Skip to content

Workplace Safety

Workplace Safety Is Not A Game

August 24, 2024 United Electrical Workers Education Department, Labor Notes. , , ,
Employer-sponsored “safety games” or “safety contests” may seem benign on the surface, but there’s a deadly motive. Employers are rediscovering an old scheme to con workers into undermining their own job safety. These games are designed to reward employees for not reporting accidents. In one United Electrical Workers (UE) shop, management (without consulting with the union) announced a new safety game. Each month the names of employees are put into a pool for a $100 prize drawing, but only if their department has not reported any accidents. If your department has reported an accident, you’re not eligible. If more than three accidents are reported in the plant, the drawing is not held.

Norfolk Southern Worker Sues; Railroad Put ‘Profits Ahead Of Safety’

July 30, 2024 Mike Gauntner, WFMJ. , , , ,
Claiming that Norfolk Southern put “profits ahead of safety,” one of the railroad’s employees has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of negligence by sending him to the site of the February 3, 2023 fire, derailment, and toxic spill in East Palestine. Joseph Lee Roberts of Indiana filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Youngstown Wednesday claiming he had developed chemically induced asthma after he and other workers were exposed to vinyl chloride that some of the derailed cars had been carrying. Roberts says in the lawsuit that with a focus on getting trains running through the village again, Norfolk Southern sent employees to East Palestine to fix the track which had been damaged by the derailment and fire.

Putting America Back On Track: A 21st Century Public Rail System

July 1, 2024 Maddock Thomas and Adam Barrington, Public Rail Now. , , ,
As America grapples with the everlasting impacts of the derailment in East Palestine, OH., Public Rail Now and Railroad Workers United released their latest report entitled  "Putting America Back on Track: The Case for a 21st Century Public Rail System." Authored by Maddock Thomas, a Stone Fellow from Brown University and recipient of the North American Rail Shippers Association scholarship, this report presents a compelling argument for transitioning the United States' rail system to public ownership. Drawing on historical precedent and rigorous analysis, it makes a compelling case for overseeing our rail infrastructure in the same manner as our interstate highways, inland waterways, and airports.

How Workers Are Winning Fans, Air Conditioning, And Even Heat Pay

June 21, 2024 Keith Brower Brown, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
If you’re dreading summer on the job this year, you’re not alone. Every month last summer was the most scorching on world record. Trapped under heat domes, dozens of metro areas busted their longest streaks ever of highs over 100 degrees. Phoenix afternoons were over 110 for a month straight. On asphalt yards nearly hot enough to melt, bonus-hungry managers forced workers to keep up the usual pace. The results were lethal. In 2022, the latest year for which we have data, 43 U.S. workers lost their lives to heat on the job. That’s up from 36 in 2021, and we can expect this cruel number to keep climbing.

Rolling Back Protections For Child Labor In The Name Of ‘Parental Rights’

June 18, 2024 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
One hundred years ago this month, I was reminded by Portside’s “This Week in People’s History” feature (5/29/23), a constitutional amendment passed both houses of Congress, with large majorities, and went to the states for ratification. It remains a proposal, not a law, to this day, because the necessary three-quarters of states didn’t accept it. The proposal is the Child Labor Amendment, giving Congress authority to regulate “labor of persons under 18 years of age.” Efforts to protect children from dangerous work continued anyway, of course, and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act included prohibitions on children under 14 working in most occupations. Separate rules have been crafted for agricultural jobs (which is its own story).

Bosses Want To Fix The Worker, Unions Want To Fix The Job

June 9, 2024 Jay Herzmark, Labor Notes. , , ,
Unions and bosses have different outlooks on safety. Employers say illnesses and injuries are caused by worker carelessness: he didn’t look where he was going; she wasn’t using correct lifting technique. That’s the way the boss wants you to think, too. But the union realizes that it’s the hazards themselves that cause injuries, and that it’s the boss who sets up the workplace, either designing in hazards or failing to design them out. Blind corners and high shelving make it hard to avoid collisions; overloaded boxes on low shelves forces awkward bending. Emphasize these different outlooks with workers.

Locked-Out Firefighters Picket Boeing

May 10, 2024 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
The aerospace giant Boeing locked out 125 firefighters across multiple facilities in Washington state May 4 after contract negotiations broke down. “We want to be out there working and protecting the community of Boeing employees,” said firefighter Jon Riggsby, vice-president-elect of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local I-66. “But the company won’t allow us.” Boeing firefighters are on hand for fueling, takeoffs, and landings. They also respond to any medical emergencies at company facilities in Seattle, Everett, Renton, Auburn, and Moses Lake. They’re the first line of defense to prevent the spread of flame and toxic emissions from the combination of materials used to build aircraft such as the Boeing 737, Triple Seven, and others as part of military contracts.

Report: Death On The Job; The Toll Of Neglect

April 28, 2024 AFL-CIO. , , ,
This 2024 edition of “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect” marks the 33rd year the AFL-CIO has produced a report on the state of safety and health protections for America’s workers. The Occupational Safety and Health Act, promising every worker the right to a safe job, has been in effect for more than 50 years, and nearly 690,000 workers now can say their lives have been saved since the passage of the OSH Act.  Over the last 50 years, there has been significant progress toward improving working conditions and protecting workers from job injuries, illnesses and deaths.

With Few Workplace Protections, Latino Worker Deaths Are Surging

April 27, 2024 Stephen Franklin, In These Times. , , ,
A burst of shouts cascades as three men plunge downward. Other workers reach for them as the scaffold plummets. But no one can grab hold of them. Thinking he can still save them, a middle-aged construction worker scampers to aid the three men, one a long-time friend, he had helped get hired on the site. “I saw everything,” he says and then repeats himself. ​“I saw everything. In a video you can see me removing planks from them because I thought they were alive, but they were dead.” Jose Canaca, 26, Gilberto Monico Fernández, 54, and Jesus ​“Chuy” Olivares, 43, had been putting up an outer brick wall for a 17-story apartment building in a popular neighborhood in Charlotte, N.C., when they fell from the 10th floor.

11 Lessons From 11 Years After The Rana Plaza Disaster

April 24, 2024 Anna Canning and Sarah Newell, In These Times. , , , , ,
On April 24, 2013, the Rana Plaza building collapsed in Bangladesh killing 1,134 people and injuring approximately 2,500 more. Those deaths were preventable. In the aftermath of the deadliest incident in the history of the apparel manufacturing industry, worker organizations and activists around the globe rallied around the demand: ​“Rana Plaza Never Again.” Since that horrific day, workers have won binding, enforceable protections to make that rallying cry a reality. The Bangladesh Accord, now known as the International Accord, has received recognition around the globe for transforming basic workplace conditions for three million garment workers.

Feds Recently Hit Maersk In Baltimore Disaster For Silencing Whistleblowers

March 28, 2024 David Sirota, The Lever. , , , , , ,
The company that chartered the cargo ship that destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was recently sanctioned by regulators for blocking its employees from directly reporting safety concerns to the U.S. Coast Guard — in violation of a seaman whistleblower protection law, according to regulatory filings reviewed by The Lever. Eight months before a Maersk Line Limited-chartered cargo ship crashed into the Baltimore bridge, likely killing six people and injuring others, the Labor Department sanctioned the shipping conglomerate for retaliating against an employee who reported unsafe working conditions aboard a Maersk-operated boat.

An Invisible Chemical Is Poisoning Thousands Of Warehouse Workers

March 9, 2024 Naveena Sadasivam and Lylla Younes, ScheerPost.com. , , , ,
The dangers came as a surprise to warehouse workers and regulators alike. Georgia EPD officials had originally only set out to monitor ethylene oxide levels around the industrial sterilization facilities fumigating medical equipment. The EPA had just published modeling that suggested high levels of cancer risk around the country’s medical sterilization facilities, and Georgia regulators wanted to assess the plants in their jurisdiction. (The modeling incorporated the results of a 2016 study that found ethylene oxide to be 30 times more toxic to adults and 60 times more toxic to children than previously known.)

Fed Up With Inaction, Rail Unions Draft And Push Their Own Safety Plan

January 30, 2024 Mark Gruenberg, People's World. , , ,
Washington - Fed up with the big Class I freight railroads’ incessant drive to put profits over people, and safety, and with federal regulators’ piecemeal and often pro-corporate responses, a coalition of rail freight unions issued a comprehensive analysis of the problem, with key recommendations to the government to force the carriers to put people first. The study, including pages of internal railroad documents and e-mails, reveals the horrible impacts of the railroads’ system, Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR). It’s designed to cut costs and workers, including safety workers who inspect freight cars and locomotives.

How The Railroad Industry Intimidates Employees To Put Speed Before Safety

November 18, 2023 Topher Sanders, Jessica Lussenhop, Dan Schwartz, Danelle Morton and Gabriel Sandoval, Pro Publica. , , ,
Bradley Haynes and his colleagues were the last chance Union Pacific had to stop an unsafe train from leaving one of its railyards. Skilled in spotting hidden dangers, the inspectors in Kansas City, Missouri, wrote up so-called “bad orders” to pull defective cars out of assembled trains and send them for repairs. But on Sept. 18, 2019, the area’s director of maintenance, Andrew Letcher, scolded them for hampering the yard’s ability to move trains on time. “We’re a transportation company, right? We get paid to move freight. We don’t get paid to work on cars,” he said. “The first thing that I’m getting questioned about right now, every day, is why we’re over 200 bad orders."

What’s Next For India’s ‘Manual Scavengers’ After Major Legal Victory

November 13, 2023 Ankush Pal, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
In late August, hundreds of women sanitation workers came together at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. The 18th-century astronomical observatory has become a popular place to publicly show dissent in India due to its proximity to the Parliament, a little more than a mile away.  The protesters were opposing recently released official statistics regarding the death of sanitation workers. The women claimed that the number of so-called “manual scavengers” who died while on duty due to the precarious nature of the occupation was much higher than what the Parliament claimed. Timed to coincide with the government’s commemoration of the 75th anniversary of India gaining independence from the British, the demonstration was part of a widespread series of coordinated actions using the slogan “Stop Killing Us.” 
«1234»
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.