn with cars and pick-up trucks parked wherever they can fit and get in off the road. I’ve arrived well before the night’s activities begin, so I easily secure a spot. But my gracious guide and translator, a college intern named Alan Garcia, warns me that I might get blocked in. It happens all the time, he says.
During the last seven Presidential election years, OSHA has an interesting record of issuing new rules on worker safety issues despite the heated national campaigns.
An internal OSHA report on the agency’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) was submitted to agency leadership nine months ago, and released to the public this week. The group made 34 recommendations to improve the program, including several addressing fatalities occurring at VPP sites.