Workplace Safety

Action Alert: Keep Our Highways Safe From Hazardous Materials

November 1, 2025 Truckers Movement for Justice, Earth Justice. Resist! Fossil Fuels, Hazardous Waste, Truckers, Workplace Safety

Every day, oil and gas companies haul potentially hazardous materials from oilfields onto our highways without following adequate safety rules, thanks to lack of federal enforcement. This is putting truckers and communities at greater risk of catastrophe. Join Earthjustice and our client, Truckers Movement for Justice, to demand that Department of Transportation (DOT) agencies enforce existing hazardous material rules when it comes to hauling oilfield waste. The waste that is created during the fracking and extraction process is often toxic, radioactive, or highly flammable, but because laws are not properly enforced, the waste is not being classified as hazardous materials.

Kentucky Battery Plant Joins United Auto Workers In Close Vote

August 29, 2025 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Resist! Kentucky, Unions, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Kentucky battery plant workers at the BlueOval SK Battery Park (BOSK) in Glendale have voted to join the United Auto Workers. The workers make batteries to power Ford’s all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck and E-Transit cargo van. On August 27 at 10 p.m., an unofficial tally showed 526 yes and 515 no votes, with 41 challenged ballots. There were 1,200 eligible voters; turnout was over 90 percent. The UAW called the vote “a major step forward for workers who stood up against intense company opposition and chose to join the UAW.” “We’re feeling pretty confident, I think we’re gonna win,” said battery worker Halee Hadfield via text message on August 23.

Farmworkers Continue To Organize In Face Of Chilling ICE Raids

August 25, 2025 Joe Maniscalco, Work-Bites. Resist! Farmworkers, Global heating, ICE, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Imagine you’re a farmworker in 2025. You make the food on tables across the United States possible. Five years ago because of the pandemic, people even began acknowledging the essential work you do. It felt good for a second, even hopeful, after decades of being left out of the conversation around worker rights. Soaring summer temperatures threaten more than 69 million workers across the United States with heat-related illnesses each year, according to the National Committee on Occupational Safety and Health [COSH]. In 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 14 heat-injury deaths in Texas alone. But farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die of heat-related stress than workers in other dangerous industries.

New Jersey Temps Fight Agency Efforts To Block Their Rights

August 22, 2025 Reynalda Cruz and Liana Katz, Labor Notes. Resist! Caribbean, Immigration, Latin America, New Jersey (NJ), Temporary Workers, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

It’s 5:30 in the morning and the warehouse is already buzzing. Workers are unloading trucks, breaking down pallets, folding boxes, and packing orders to be shipped to local stores. Most of the workers at this New Jersey warehouse are immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, and most are temps, hired by one of the 200 temp agency branches that advertise warehouse and light manufacturing jobs in the state. These agencies take a cut of workers’ wages while companies save on recruitment, benefits, and payroll costs. Companies use the temp agencies to shirk their responsibilities, since temps are officially agency rather than company employees. For many immigrants in New Jersey, particularly those without legal status, temp work is one of few employment options, but they face low pay and perilous working conditions.

Atlanta Teamsters Confront Management Over Heat Safety

August 14, 2025 Alex Carson, Fight Back! News. Strategize! Global heating, Unions, UPS, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Atlanta, GA- On Tuesday, August 12, Teamsters out of Local 728 at UPS SMART hub presented a petition to management with the signatures of about 100 rank-and-file workers. The petition demands that UPS identify designated areas in the hub as shade or cool zones and educate all SMART workers of their rights to use such areas for cooldown breaks. Cool zones were won as an addition to Article 18, section 27 of the 2023 Teamsters contract. But the gain has gone unrecognized in many hubs, including SMART, which is the third largest UPS hub. This has prompted rank-and-file Teamsters to take action in enforcing the contract and asserting their power on the shop floor. By not designating cool zones, many workers are unaware of their right to take a cooldown break when they feel overheated. This is in addition to their ten-minute break.

‘Toxic’ Laundry, Melting Aprons: Mauser Strike Hits Two Months

August 9, 2025 Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Labor Notes. Resist! Chicago, Mauser, Strikes, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Many employees at Chicago’s Mauser Packaging Solutions dread laundry day, and not for the usual reasons. The workers, who recondition steel drums used in the transport of materials like acetone, ammonia, and paint, say they have inconsistent access to uniforms and protective equipment. “The fear of a lot of the workers is that they don’t have a uniform and have to wash their clothes, and that they have to mix it with their children’s or wife’s clothes, and they don’t know what the impact will be,” said Arturo Landa, a shop steward at Mauser and member of the bargaining committee. Their contract expired April 30. Since June 9, 160 Mauser employees, members of Teamsters Local 705, have been on an unfair labor practice strike after Mauser illegally surveilled union members who were speaking with their business agent during a break, the union said.

Department Of Labor Proposes Rollback Of Workplace Safety And Wage Protection Regulations

July 24, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Educate! Department of Labor, Deregulation, Labor Movement, Trump Administration, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

This month, the US Department of Labor, led by Trump-appointed Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, announced a proposal to repeal 63 workplace safety rules in what the Department called “aggressive deregulatory efforts” in order to “put the American worker first.” The regulations that the DOL has dubbed “obsolete” include eliminating minimum wage and overtime protections for millions of home health care workers, rolling back protections for farm workers, rescinding a requirement for employers to provide adequate lighting at construction sites, weaken safety standards in the mining industry, and limit the authority of OSHA to protect workers in what the DOL dubs “inherently risky professional activities” such as entertainment or journalism.

Truckers Are Tired Of Being Exposed To Hazardous Waste

July 19, 2025 Kim Kelly, In These Times. Resist! Environment, health, Oil and Gas, Truckers, Workplace Safety

A seemingly unlikely coalition of oil and gas workers and environmentalists have joined forces to ask the federal government for help. On June 4, the driver advocacy group Truckers Movement for Justice and Ohio Valley Allies, Earthjustice, Oilfield Witness and several other environmental groups sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and top officials at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. They made a simple request: that regulations around the transportation of hazardous materials be enforced.

From Workplace To Wall Street; Technologies Impacting Mine Workers

July 18, 2025 Ericka Wills, Power at Work. Strategize! Black Lung, Indigenous Activism, Mining, UMWA, Unions, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

When considering workplace artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and new digital technologies, one might envision workers in Silicon Valley or remote factory robotics. However, coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) are addressing the effects of technological change in coal mines and Wall Street from New York City to the Navajo Nation. In the workplace, contemporary mining technologies and practices without adequate regulations and implementation of safety technologies have resulted in a surge of silica-dust-induced Black Lung disease.

Coping With Climate Crises On The Job

July 17, 2025 Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Organize! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Heat, Smoke, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

Heat, smoke, flooding, hurricanes, fires, turbulence—on the job, workers are already facing the ravages of a changing climate. These problems are ripe for organizing—usually everyone is feeling it. Often it’s very clear what solution would help, and who could deliver it. Such fights don’t address the underlying causes of climate change. But they’re opportunities to build union power by strengthening the bonds among co-workers and getting folks into action together. And they can open the door to talking about how confronting climate change at its root is a union issue, too.

Two Thirds Of UK Workers Will Face Deadly Temperatures By 2030

June 1, 2025 The Canary. Educate! climate crisis, Global heating, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

As the UK faces increasingly extreme summer heat due to climate breakdown, new research has revealed that up to two-thirds of British workers could be exposed to dangerously high temperatures at work by the end of this decade. What’s more, these climate crisis-exacerbated deadly temperatures will affect virtually the entire workforce by the end of the century under current emissions trajectories. These are the findings of a new report titled A New Deal for Working People: Extreme Heat. Independent research institute Autonomy produced the damning new revelations, which argues that the UK is failing to protect workers from rising heat.

Health And Safety Is On The Chopping Block

April 29, 2025 Micah Niemeier-Walsh, Labor Notes. Resist! Labor Movement, NIOSH, OSHA, Trump Administration, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

The Trump Administration attacked the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) on April 1, cutting more than 90 percent of the agency’s workforce, including me. NIOSH is the backbone of worker safety. It’s the small agency you’ve never heard of that has probably saved your life. The agency conducts vital research—testing respirators, certifying protective equipment, investigating health hazards, and providing crucial data to workers and unions. This is not just a budget cut. It is a direct, calculated assault on the working class. Today is Workers' Memorial Day, the day when we honor the workers who die every year from workplace injuries and illnesses.

This Little-Known Program Protects Immigrant Workers From Retaliation

October 13, 2024 Jorge Mújica, Labor Notes. Resist! Deportation, Immigrants, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to organizing, for workers everywhere, is fear of retaliation. This is an even greater factor when the workers are undocumented immigrants. Not only do you fear being suspended or fired, but the idea of being deported if the employer calls immigration, and being separated from your family, multiplies the fear. But a federal program that few know about can offer confidence-boosting legal protection. Arise Chicago has been supporting workers to use the program, Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement (DALE). The fear of workplace raids remains widespread—even though the current federal administration has not conducted workplace raids targeting immigrant workers since 2021.

How Climate Change Threatens Workers

October 12, 2024 Jordan Barab, Portside. Strategize! climate crisis, Extreme weather, Worker Rights, Workplace Safety

At least six workers in a Tennessee plastics factory are dead or missing after managers allegedly told them not to evacuate despite urgent warnings of severe flash flooding. What does this tragedy say about the unique threat that workers face from climate change and related adverse weather events? Climate change is not a hoax, as some politicians continue to argue. It is very real as we witnessed most recently the past several days as a climate change-fueled hurricane wreaked havoc and death from Florida's far north as eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Hundreds are confirmed dead and many more are still missing.