Last summer, 25-year-old Roendy Granillo died of heat stroke while he installed flooring in a house in Melissa, Texas, just north of Dallas. His tragic and entirely preventable death marked a turning point in advocacy efforts to pass a rest break ordinance for local construction workers.
One member of the NTSB challenged her colleagues’ proclivity for citing “operator error.” Her remarks came during this week’s hearing on the May 2015 Amtrak train derailment that killed eight passengers.
Hardly a day goes by lately without another story on companies like Uber and their model of classifying workers as independent contractors while treating them more like traditional employees and sidestepping traditional employer responsibilities. It’s a model that has serious implications for workers’ rights and wages. However, there’s another form of employment that may be even more damaging to hard-fought labor standards: subcontracting.
The FAA updates its website daily with aircraft safety incident reports linked to ownership data. MSHA promptly posts injury, illness, and close-call incidents reported by every US mining operation. OSHA’s plan for 2018 to post annual injury data for a fraction of US workplaces is just the agency trying to keep up with the times.
It’s been 15 years since worker safety advocates in Puerto Rico first began fighting against a proposal to dilute the qualifications associated with being a professional industrial hygienist. As part of their efforts, such advocates developed their own proposal to protect the livelihoods of those with the knowledge and experience to properly protect workers. And after years of work, they may finally cross the finish line victorious.
With near constant news on the threat of Zika virus and a quickly growing evidence base detailing the virus’ devastating impact on fetal brain development, you’d think Congress could get its act together to make sure our public health system is fully prepared and equipped to confront the mosquito-borne disease. Sadly, you’d be wrong.
Workers inside Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel speak up about wages and conditions; New York’s governor sides with farmworkers in right to organize; reporters investigate the lack of women coaches in college sports; and Uber agrees to a workers guild with very limited power.
This week’s snapshot of just one work-related fatality in the US. This one occurred on Monday, May 2 in Denver, IA
Just in time for Mother’s Day comes more good news from the Affordable Care Act: the rate of uninsured moms caring for kids younger than 19 has dropped to its lowest rate in nearly 20 years.
The fatal work-related injuries that killed Justin ‘J.D.’ Jorgensen could have been prevented had his employer followed worker safety regulations.