Daylight saving time policies data back more than 100 years. What do we know about their effect on health?
Poultry workers travel to Washington, DC to ask the Obama administration to rescind a proposed rule that would allow for faster processing-line speeds; a camera assistant is killed during a railway film shoot; and a Tennessee lawmaker has introduced bills to improve worker health safety in that state.
By Jonathan Heller. Author Nicholas Freudenberg advocates that we “return to the public sector the right to set health policy and to limit corporations’ freedom to profit at the expense of public health.” We should also think specifically about obligations corporations have to their workers, at a time when the minimum wage is inadequate, wage theft is common among low-wage workers, and millions of US workers lack paid sick time.
Cancer
Will farm workers be better protected? EPA proposes new pesticide protection standards but farm worker advocates see some steps backward
“For us it’s personal,” said Jeannie Economos, Farmworker Association of Florida Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator. “It’s a daily issue for us. Every day with a weaker protection standard is another day a worker is exposed to pesticides,” she said. On February 20th the EPA proposed revisions to its Worker Protection Standard for agricultural pesticides. Farm worker advocates are welcoming the proposal – the first update since 1992 – but see both improvements and what some are calling “steps backward.”
Food Safety & Nutrition
Poultry workers appeal to White House, USDA must abandon new poultry slaughter rule
The Obama Administration still has time to abandon its ill-conceived new regulation on poultry inspection. We’ll see if the Administration decides to treat poultry workers better than the firms that employ them.
Environmental Health
Stopping chemical catastrophes: Can we do better than calling for stronger storage tanks?
More than a month after the Freedom Industries chemical spill in West Virginia, it remains unclear if Charleston’s water is truly safe to drink and what the health consequences of exposure to these chemicals may be. Legislation has been introduced that calls for more inspections, better tank construction, overflow containment and emergency response. But why not go beyond and also call for safer chemistry?
Government
Industry has abandoned the dangerous practice; let’s seal the deal with an OSHA regulation
OSHA says that the power-generation industry has abandoned a deadly practice that led to the February 2010 death of six Connecticut workers. It’s not a heavy lift for OSHA to prohibit the practice once and for all.
Child Labor
Texas’ Workers Defense Project launches biggest campaign to date in support of construction workers
Last weekend, construction worker Jose Perez stood up and spoke about life as a construction worker in one of then nation’s most prosperous cities. In front of him were hundreds of supporters who had gathered in downtown Austin, Texas, to call on a local developer to treat its workers better. Looming behind him was the new Gables Park Tower, an unfinished luxury apartment complex where construction workers have reported dangerous working conditions and frequent wage violations.
Anniversaries of two deadly workplace disasters remind us of the hazards of combustible dust and gas blows; a former Cal/OSHA employee warns that the agency is dangerously understaffed; and CDC uses sugar-industry money to fund studies into the epidemic of chronic kidney disease striking Central American sugarcane workers.
Government
When employers are reckless with workers’ lives, they have no right to remain in business
A 32 year old worker was killed because a machine safeguard had been disabled. His employer had a pattern of reckless behavior, and should not have a license to kill.