The road toward eliminating the threat of asbestos has been long, slow-moving, incredibly frustrating and littered with significant hurdles. Thankfully, advocates like Linda Reinstein, who lost her husband to asbestos-related disease in 2003, refuse to get discouraged.
The fatal work-related injuries that killed Kenneth Schultz could have been prevented had his employer followed worker safety regulations.
Flip Wilson retired months ago after 40 years as a coal miner. Co-workers designated him as their safety representative. He drives 70 miles roundtrip to accompany mine inspectors and ensure the company is following the law.
Reveal investigates the toll of nuclear testing on the country’s “atomic vets”; federal labor officials propose new mining safety rules; D.C. officials vote in support of a $15 minimum wage; and an Amazon employee writes a first-person account from inside one of the company’s warehouses.
This week’s snapshot of just one work-related fatality in the US. This one occurred on Friday, May 27, in Jessup, MD.
A ‘hidden’ workforce of foreign workers at a Tesla plant in California; Illinois legislators pass a domestic workers bill of rights; Congress uses a spending bill to weaken safety rules for truckers; and lawsuits over workplace leave policies spike way up.
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.
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.