Texas workers face higher workplace fatality risks; Washington state court ruling holds parent company liable for wage violations; rail workers dismayed by union deal that threatens safety; and transgender workers receive new workplace protections.
Government
Not an “accident”: Elbert C. Woods, 45, suffers fatal work-related injury at Cleveland, Ohio company
This week’s snapshot of just one work-related fatality in the U.S. This one occurred on August 21 at Cleveland Track Material in Cleveland, Ohio.
Government
Massachusetts advocates optimistic about paid sick leave ballot: ‘We need public policies that lift people up and keep families healthy’
After nearly a decade of hoping state legislators would pass an earned paid sick time law, advocates in Massachusetts decided it was time to put the question to voters. Now, in November, voters will have the chance to help improve the lives of nearly 1 million workers who can’t earn one, single hour of sick leave and are often left to choose between caring for themselves or a loved one, paying the bills or losing a job.
Agriculture
New herbicide and GE seeds: EPA and USDA poised to approve herbicide with insufficiently unexamined cumulative and long-term health effects
If the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) give their approval to a new herbicide called Enlist Duo and to corn and soybean seeds genetically engineered (GE) to resist that chemical, the United States could see a significant increase in what is already one of the country’s most widely used herbicides. […]
Injury Control & Violence
Fatal work injury that killed Erik Deighton, 23, was preventable, MIOSHA cites Colonial Plastics
Erik Deighton’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see Michigan OSHA’s findings in the agency’s citations against his employer, Colonial Plastics.
Failing to get the time to acclimate to a hot work environment can be deadly. That’s the message I took away from an item in last week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). “Heat illness and deaths among workers — U.S. 2012-2013” reports on 13 occupational heat-related fatalities investigated by federal OSHA. Nine of the […]
Obama signs order requiring certain contractors to disclose labor violations; judge rules in favor of college athletes; Brooklyn hospital fined for workplace violence; and workers take wage theft to court.
Education
New data: Lack of acclimatization procedures most often associated with worker heat deaths
Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data on heat deaths among U.S. workers, underscoring the often-tragic consequences that result when employers fail to take relatively simple and low-cost preventive actions.
Government
Not an “accident”: Stanley Thomas Wright, 47, suffers work-related asphyxiation at railyard in North Las Vegas
This week’s snapshot of just one work-related fatality. This one occurred on August 2 at a railyard in North Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Labor Department convinced USDA to insert some worker safety measures into its new poultry slaughter inspection regulation. Poultry workers hope the measures are more than just words in the Federal Register notice.