Confined Space

Workers Lose Cancer Lawsuit Against IBM

Two workers, Alida Hernandez, 73, and James Moore, 62, lost a lawsuit they filed against IBM, blaming their cancer on chemical exposures while working at the company. The former IBM employees

blamed chemicals they used to make computer components between the 1960s and 1980s for causing them to develop cancer. They sued IBM under a provision of California law that allows workers to collect punitive damages if they can prove an employer fraudulently concealed information and exacerbated an injury.

After less than two days of deliberation, the jury unanimously concluded the plaintiffs had failed to meet their first legal hurdle: proving they had suffered from systemic chemical poisoning as a result of their jobs.

The jurors declined to comment on their verdict

IBM attorney Robert Weber called the verdict "a slam dunk" that vindicated the company's medical team. "It's hard to be cleared any better than a 12-nothing verdict in less than two days after a five-month trial," he said.

This was the first of 200 lawsuits against the company, including a $100 million birth defect lawsuit beginning next week. The judge has earlier thrown out "testimony about a corporate mortality database that purportedly showed that IBM workers died of cancer at higher rates than the general population and at younger ages."

IBM and other high tech companies in Silcon Valley have a long history of environmental and workplace pollution problems.

Of all U.S. counties, Santa Clara has the most sites, 23, on the National Priorities List, commonly known as the Superfund list. Of those, 19 were contaminated by tech companies.

Normally workers can't sue their employers after suffering injuries or illnesses from on-the-job exposures. There are exceptions to that rule if it can be proven that the employer fraudulently concealed information. But this case points up the problem of proving that any specific cancer is caused by specific exposures. Although experts testified about the link the workers' exposure to their cancers, IBM attorney's cast sufficient doubt in jurors' minds.

Throughout the trial, IBM's attorneys argued that the alleged injury of "systemic chemical poisoning" was not a real diagnosis and was not reflected in the records maintained by IBM's medical department.

Those records only show one instance, in March 1967, in which Moore was treated for "profuse nasal discharge" after exposure to chemicals. IBM's attorneys maintained that his other symptoms -- blackouts, runny nose and headaches -- could have been caused by seasonal allergies.

IBM attorneys maintained that Hernandez's health problems, which first manifested in abnormal liver tests, were caused by her weight, diabetes and use of medications.

The computer company also sought to minimize the quantity of chemicals that Hernandez and Moore used on the job. During Weber's closing argument, he told the jury that Hernandez had been exposed to a potent mix of disk-coating chemicals for less time than they had spent listening to testimony.

So what we have is a situation where neither workers compensation, nor (at least until now) lawsuits provide effective tools to stop employers from poisoning workers. OSHA is also fairly ineffective in preventing chemical exposures because most of its standards are over 30 years old and don't take into account the effect of exposure to multiple chemicals.

Ultimately, the solution lies in preventing the use of these chemicals in the first place through a system that stops considering chemicals to be innocent before proven guilty. This is the essence of the REACH proposal being considered by the European Union, which I've written about here before, as well as here, here, here , here and here.

Previous Confined Space articles about the trial here and here.

Update: Worker Comp Insider has an article on the trial here.

Highlighting the Obvious

From the Financial Times to the Washington Post. When you're hot, you're hot.

The Washington Post actually printed one of my letters today. It commented on a May 8 article in the Post (that I wrote about then) that made the shocking argument that Bush's policies favor business.

Highlighting the Obvious

Says the headline: "In Bush's Policies, Business Wins" [news story, Feb. 8]. As my children would say: "Duh!" From the first piece of major legislation he signed -- the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's ergonomics standard in March 2001 -- to the president's recent victory in the battle for his business-friendly Medicare reform, this administration has been pro-business as far as the eye can see. I don't know whether I should feel happy that your paper has finally headlined this obvious conclusion or sad that it has taken more than three years for it to get there.

-- Jordan Barab
Takoma Park

Labels: Ergonomics

Financial Times of London Picks Up Confined Space OSHA Web Story

Well, at least they're paying attention in England:

Labor Department Takes a Break

Is the Department of Labor keeping banker's hours? In the 24-hour world of the internet, part of its website is only open 8am EST to 6pm EST.

Al Belsky, spokesman for the Occupational Safety & Health Administration - the division of the Department of Labor that makes sure you don't get hurt at work - says the agency had to limit hours because every time someone used the site to look up employer workplace violations it cost OSHA money.

This hasn't stopped people on the internet from speculating about darker motives. Confined Space, a blog dedicated to workplace issues, wrote, "What's next, holidays and snow days for computers?"

Belsky says the practice, which began last month, will not continue much longer, although he did not have a date for things to change. "It won't be an inordinately long time. It will be weeks rather months."

Until then, west coast workers, three time zones behind the east coast, are stuck in the Flintstone era. "People can still write to us for that information," Belsky says - as long as they are able to walk to the post office.

Workers Memorial Day 2004

April 28th is Workers Memorial Day, where unions around the world remember those who have suffered and died on the job and to renew the fight for safe workplaces. The AFL-CIO is the lead organizer in the United States:

Regrettably, the Bush administration has turned its back on workers and workplace safety. Siding with its corporate friends, the administration has overturned or blocked dozens of important workplace protections including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration?s ergonomics standard and new protections on tuberculosis, indoor air quality, reactive chemicals and cancer-causing substances. Voluntary compliance has been favored over enforcement, and job safety programs have been weakened, leaving workers in danger.

At the same time, good jobs?jobs that pay decent wages and provide health care benefits and pensions?are disappearing. Corporations are looking to export jobs and cut pay and benefits. Workers are considered more expendable than ever. Worker safety and health protections, rarely a priority for most companies, will be further threatened in a low-wage economy.

Organizing materials and information on American events can be found here.

Events are also being organized in around the world. Check out the Hazards Workers Memorial Day website for more information.

Labels: AFL-CIO

La Guardia Baggage Screeners Protesting Workplace Conditions

La Guardia airport baggage screeners have formed the Metropolitan Airport Workers Association and are threatening a class-action suit "in connection with allegations of rampant violations of workers’ rights by management." Health and safety problem are high among the issues:

The poor working conditions alleged by MAWA are blamed mostly on understaffing and unresponsiveness from management toward worker injuries. Out of more than 700 screeners at LaGuardia, 160 got hurt on the job last year, according MAWA’s reports.

“That’s a third of the workforce,” Miguel Shamah, acting vice president of the MAWA said.

He indicated that the majority of injuries to workers are back and shoulder ailments attributed to heavy lifting. A request to provide screeners with Kevlar-laced gloves—which police officers wear for protection—was denied.

Thomas Wilkins, federal security director for the TSA, informed Shamah in a December 2003 letter that the gloves “have been found to offer limited protection against cuts, but not needle sticks.” Wilkins indicated that the TSA was conducting field tests on several different gloves to determine whether they offer protection from cuts and needle sticks.

Shamah, 34, who has worked as a screener at LaGuardia since September 2002, said he is going through a series of blood tests after being punctured while searching through a bag.

Training, Safe Operating Procedures? Nah, Just Get The Job Done

Workers Use Tape to Secure Aging Nuke Bomb

WASHINGTON — Workers dismantling an aging nuclear weapon secured broken pieces of high explosive by taping them together, federal investigators found. An explosion could have occurred, they said.

The incident was among several recent safety lapses at the Energy Department's Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, noted by the independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Last fall, workers taking apart another old warhead accidentally drilled into the warhead's radioactive core, forcing evacuation of the facility.

This month's unorthodox handling of the unstable explosive increased the risk that the technicians would drop it and set off a "violent reaction," the safety board said Tuesday in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

Such a reaction could have "potentially unacceptable consequences," board chairman John T. Conway said in the letter, which raised disquieting questions about safety at the Pantex plant.

Scandal at Hanford: And Workers Pay The Price

This is a federal nuclear facility, the United States of America, 2004

Bonuses given to the contractor (C2HM HIll) to empty nuclear and chemical waste tanks faster.
Nuclear Cleanup Contractors given an incentive to minimize the number of workdays lost to employee injuries.
Employee Medical Center director instructs clerks to alter patient records to show that a workers' injuries were not related to work.
Environmental monitoring conducted after toxic gasses have dispersed.
Workers harrassed and fired for requesting protective respirators and complaining about safety conditions.

***

Steve Lewis became a seething malcontent after a visit to the doctor who presides over the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Lewis, an electrician, had been exposed to a blast of ammonia vapor from Hanford's underground "tank farms." Down on these farms during the Cold War, as federal workers churned out plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, they buried the largest haul of high-level nuclear waste in the Western Hemisphere. Lewis is part of another generation of Hanford workers that for more than a decade has been mopping up the festering mess.

His vapor exposure, which occurred in January 2002, flushed his face red and burned his lungs. Four months later, he had headaches and nosebleeds and was gagging on phlegm. He went to see Larry Smick, Hanford's acting medical director, who diagnosed Lewis's complaint as a preexisting condition: "Allergic disease likely making him more sensitive to irritant vapors at work," according to the doctor's handwritten notes.

Lewis was incredulous. He had never had allergies. He said he tried repeatedly during the exam to get the doctor to talk about chemical exposure out at the tank farms, but Smick would only talk allergies.

"Quite honestly, that is when my bubble popped," said Lewis, 51. "I could live with injury because these things do happen. I was not an angry employee up until they started trying to convince me that I hadn't been injured."

***

This is not from some new best-selling novel or an updated "Silkwood-type" movie. This is a startling Washington Post article about what has actually been happening at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, one of the most contaminated pieces of earth in the world, where employees, working for private contractors hired by the Department of Energy, labor to empty highly toxic tank farms, leftovers from the cold war.

But this article not just for the atrocities committed at Hanford. While you're reading it, think of the New York Times series on McWane Corporation and the later series on workplace deaths that go largely unpunished. Think about the more than 5,000 workers who die in this country every year without the Washington Post or the New York Times noticing. Think about how injury and illness rates in this country fall every year, and then re-read the section about how the Hanford medical clinic has been changing patients' records so that their injuries and illnesses appear non-work-related.

This is America in 2004, not 1904. And far from being antiquated relics of a pre-civilized past, strong and well-enforced health and safety regulations, credible whistleblower protections and strong, active labor unions are needed today more than ever.

Instead we have our "regulatory" agencies being defanged and transformed into educational associations whose success is measured by how many "alliances" it can form with industry associations. We have our courts being filled with judges who believe that companies can only be found guilty of hurting or killing workers if they're found with a smoking gun and blood on their hands. We have a federal government that is showing corporate America the way by weakening its own unions and making it more difficult for all unions to represent their members effectively. Our White House and Congress is controlled by members and lobbyists who argue that the only "sound" science is that which justifies their arguments that all science that shows a connection between work and health is suspect, and the "invisible hand" of the economy is the best protection that workers can possibly have.

Because, as every company owner says after killing one of his workers: "Our employees are our most important resource."

And as OSHA says at the end of every press release, "Safety and health add value to business, the workplace and life."

Yeah, tell it to DOE, tell it to C2HM Hill, tell it to all the sick workers, tell it to all of the workers who aren't with us anymore, tell it to their kids and their spouses.

We have an election coming up. And it shouldn't be about gay marriage or who looks best endowed in a flight suit. There are real life-and-death problems to address, not just in Iraq, and not just at our airports, but in every workplace in this country.

We have a chance to throw the bums out. It won't fix everything, but at least we'll be heading in the right direction. Let's do it.

Restaurant Workers, UNITE Unions to Merge

WASHINGTON (AP)--Two unions representing hotel and restaurant employees and retail, textile and laundry workers are merging to create a single labor organization with more than 500,000 members.

The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees, called HERE, and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, known as UNITE, are scheduled to announce the merger Thursday, several union sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

UNITE officials would not comment on the merger Wednesday night. A spokesman for HERE was not available.

The partnership pairs two similar unions that represent a large number of minority and immigrant workers in the growing service sector. It also spells opportunity: UNITE's organizing focus on laundry and retail distribution workers fits nicely with HERE's hotels and restaurants and their need for linens and uniforms.

More here.

Let Children Be Children

Child Labor Violation Leads to Death

Last October, there was a move in the U.S Congress to establish a religious exemption allowing Amish children to work in sawmills. "It would be OK," Amish leaders said, because the kids wouldn't actually be working with the saws themselves, just in the same vicinity.

Now comes this story from Washington state:

Pull A Part Auto wrecking yard in Lynnwood violated child labor laws by allowing a 16-year-old boy to work near a steel gantry crane that fell and killed him, according to the state Department of Labor and Industries.

Josh McMahon was too young to work near the 9-foot-tall crane, Labor and Industries reported last week. Investigators found that the business failed to ensure that McMahon and other young employees stayed away from the crane, which toppled on Aug. 13.

Labor and Industries ordered the business, owned by Ferrill's Auto Parts, to provide more training for teenage workers. The business was not fined, and no health or safety violations were issued.

"We believe it was just a horrible, tragic, isolated incident," Labor and Industries spokeswoman Elaine Fischer said.

Definitely horrible, definitely tragic, but these horrible tragedies will only remain isolated if people actually follow the law.

L.E. Myers and MYR Group: Losing Lives 'While Winning With Safety'

I'm not a lawyer, so maybe that's why I really don't understand this what's going on here.

I reviewed an extremely disturbing article in the Chicago Tribune last November about L.E. Myers, an electrical contractor that seemed to have the habit of electrocuting large numbers of its employees.

Rolling Meadows-based L.E. Myers has a long history of on-the-job deaths, accidents and safety violations. At least 35 employees have died--17 by electrocution--in the three decades the government has been keeping workplace safety records.

The deaths and accidents at L.E. Myers raise questions about the company's commitment to safety as well as about the effectiveness of the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, created by Congress in 1970 to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses.

It also underscores the safety problems inherent in an industry that relies heavily on union hiring halls for its workers, often without evaluation of individual job skills or experience.

L.E. Myers is awaiting trial on criminal charges in U.S. District Court in Chicago for allegedly violating job-safety regulations that led to the deaths of Blake Lane and Wade Cumpston. The company has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say it is the first time an electrical contractor has been charged with criminal violations of federal safety rules in connection with the deaths of workers on high-voltage transmission towers.

L.E. Myers is a subsidiary of the MYR Group, which was also indicted in this case because MYR "began a major initiative in the 1990s to improve and expand safety and training programs."

The charges against MYR were dismissed last year because a judge ruled that "MYR Group had no control over the work sites, the specific hazards faced by Lane and Cumpston or their job assignments."

Now, however, OSHA and federal prosecutors are seeking to overturn that decision and have the indictment against MYR reinstated.

Here's where I get confused.

The National Electrical Contractors Association is criticizing federal prosecutors and OSHA because

Defense lawyers have argued that MYR Group should not be held criminally liable because Lane and Cumpston were not directly employed by the parent. MYR Group had no control over the work sites, the specific hazards faced by Lane and Cumpston or their job assignments, the lawyers contended.

"MYR Group had no connection whatsoever with any of these work sites," Corey Rubenstein, a company lawyer, told the appeals court panel.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, lawyers for the electrical contractors association argued that reinstating the charges against MYR Group could have nationwide repercussions.

Contractors often use the services of trade groups or consulting firms to provide safety training and advice to their employees. Those programs would be jeopardized if the firms thought they might face criminal charges, the lawyers said.

The judges seemed troubled by the thought of extending criminal liability to consultants or others who might provide safety training to workers who are not their employees.

"People would be terrified," Judge Ilana Rovner said.

I don't get it. MYR owns L.E. Myers. They're not a consultant or a trade group. They are the corporate parent.

And check out MYR Group's web site. The "About MYR Group" section states that "MYR Group provides support to the subsidiaries in the areas of safety management, equipment procurement, management development, personnel training, marketing, accounting, finance and administration."

Click on the "Safety" page and you'll find:

Safety is the first priority of the MYR Group. It is the cornerstone of our philosophy and fundamental to the success of our projects and our company....

In bringing a strong safety culture to all of our projects, we utilize a corporate safety plan, training program, monitoring system and incentive programs, which are standard for all MYR Group operating subsidiaries.

Yeah, standard on paper, maybe, but not where the rubber hits the road.

Along with their elaborate incentive program, highlighted a couple of years ago in the Wall St. Journal, the MYR Group also has a nifty slogan, "Winning With Safety" and this truly inspiring and educational logo:

Gosh, it kind of get's you all choked up and makes you want to.....PUKE!

So what we have here is a parent company that prides itself on the safety program it has imposed on its subsidiaries. Turns out the safety program may look good on paper and on coffee mugs and posters and shirts and cookouts, but isn't worth a bucket of warm spit when it comes to actually making the workplace safer.

Then when people continue dying and the program is revealed as a sham, MYR suddenly "has no connection whatsoever with any of these work sites."

"Who, me? Never seen 'em before in my life!"

Anyway, it was the dumb workers' fault:

“Neither L.E. Myers nor MYR Group believe there is any criminal wrongdoing with these unfortunate accidents caused by human errors” by the workers who died, says Corey Rubenstein, an attorney for the contractor. Myers carries out extensive safety training, he says. “Obviously, it’s a very dangerous industry and all participants have accidents from time to time,” he says.

Yeah, shit happens. Sounds like a good defense to me.

And if that's not bad enough, MYR and their electrical contractor association buddies seem to be successfully selling the notion that they are just some totally unrelated "trade group" or "consulting firm" that was just trying to be helpful when big, bad OSHA entraps them in their evil web.

Well, again, I'm no lawyer, but personally I say "Give me a break! Throw 'em all in jail."

*****

For more information on the hazards of electrical line work, check out this Engineering News Record article which blames many of the safety problems on the restructuring of the industry:

Electrical industry restructuring also has bred a new bottom-line consciousness among electric utilities and other operators of transmission lines. Many are getting by with fewer workers and are largely abandoning apprentice training, say industry insiders. As a consequence, fewer linemen often perform more work....With experienced journeymen scarce, younger and less experienced hands have been pressed to take more responsibility.

Crews are working longer hours, while promotions to foreman sometimes are made prematurely. One result, some say, is more deadly accidents. And when the voltage is several thousand times that delivered to an average light fixture—sometimes as high as 765,000 v in a transmission line—burns and injuries can be grotesquely severe.

And, as in many other industries, contractors are increasingly being used for the more dangerous work:

Contractors perform much of the line repairs now, as much as 60%, some say. A key Labor Dept. official says contractors also account for a disproportionately high share of the deaths. Contractor personnel “are getting killed at twice the rate of those working for utilities,” says David Wallis, director of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s office of engineering safety. Contractor linemen forget to use personal protective equipment, such as insulated gloves, more often than utility linemen, he says.

Forget?! What, does the job of contractor tend to attract early Alzheimer patients, as opposed to the utility linemen? Could we possibly have a training or management safety system issue here?

But contractors also are hired to do many of the dangerous jobs that utilities or industrial owners prefer not to do, notes H. Brooke Stauffer, executive director for standards and safety at the National Electrical Contractors Association, Bethesda, Md. There also are deeper issues affecting jobsite behavior. At a recent meeting, NECA contractors and federal officials agreed that “a pervasive culture of risk-taking is partially to blame.”

Yeah, but who's taking risks with whose lives? The utilities and industrial owners "prefer" not to do these jobs because they're dangerous and they'd have to hire expensive skilled workers and provide them with expensive training and safety equipment. It's much cheaper to hire more inexpensive contractors who can cut their costs along with a few safety corners and pay cheaper wages to less skilled workers who tend to "forget" to use their safety equipment.

You know what? Maybe those Chinese aren't so far off.

I gotta go.

Labels: Criminal Prosecution

NIOSH Creates Worker Notification Page

I'm a dry cleaner, what kind of studies have been done about my working conditions? Check out the NIOSH Worker Notification Program page.

While OSHA is busy cutting back access to some of its most useful web pages, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Heatlh (NIOSH) has produced this nifty web page that notifies workers and other stakeholders about the findings of NIOSH research studies and notification materials. Sorted by Work Exposure or by Industry Group, the page provides an amazing amount of information and does a much better job than any web page I've ever seen in translating complicated information into plain, understandable English.

If you're a dry cleaner, you'll finding listings under percholorethylene and organic solvents. Information includes how the study was done, the findings, limitations of the study, what other studies have found, OSHA regulations, current conditions, how to protect yourself and where to go for more information, including information about related medical problems.

Check this out. It's a fairly major step in translating valuable scientific material into a form that workers can actually use.

Good work NIOSH!

(Yet) More McWane

Some of you more observant folks out there may have noticed in my latest Weekly Toll about a McWane Worker dying "in a fall." Turns out he "fell" into a sand collection machine and was crushed to death when he got caught in a conveyor belt. The worker, Timothy J. Blow, 45, had been working alone.

McWane, as you are undoubtedly aware, became infamous due to a New York Times/Frontline series last year on the horrid health and safety practices at the plant

Labels: McWane

Getting Serious With Workplace Killers

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Jails

OK, this might be just a little over the top...

China executes official in 2001 mine disaster

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIJING (AP) - A former Communist Party official was executed Friday for trying to cover up a tin mine accident that killed 81 people in 2001, the government announced.

Wan Ruizhong, a former county party secretary in the southern region of Guangxi, was convicted of taking bribes from mine managers to conceal the July 17, 2001, accident. Other officials convicted in the disaster have been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

DOE Backtracks on Contractor Safety Policy

I've been kind of hard on the Department of Energy (DOE) today (see below), so I want to be the first to compliment them on being brave enough to admit when they've made a mistake.

Earlier this month I wrote about DOE's new policy to allow contractors to develop their own voluntary safety and health programs. It seems now that DOE has seen the error of its ways:

The Energy Department said Monday that it was suspending its proposal to have the contractors who run nuclear weapons plants take charge of planning for how to ensure worker safety.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an oversight body created by Congress, had complained that the proposal could wipe out 50 years of rule making.

Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, said in a letter to the chairman of the board that the department would work with the board to redraft the rule and that "any final rule will reflect my policy that safety standards will not be written by contractors." Mr. Abraham said the department would continue to seek a new rule that safety plans be reviewed by its headquarters, not field offices.

Apology accepted.

Silica Cover-Up at DOE Facility in Nevada

Those of you familiar with the history of occupational safety and health in this country may remember the Hawks Nest incident in the early 1930's where hundreds of men died and over a thousand fell ill from acute silicosis contracted during the building of Union Carbide's Hawk's Nest Tunnel through Gauley Mountain in West Virginia.

Thank God, humankind has made progress since then. Or....fast forward 60 years....

Energy Department officials have initiated an investigation into whether Yucca Mountain Project field notes were altered to misrepresent tunnel workers' exposure to harmful silica dust.

The request is expected to form a base for a broader probe into worker health conditions during early excavation and peak tunneling at the nuclear waste repository site a decade ago, Energy Department officials said Thursday.

According to the Department of Labor,

Silicosis is a disabling, nonreversible and sometimes fatal lung disease caused by overexposure to respirable crystalline silica. Silica is the second most common mineral in the earth's crust and is a major component of sand, rock and mineral ores. Overexposure to dust that contains microscopic particles of crystalline silica can cause scar tissue to form in the lungs, which reduces the lung's ability to extract oxygen from the air we breathe.

And it gets worse. It seems that an industrial hygienist assigned to the project, Judy Kallas, alleges that she was ordered to falsify air monitoring records so that the exposures would appear to be much lower than they really were.

Kallas said she was told what to write about the length of time that monitors recorded airborne dust levels inside the tunnel. She said those notes were taken as well and made the basis for official reports.
On paper, the dust concentrations would appear to be diluted by time, or lower than they really were inside the tunnel, she said.

Filters where the dust accumulated inside the monitors were sent to a laboratory for verification and analysis of what type of particles were in the dust.

Kallas said her notes were altered quite often during the four months she worked for project contractor Kiewit Construction, from April 16, 1996, to Aug. 9, 1996. Kiewit constructed the tunnel from 1994 to 1997.

Kallas was fired by the company for "disregard of authority and directions of supervisor," according to a copy of her employee profile.

Kallas said she was told what to write about the length of time that monitors recorded airborne dust levels inside the tunnel. She said those notes were taken as well and made the basis for official reports.

On paper, the dust concentrations would appear to be diluted by time, or lower than they really were inside the tunnel, she said.

Filters where the dust accumulated inside the monitors were sent to a laboratory for verification and analysis of what type of particles were in the dust.

Kallas said her notes were altered quite often during the four months she worked for project contractor Kiewit Construction, from April 16, 1996, to Aug. 9, 1996. Kiewit constructed the tunnel from 1994 to 1997.

Kallas was fired by the company for "disregard of authority and directions of supervisor," according to a copy of her employee profile.

Officials with Kiewit's headquarters in Nebraska have not returned a telephone call placed earlier this week seeking their comment.

When she tried to report concerns to managers about altering her field, Kallas said, notes she was told to follow her supervisor's instructions

"I said what they were telling me to do was illegal. Then they reminded me that the only reason I was there was because DOE required somebody with my credentials to be there," she said.

Mining began in 1992, but it was not until 1996 that better ventilation was installed and workers were provided with appropriate respirators. The Energy Department is investigating and Nevada Senator Harry Reid has called on the Department of Labor and OSHA to investigate. According to Reid, "The DOE's policy of self-regulation, to the extent it enforced worker health standards, has apparently failed to ensure the proper safety of its contractor work force."

DOE had announced a silica screening program at the end of January after first finding that airborne limits of silica had been exceeded.

More here.

DOE's Really Stupid Workplace Safety Policy

Jonathan Bennett at NYCOSH noted that I missed one of the most important parts of last week’s NY Times article about hazardous conditions at the Hanford Nuclear Facility in Washington: the unveiling of the Department of Energy's new safety policy:

The contractors are on notice that they must ensure safe working conditions, said Joseph Davis a spokesman for the Energy Department. "We will not put at any risk any of our workers for the benefit of a faster cleanup," Mr. Davis said. "We can terminate them any time if we think they're doing something really stupid."

Doing something really stupid? How does that work, I wondered? To find out, I hung out at a favorite watering hole of DOE officials and sure enough, along came one of my usual “sources,” who shall remain nameless.

I asked him about this quote.

“Yup, that’s our new safety policy. We’ve essentially enhanced OSHA’s penalty categories: As with OSHA, we start out with "non-serious," then "serious" and "willful." Boring. And no one really knows what all of those mean. So, we developed our own "plain English" version of citation categories and penalties:

Dumb: Tsk, tsk. Dumber: DOE sends the contractor a letter remind them that workers are their most important resrouces and urging them to do better. Stupid: DOE sends the contractor a letter (see above) that uses harsh language. Really Stupid: The contractor risks termination.

"Dude, that’s harsh," I said. "So, like what do you consider 'Really Stupid?'"

“Getting caught,” he said, bursting into laughter. “No, no, seriously, I don’t know, maybe, oh, let’s see…”

“How about sending someone down into an 8 foot deep trench without shoring up the walls,” I asked.

“That would be 'stupid',” he admitted. But not 'really stupid.' The trench would have to be 12 feet deep for it to be classified as “really stupid.”

“Sending someone into a confined space without monitoring first?”

That might be “stupid,” but probably not “really stupid” unless someone died.

“What about exposing someone to radiation or beryllium?”

"If it kills someone, it’s probably “'really stupid.'”

"What if it doesn’t kill them for 20 or thirty years.”

“Then it’s probably just ‘stupid.’”

“That’s really stupid,” I said.

“No, it’s just 'stupid,'” he replied

“No, I mean the policy is really stupid.”

“Really?”

“Stupid.”

Koufax Award Results

The envelope please….

Well the final results are in for the Koufax Awards for Best Lefty Blogs and despite all of your best efforts, Confined Space did not win the award for Best Single Issue Blog.

I want to thank you all for you support, votes and very kind comments. Although the final vote totals were not released, Confined Space appears to have come out somewhere in the middle of the 8 finalists, which his not too bad considering Confined Space has far fewer readers than the other blogs in the finals.

The winner, by the way was Merritt’s Talk Left for coverage of Criminal Law Issues and coming in second was the Daily Howler for coverage of media issues.

You, too may be a terrorist

Secretary of Education Calls National Education Association Terrorists

Note: I am not making this up

Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation's largest teachers union a "terrorist organization" during a private White House meeting with governors on Monday.

Missouri Governor Bob Holden (D) explained it this way

"He was implying that the NEA has not been one of the organizations that has been working with the administration to try to solve 'No Child Left Behind,"' he said.

Well, now that that's perfectly clear.

Paige assured the Governors that he just meant the NEA itself and not individual teachers. He also denied that there was any truth to the rumor that the Education Department has offered the NEA free convention space in Guantanemo.

Describing the Lives of Workers

Carlos works for a cleaning company that is subcontracted by the Excel plant, a common arrangement in the Nebraska meatpacking industry. He is paid to sanitize the plant, to clear out the meat left in the machinery, to hose the blood off the kill floor. If he cleans his area by the end of his seven-hour shift he receives a bonus. If he falls behind, even for a night, he can lose his bonus for the entire week. The pressure encourages Carlos and his co-workers to cut corners. They don’t follow the time-consuming machinery-lock-out/tag-out procedure required by OSHA. As the World-Herald explained, “Locking out is the equivalent of turning off a light in your house by going to the basement, turning off the circuit breaker and inserting a padlock that prevents others from turning it back on.” There isn’t time for that.
“Move your ass,” the supervisors have yelled at Carlos as he worked. They know that there are plenty of other immigrants who want these jobs, even at a starting wage of $6.50 an hour. And Carlos thinks it would be tough to find a new job with his forged identity documents and limited English.

This is from an article in the Columbia Journalism Review that told of two Omaha World Herald reporters, Jeremy Olson and Steve Jordon, who courageously compiled a series on the hazards faced by meatpacking plant cleaners -- even after the Nebraska Cattlemen association had organized an advertising and subscription boycott against the paper in reaction to a 1997 series on an E. coli outbreak at a meatpacking plant.

The Review also discussed the difficulty that dedicated reporters -- and OSHA -- have finding information on the injuries of these workers. Because the cleaners are contract workers, they aren't classified with meatpacking workers. Instead they are lumped into an industry category with office janitors and hotel maids. The problem here is that OSHA targets it inspections at those industry groups that have high injury rates. Because these workers are lumped in with workers with a much lower injury rate,

the true danger of their work has escaped the scrutiny of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And because the majority of the cleaners, like Carlos, are working with false documents, they don’t complain about conditions that routinely lead to acid burns, crushed bones, amputated limbs. Sometimes to death.

Because these workers slipped under OSHA's radar,

It was ultimately Workers’ Compensation Court files that provided Olson with the bulk of the information he needed to dig into the investigation. The files confirmed the scenes Carlos had described in the plant: hand crushed in rollers when worker tried to catch a scrubbing pad that he dropped; worker cleaning table loses fingers in pinch point of a table; hand crushed between rollers and belt while wiping grease off machine. Olson spent weeks creating spreadsheets that detailed the names of the cleaning contractors, their injured employees and the nature of the injuries. Stacked-up manila file folders crowded his small cubicle. In the end, he calculated that one in every ten cleaners working in the meatpacking industry will suffer a severe work-related illness or injury each year; that the meatpacking cleaners have an injury rate four times greater than those of the jobs they are grouped with; that meatpacking cleaners were more prone to severe injury than the meatpackers themselves.
What makes cleaning so dangerous is that it exposes workers to the “pinch points” of industrial plants. Bits of meat and grease stick to the teeth of grinders; they drip behind safety guards, and they dangle from gears and chains.

The safety barriers that protect daytime workers become impediments at night, because cleaners have to get around and behind them to thoroughly sanitize the plant.

And, as often happens, it took the news articles to make the state government aware of the working conditions of the employees they are supposed to be protecting.

Jose Santos, the worker rights coordinator for the meatpacking industry in the Nebraska Department of Labor, confessed that when he read the story on-line, it was the first time he was made aware of the hazards afflicting the cleaners. He said he is grateful for the important investigation the World-Herald did and is now working closely with OSHA on the issue. Nobody in the industry pulled any advertising.

The series in the World Herald can be found here. Scroll down to "On the job of last resort"

The Weekly Toll

5 Missing as Supply Boat Sinks

VENICE, La. - The Mississippi River remained closed Sunday while dive, boat and air crews began a second day of searching for the crew of a supply boat which sank after hitting a container ship early Saturday.

The 178-foot offshore supply boat Lee III and the 534-foot container ship Zim Mexico III collided in the fog early Saturday near the mouth of the river, in the Southwest Pass seven miles south of Pilottown, the Coast Guard said.

The smaller vessel sank. The missing crew members were identified as Joseph Brown, 44, of Vidor, Texas; Lawrence Glass, 65, of Mobile, Ala.; Daniel Lopez, 31, of Port Arthur, Texas; Ramon Norwood, 27, of Galveston, Texas; and Baldemar Villerreal, 54, of Lake Jackson, Texas.

Pepco Worker Dies From Burns

Washington (AP) - A Pepco worker has died of severe burns he suffered in a fire at a Northeast D.C. substation.

Pepco spokeswoman Debbie Jarvis says the unidentified man suffered third-degree burns over 90 percent of his body in Friday's night's fire. He died Saturday afternoon at Washington Hospital Center.

D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Alan Etter says the man was working inside the building in the 3200 block of Benning Road in Northeast when he touched a live electrical feeder line.

Sioux Falls school worker dies in fall

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - A custodian at a Sioux Falls elementary school died Friday after he was injured in a fall.

Tommy Metli, 37, of Sioux Falls, was changing a light bulb Thursday in the lobby of Garfield Elementary School when he fell from a 10-foot ladder and was knocked unconscious, school officials said. He was taken to a Sioux Falls hospital where he died on Friday.

"What we think happened is the light bulb broke in his hand," said Jack Keegan, superintendent of the Sioux Falls School District. "He may have flinched and fell off the ladder."

Keegan said Metli was following procedures and had placed the ladder on a rubber mat so it wouldn't slip.

Two Workers Killed in N.M. Train Crash

CARRIZOZO, N.M. - Two workers were killed when the freight train they were on hit another train in southern New Mexico on Saturday, officials said.

An eastbound Union Pacific train carrying automobiles swiped the side of a train carrying grain as it moved onto a side track, said UP spokesman John Bromley.

The two men, whose names were not released, were on the Union Pacific train, he said.

N.Y. McWane worker dies in fall; officials investigating

A worker in McWane Inc.'s New York foundry died Thursday after the employee fell onto machinery, the Birmingham-based company said.

Timothy Blow, 45, died at the scene, McWane President Ruffner Page said. Details of the circumstances leading to the death were unavailable pending government investigations, Page said.

The death occurred at Elmira-based Kennedy Valve, a fire hydrant maker. It is the 10th at McWane plants since 1995 and the first in four years.

Five Injured in Scaffolding Collapse

SUGARCREEK TWP., Ohio -- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) returned Friday to the scene of a construction accident in Sugarcreek Township.

Thursday, five workers fell more than 20 feet, when scaffolding collapsed at the site of a new Target store on Feedwire Road.

One worker is listed in critical condition and another in serious condition at Miami Valley Hospital. Three other workers suffered minor injuries.

One worker killed, three injured in landfill gas leak

OKEECHOBEE, Fla. - An Ohio man was killed and three other workers were sickened Thursday when overcome by methane gas from a seepage line at a landfill.

Kenny R. Warne, 32, of Cambridge, Ohio, was pronounced dead at Raulerson Hospital, the Okeechobee County sheriff's office said.

Billy Seaborn, 30, of Cambridge, Ohio; Troy Diloreci, 31, of Wintersville, Ohio; and Dana Garno, 36, of Bowling Green, Ohio, were hospitalized in stable condition, The Daily Okeechobee News reported.

"It was a freak accident," said Jeff Sabin, government affairs director for Waste Management, which owns the Okeechobee County Landfill.

Concrete slab crushes man

SEBASTIAN, FL -- A worker from a Jacksonville concrete company was killed Thursday afternoon when he was hit by a 2.5 ton concrete slab while working on a new hotel, Sebastian police said.

Rusty Kirk, 45, of Satsuma, died when he was hit by a concrete slab he had been helping to steer onto the second-floor of the future Best Western Sebastian Hotel and Suites, in the 1600 block of U.S. 1 near Davis Street.

A crane had been toting the 2.5-ton slab, which Kirk and another worker stood on top of while using long poles to help guide it down onto the second floor, police said.

But the slab started tilting and, while one worker jumped off safely, Kirk fell off and the slab landed on him, killing him instantly, police said.

***

Officials from OSHA arrived at the site Friday morning and determined there was "no real reason not to continue" construction of the 54-room, three-story hotel, Marcinik said.

Officials from OSHA still want to review Marcinik's police report, expected Monday, as well as records on safety meetings and personnel of Gate Concrete Products, Marcinik said.

But, "It appears it was just an unfortunate accident," he said

Yeah, come on, let's move along folks, nothing to see here. Just an unfortunate accident.

Postal worker dies after crashing mail truck in Hollywood

A postal worker died in Hollywood, FL, today after he crashed his mail truck into a cement pillar and a tree.

The 52-year-old man, whose name was not released, may have suffered a heart attack, seizure, or other medical problem before the accident, said Hollywood Police Capt. Tony Rode. He was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital, where he died shortly after arrival.

Construction zones turn deadly for two Houstonians

HARRIS COUNTY -- A growing number of people have been killed in work zones, making road construction safety a concern.

Flags are at half-staff at the precinct four Constable's office after deputy Frank "Scotty" Claborn was killed working an extra job.

Little was left of the car he was using to protect a work crew setting out cones on the Sam Houston Tollway.

A driver, allegedly under the influence of alcohol and speeding, rear-ended the deputy.

"Our emergency equipment can often times be a beacon and drivers will focus in on that red light and travel right to it," said Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Ron Hickman.

Less than 10 hours after deputy Claborn died, a construction worker was killed in a work zone on state Highway 288.

A construction worker was killed in a work zone Thursday on Highway 288.
Police said the victim never had a chance.

A driver crossed the yellow line and slammed into him, as a crew was preparing to block off a lane with construction cones.

Fireman killed in bar fire

DIAMOND, Mo. - A Carthage firefighter killed while assisting another department battle a fire at a southwest Missouri bar likely died when the building's roof collapsed, officials said.

Steve Fierro, 40, of Carthage, died Wednesday. He was among several Carthage firefighters who rushed to Bronc Busters Bar near Diamond to assist that town's department put out the blaze.

----

The air tank and protective equipment used by Carthage firefighter Steve Fierro, 40, have been sent to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said John Cooper, Carthage fire chief.

The equipment apparently will be checked for defects and malfunctions, and for signs of any other factors that could have contributed to the death.

The tank had been tested recently and was found to contain air, he said.

Newton County Coroner Mark Bridges said initial tests show that Fierro died of smoke inhalation.

Window Cleaner Dies Of Injuries

WINDSOR LOCKS -- A man who fell from a ladder while cleaning windows at Bradley International Airport last week has died from his injuries.

Jan Dziubasik, 57, of West Hartford, an employee of Capitol Cleaning Co., had been working about 15 to 20 feet up outside the ground floor level of Terminal B when he fell to some stairs below, airport officials said. He was taken to Hartford Hospital by emergency helicopter.

OSHA Investigating Fatal Construction Accident

According to police, 43-year-old Leonard Powers was walking across an overpass that was under construction when he fell.

It was Jacksonville's first fatal fall of the year at a construction site.

Powers, who was a foreman, was not wearing a harness according to police.

Leonard Powers worked for Hal Jones Contractor of Jacksonville.

Man Crushed By Bulldozer

KANNAPOLIS, NC -- Authorities have identified a man who was crushed under a bulldozer Tuesday at a work site behind Stanley Works on N.C. 73. But they don't know why it happened.

Joe Clifton Herron, 37, of Denver, was operating the bulldozer when the accident occurred around 4 p.m., said Kannapolis Police Capt. Woody Chavis. He apparently fell off and was run over by the heavy machinery.

"We don't really know exactly how it happened, because nobody witnessed it," Chavis said.

A co-worker of Herron's saw the empty, moving bulldozer and ran over to stop it. When he got the bulldozer stopped, the co-worker saw Herron lying beneath it, Chavis said.

Herron worked for Earnhardt Grading Inc. of Huntersville. More here.

Teen Killed in Construction Accident

Stephen Rutherford, 19, died Tuesday morning from head injuries at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield. He had been flown to the hospital Saturday afternoon from a construction site in the town of Strongs Prairie in Adams County, according to the Adams County Sheriff's Department.

Rutherford had been working for the Plainfield-based Brewer Concrete since January.

Rutherford had taken a wall form from a rack, and he was pushed to the ground when the rest of the wall forms fell on him, said Brewer, who was at the construction site Saturday when the accident occurred. Rutherford was struck in the head by an object as he fell, he said.

More here.

Mill worker crushed between giant rolls of paper

Houston - An employee was killed at a Pasadena paper plant Tuesday when he was accidentally crushed between two large paper rolls weighing 35 tons each, authorities said.

Jimmy Bailey, 34, of Pasadena, was killed in the mishap, which happened around 5:30 p.m. at the Pasadena Paper Company in the 100 block of North Shaver, according to Harris County sheriff's deputies.

Witnesses reported a crane operator released a large roll of paper along a rack, causing a chain reaction just before Bailey was crushed.

1 killed, 1 critically wounded in failed armored car heist
Follows Shooting of 2 Police Officers

DETROIT -- An armored car employee was killed and his partner was critically wounded during an attempted robbery early this morning at a Comerica Bank branch.

Cmdr. Craig Schwartz, head of the Major Crimes Section, said Guardian armored car employee Jerald Kikkos, 36, of Harrison Township was killed in the shooting about 3:25 a.m. and his partner, Tommie Scott, 29, of Detroit, was critically wounded by the robber who apparently had been waiting for them.

The two men, carrying empty money bags, were going to service the automatic teller machine

The fatal shooting comes just two days after two Detroit Police officers were shot to death during a traffic stop

Four killed in crash

(Honolulu-AP) -- Honolulu police say two cars may have been racing before they crashed into a flatbed truck on the H-One Freeway early today, killing four people and injuring two others.

Police say one of the two cars crashed into the truck owned by a company contracted by the state Department of Transportation to help open the freeway's Zipper lane every weekday morning. That car was wedged under the truck, which burst into flames. The second car came to rest against the first car.

Police said the two people in the first car were burned beyond recognition. Also killed were a passenger in the truck and the driver of the second car. The passenger in the truck was identified by family members as Melvin Salangdron of Wahiawa.

More here.

CVS Clerk Killed Trying To Stop Shoplifter

BOSTON -- Investigators worked with witnesses Tuesday to try to find the person responsible of a fatal stabbing that left an 18-year-old CVS Pharmacy store clerk dead.

Christian Giambrone, of Jamaica Plain, was stabbed to death, and another employee was injured outside the store on Brookline Avenue when they tried to apprehend a shoplifter Monday night.

Man Killed in Plant Accident

Des Moines, February 16th, 2004 -- An update on a deadly accident at a metro packing plant.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the accident. It happened at Pine Ridge Farms on the east side of Des Moines yesterday.

The company was formerly known as the Iowa Packing Plant.

Investigators say Raul Rojas was checking a grinder to make sure it was working when he fell and became trapped.

Just last month, Pine Ridge Farms bought the plant from Iowa Packing. Hundreds of workers were laid off. The new company only hired back enough workers to operate the plant at sixty percent capacity.

Hmmm

Equipment overturns at F&P America

TROY -- A maintenance worker died Thursday after a scissor lift he was operating toppled over on the grounds of an automotive parts manufacturer.

Neale Schneider Jr., 30, of Troy had been working on a light that illuminates an access road outside F&P America, 2101 Corporate Drive, when the lift overturned into an embankment just before 11 a.m., Troy police Sgt. Chris Anderson said. Schneider fell about 30 feet.

Santa Paula man killed at area ranch after water pipe explodes

A Santa Paula, CA man died shortly after a water pipe he was trying to fix exploded, according to the Ventura County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office spokesman.

Jose Luis Huizar, 37, was killed Friday after he and two co-workers from Somis Pacific Ag Management, Inc. attempted to fix a broken 4 1/2 inch water pipe on Pepper Tree Canyon Road, two miles north of Foothill Drive in Santa Paula.

Local Worker Killed By Ice

The occupational safety and health administration is investigating the death of a Weirton man killed while on the job...

Yesterday around 10 am, 38 year old Michael Mackey was struck by a falling ice while working on a waste treatment plant at Appleton Papers Spring Mill located in Blair County, Pennsylvania.

Recycling-yard death is probed

McCOOK, IL -- Federal officials Wednesday were investigating the death of a Chicago man who fell off a piece of machinery at a McCook recycling yard.

Victorino Cruz, 38, was working atop a compactor container Monday at Crown Recycling and Waste Management, 8475 W. 53rd St., when he fell, said Vincent Blakemore, assistant area director for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Track worker killed during race

DAYTONA BEACH - The dangers of racing struck again at Daytona International Speedway.

During a caution of the IPOWERacing 150 Dash sports car race Sunday afternoon, track crew supervisor Roy H. Weaver III, 44, was struck by a car going 100 mph and driven by paraplegic Ray Paprota. Weaver died at the scene, track spokesman David Talley said. More here.

OSHA investigating death of Pittsgrove tree trimmer

WASHINGTON TWP., NJ -- The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has launched an investigation into the circumstances that led to the on-the-job death of a 48-year-old Salem County man here Sunday.

Joseph Chester, 48, of Pittsgrove, was approximately 25 feet up in a tree and was struck in the head after he cut through a large branch at a residential home on Pollux Court in the Birches West development late Sunday morning, police and fire department reports said.

Although two co-workers were on the ground at the time of the accident and held a rope that was tied to the branch Chester was cutting, the branch fell toward him instead of falling away from his body. The branch struck Chester on the head, police said, causing severe neck injury.

Mill worker dies in Banks

BANKS -- A 24-year-old millworker died Monday in a Banks Lumber Mill accident. The state Occupational Safety and Health Division will investigate.

According to witnesses, Cory Kepple of Vernonia was working with logs about to go through the barker when he got pinned under the press rolls. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Labels: Weekly Toll

Smart Thinking, Bush Guys

[Bush] campaign officials said in interviews that they plan substantial positive advertising about the president, focused on his proposals rather than accomplishments.

Gee, I wonder why?

The rest of his campaign, in case you're interested, will be focused on bashing Kerry's anti-Viet Nam war statements 30 years ago. That advertising probably won't be as postive.

Workers At Risk (Still, Yet, Again) at Federal Nuclear Reservation

I wrote recently about the Department of Energy giving its contractors the authority to write their own safety and health standards. A disturbing article in the NY Times today about the health and safety conditions of workers cleaning up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation casts some doubt on the wisdom of that plan.

For almost half a century, the hulking factories across a vast nuclear reservation here churned out the plutonium for most of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, including the bomb used on Nagasaki.

But in the last several years, with the cold war long over, the shuttered silence of the nine nuclear reactors on this 586-square-mile site has been followed by one of the world's largest cleanups, costing $2 billion a year.

An army of workers numbering more than 11,000 faces the staggering cleanup task at the Hanford complex in the high desert of southeastern Washington, a project made more daunting with an accelerated timetable that slashed cleanup projections to 35 years from 70. The quicker pace has led to charges among some doctors, experts and lawmakers that speed has taken priority over worker health and safety. And some warn that, in its dormancy, the vast wasteland may pose even more danger to the cleanup workers than it did to those who built the nation's arsenal here when the complex was in full operation.

The Departments of Energy and Labor are already dealing with a generation of workers with cancer and beryllium disease. Now, some say they're creating a whole new generation.

The allegations under review by the state attorney general's office stem from a report by the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that represents some Hanford workers in legal actions. The report said that from 2002 through the middle of last year, there were 45 incidents in which 67 workers required medical attention because they were exposed to toxic vapors from the underground tanks.

"Hanford is in the process of creating a new generation of sick and injured workers," the report said.

Tom Peterson, 51, an ironworker rigger who has worked at Hanford for 25 years, is one of 21 workers with chronic beryllium disease, an illness unknown at the height of the cold war. Dr. Takaro said 84 more have been "sensitized," to beryllium, which means they are at high risk of contracting the full-blown disease.

"I went to work out there figuring I was going to support my family," Mr. Peterson said. "I didn't expect to go out there and be poisoned and nobody fess up to anything. If they would have told me ahead of time what I was getting into, maybe I wouldn't have taken the job."

Electricians, a group not generally thought at high risk, are among those showing symptoms of exposure to asbestos and other hazards, as well as health physics technicians, who help monitor workers' radiation exposure.

Last June, 12 workers inhaled radioactive gas and two also tested positive for skin contamination when they were working on the "tank farms," according to a report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an oversight panel established by Congress.

And Congress is taking a hard look at the Energy Department's plan to give health and safety authority back to the contractors

Some members of Congress have been urging the department to exert more authority over the site contractors. And the oversight panel set up by Congress does not want to see safety rules relaxed. It has taken issue with a plan by the Energy Department that would allow Hanford contractors and other sites to draw up their own plans for meeting safety rules.

John Conway, chairman of the oversight panel, said the panel objected to the agency's plan because it would mean that many rules and requirements would be softened, or considered merely guidance, without enforcement teeth.

Ms. Roberson, of the Energy Department, disagreed, saying the agency would still control safety standards. But Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and the ranking minority member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, complained in a recent letter to Secretary Abraham that "there has been very little evidence that D.O.E. contractors have made the interest of their workers a foremost concern."

Mr. Dingell added, "In the past, weapons production took priority over health and safety; currently, accelerated cleanup schedules and reduced cleanup budgets are taking priority."

One hopes that we have learned from the lessons of the past, that the thousands of sick and ill workers, and those that have already died, would serve as a lesson that unless there is strong government oversight, people will continue to get sick and die from preventable hazards.

But it's like those who say "unions may have been a good thing once upon a time...." but now we're so enlightened, etc., etc. We may have made progress over the past century in protecting workers' lives, protecting the environment, consumer safety, etc., but none of this progress has come without a fight, and none of it will last without constant vigilance. Some things may have changed over time, but human nature and the need to make a profit makes strong laws and enforcement as necessary today as they've ever been.

Mercury is now a vegetable

Coming Soon to a Location Near You: Union Busting, Federal Style

The Terrorists Have Won

Long article in the Federal Times, Union Busting DoD Style, about the new civil service "reforms" at the Department of Defense, and an interview with chief union buster and undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, David Chu. Some of the "highlights" include:

At least half of the more than 400,00 employees covered by collective bargaining units could lose that right.
It would be harder to join a union and easier to drop out.
Unions could consult management about big changes to working conditions, but management would have the final say.

The union’s big fear is that

changes would gut workplace protections for employees, fuel labor-management animosity and mistrust, and kick off the dismantling of collective bargaining rights across government.

And make no mistake about it, the Department of Defense labor plan, combined with the attacks on union rights for Department of Homeland Security employees, are just the precursor of their plans for the entire federal government labor force. And as we experienced more than 20 years ago with PATCO, private industry tends to take their labor-relations cue from the federal government. Although, in this case, government may be taking its cue from private sector union busters.

Chu tells unions to chill:

“It’s a starting point. I don’t really think we’re wedded to these ideas in any strong sense,” Chu said. “We’re very hopeful everyone will calm down and enter into this dialogue in the spirit it was intended.”

***

“It would be a hideous mistake to think that this is being poured in concrete,” Chu said. “We’re going to evaluate its performance on an ongoing basis. If it works well in particular areas, then we celebrate that fact and we enforce those successes. If the results are weak . . . then we will all want to readdress the tools we are using and the approach we are taking.”

"If it works well in particular areas" for whom?

One of the most objectionable parts of the plan is a proposal to allow union representation only when a majority of employees in a given bargaining unit to vote for representation. The current standard requires a majority of only those employees who actually vote. But as Colleen Kelley, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union. says, “They have set up a system for union elections that no current elected official could meet in their own elections if they were applied to them.”

Good point. As a matter of fact, the current resident of the White House didn't even get 50% of those voting in 2000.

Although DOD was ordered by Congress to work with the Office of Personnel Management on the changes, OPM has pretty much been ignored in favor of private consultants who don’t appear to be very "enlightened" when it comes to labor relations:

“DoD has hundreds of different unions. To try to do anything systematic across the department in that environment, it’s almost impossible,” said Tim Barnhart, a federal human resources consultant who has worked for several Defense agencies. “They tend to represent a disgruntled minority and they tend to not be in a position to facilitate progress. They tend to be an obstacle.”

Chu betrays his attitude toward unions in an accompanying interview when asked about planned provisions that would allow members to stop paying dues at any time instead of at a specified time during the year.

If the union is successful as an organization, people are going to want to pay their dues. That’s how people pay dues to professional organizations. No one makes you join your professional organization. You pay your dues, often much more substantial dues, because you think you got fair value for that money. I’m surprised the unions feel they can’t pass that test.

Well, yeah David, but when you stop paying dues to a professional organization, you stop getting their benefits. No freeloaders there.

While the unions will attempt to use whatever pressure they can through Congress or demonstrations, they're keeping their eye on the prize:

AFGE held a protest rally at the Capitol on Feb. 11 to call lawmakers’ attention to the proposed changes, but few union leaders or employees seem to believe lawmakers will do anything. Instead, they say the only real option is to march to the voting booth in November and remove President Bush and his Cabinet from office.

“The only way this is going to be changed is if we change administrations,” said Don Hale, president of AFGE Local 2367 in West Point, N.Y.

The disgruntled minority has spoken.

Scientists Say Bush Distorts Science

There has been quite a bit of discussion in Confined Space about the Republicans' misuse of science, labeling as "junk science" everything that doesn't fit in with their pro-business, anti-regulatory, anti-worker, anti-environment message. The Bush administration and its Office of Management and Budget has been leading the charge lately with its so-called Data Quality (sic) and Peer Review Initiatives.

Now scientists have begun to organize and fight back.

More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad.

The sweeping accusations were later discussed in a conference call organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. On Wednesday, the organization also issued a 38-page report detailing its accusations.

The two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases.

The report can be found here (although it's hard to get to as traffic has been high.) Excellent commentary's by science blogger Chris Mooney can be found here. And there was a good NPR story last night that quoted former Republican Cabinet officials as saying that they had never seen anything -- under Reagan or Bush I -- like the politicization of science that is ocurring under this Administration.

Train Wagon That Killed 4 Secured by Two Small Pieces of Wood

The runaway train wagon that killed four British workers earlier this week was apparently being held in place by two small pieces of wood jammed underneath the wheels.

According to Bob Crow, General secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT), the union that represents the railway workers,

"Our information suggests that two two-inch blocks of wood were placed beneath the wheels of the trolley to stop it moving.

"Apparently loading had just commenced when the trolley crushed the wood and careered downhill."

Mr Crow said there had been claims the workers were not aware that there were colleagues on the line down hill.

"If this information is correct our members will be outraged at the cavalier, reckless and disjointed approach to safety management and safe ways of working on the railways," he said.

(via the Yorkshire Ranter)

Crane Collapse Updates

Fourth Worker Dies From Toledo Crane Collapse

A fourth construction worker, 47-year-old Arden Clark, has died from Monday's crane collapse near Toledo. More here.

Connecticut Crane Collapse Company Had Previous Violations

Seems that Balfour Beatty, the company involved in the death of a Connecticut worker yesterday when the crane he was operating flipped off a construction barge into the river, has had some safety problems before.

Since 1993, Balfour Beatty has been the subject of eight complaints or referrals for possible safety violations. Federal regulators cited the company for violations in four cases: June and August 1993, April 1996 and October 2001. Details of those complaints were unavailable late Tuesday.

Records show one such violation, which resulted in a preliminary $3,825 fine, occurred at the same job site when a piece of heavy equipment fell off another barge and into the water. No one was injured in that accident.

The worker in Tuesday's accident [Charles Jordan, 60] was pulled from the cab of the crane, which had flipped off of a construction barge and landed upside down in the river, police said. Co-workers tried to resuscitate the worker, but he died an hour later at Bridgeport Hospital.

Workers Comp Insurers Show Record Profits

You can barely pick up the paper these days without reading about insurance companies and Republicans complaining about outragious lawsuits and the need for tort "reform" and medical malpractice "reform." Insurers are raising their rates through the roof and blaming it on lawsuits, although evidence shows that it was really their bad investments -- and not huge lawsuits -- that are causing the "crisis" and "forcing" them to raise their rates.

Also high on many states' legislative agenda this year is workers compensation "reform" (a.k.a. cuts in benefits) designed to fight rising premiums, yet workers comp insurers are showing record profits.

Insurance companies are reporting that 2003 was the fattest year on record, while they push to cut meager benefits to injured workers. Many of the insurers writing worker’s compensation policies in California reported “record net income and underwriting income in 2003,” figures in line with other companies’ banner profits.

“The very companies enjoying huge profits from the huge rate increases imposed on businesses are calling for more cuts in medical benefits to injured workers,” said Art Azevedo, president of the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association (CAAA). “Insurance company earnings soared in 2003 – even before the major new reforms took effect this year – as insurers profited from huge rate increases.

Because of rapidly rising premiums, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has made workers comp reform one of his top goals, but most of the "reforms" will serve only to make it harder for workers to get benefits after they've been injured.

California injured workers groups are calling on Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi to put caps on insurance rates.

The Commissioner would reduce benefits to injured workers but allow unlimited profits for insurance companies. Garamendi’s plan includes a floor on rates, but no ceiling, so insurance companies can continue to gouge California employers. That’s not right,” said David Schwartz, President-Elect of the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association (CAAA). “Garamendi’s plan takes away benefits from injured workers, benefits that are already too low. You can cut injured workers’ benefits down to zero, and without regulation insurance companies may not reduce premiums by a single dollar.”

The groups do credit Garemendi's plan with a few good points, however, such as his proposal to accelerate payments to injured workers and to increase penalties for employers who fail to carry workers comp insurance.

Iranian Train Blast

Close to 300 people including 182 fire and rescue workers were killed when runaway train cars carrying a lethal mix of fuel and chemicals derailed, caught fire and then exploded hours later Wednesday in northeast Iran.

The sickening smell of sulphur hung in the air and the corpses of dead farm animals littered the countryside.

Only tattered clothing and patches of blood remained as evidence of the human carnage that had occurred just hours before, when a huge chemical explosion ripped through Neyshabur in northern Iran, killing and injuring hundreds of people.

By last night, the Iranian authorities said the death toll had risen to 295.

More here

Good thing it can't happen here.

Labor and Enviros Together Against Bush, Oh My!

Some of us have been trying for decades to bring labor and environmentalists together, but it seems like President Bush has found the secret -- piss them both off. Here is a column by UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Sierra Club President Carl Pope that argues that the administration's new fuel efficiency standards will be bad for jobs and the environment.

United States manufacturing is already in deep crisis, with employment having declined every month since President Bush took office — a total of 2.8 million lost manufacturing jobs. The Bush administration should not aggravate the problem with changes in fuel economy standards that could jeopardize the jobs of thousands of workers in the auto industry. Even some automakers have expressed concern about these new standards, preferring the existing rules to uncertain new requirements.

The Sierra Club and the United Auto Workers do not always agree on automobile policy. We do agree, however, that the Bush administration's proposal would destroy American jobs, reduce fuel economy and increase global warming emissions — and add to the burdens of an already struggling auto industry.

Wither CalOSHA?

Most people don't realize that almost half of the states in this country run their own OSHA programs and that the effectiveness of these programs is dependent on both federal and state funding. Federal OSHA runs the rest. OSHA law allows federal OSHA to fund up to 50% of the program as long as the state runs a "fully effective" program. To determine whether a state program is fully effective, federal OSHA and the state agree to staffing level "benchmarks."

The California Association of Professional Scientists (CAPS), the union representing CalOSHA inspectors, has released a report questioning whether California OSHA (CalOSHA) is actually running a "fully effective" program. The report found CalOSHA's staffing level to be below its staffing commitment to federal OSHA and and far below what is needed to assure safe workplaces for California workers.

"It's a sorry picture," according to CAPS' Matt Austin.

California is one of 22 states to run its own OSHA program, covering both private and public sector employees. In 1980, when the CalOSHA program was first approved, the state agreed to a staffing level of 805 inspectors to cover over 11.6 million workers in half a million workplaces. CalOSHA never came close to that level and in 1994 renegotiated a much lower level with federal OSHA: 118 safety and 80 health inspectors. At that time, CalOSHA estimated that the safety inspectors would be able to inspect around 12,000 workplaces determined to be high priority, in addition to complaint, fatality and catastrophe inspections. Health inspectors would be able to inspect around 3800 workplaces.

In 1994, California was estimated to have just over a million workplaces, which meant that there was 1 inspector for every 82,822 workers and 1 inspector to for every 4,718 worksites.

Fast forward 10 years. California's labor force has grown 15% and the number of workplaces over 30% since 1994. How is CalOSHA doing keeping up?

Not well, according to CAPS.

Instead of growing in proportion with the number of workplaces covered, the official benchmark has remained at 198. The actual number of inspectors in the field, however, is much less: 176.5 (not including 7 who are on long term leave), making today's ratio of inspectors to workers 1 to 100,181 workers and 1 to 6,464 worksites.

Today, California has more fish and game wardens than workplace safety and health inspectors - 227 vs. 193.

If California was still operating under the 1980 federal OSHA benchmark ratios, the agency would have one inspector to every 15,000 workers and 625 workplaces.

CalOSHA also doesn't seem to be doing well compared to other western states. Washington State, for example, has a ratio of one inspector to 21,655 workers and 1,834 worksites, while Oregon has a ratio of one inspector to 22,286 workers and 1,239 worksites. And just for amusement, check out British Columbia which has a ratio of one inspector to 9,549 workers and 845 worksites.

There is currently a hiring freeze in California and the effect of the current round of budget cuts is not yet known.

CalOSHA is also failing to meet the challenge of keeping up with the changing composition of the state's working population. The non-English speaking workforce of California is estimated to be more than 6 million workers, over one-third of the working population. Yet CalOSHA has only 29 inspectors (or 16% of the total) who are fluent in a language other than English. Twenty of these speak Spanish.

According to Austin, there are several obstacles to fully staffing the program: budget problem, low pay for inspectors and lack of political will. CalOSHA has not been on top of the priority list for either the current or under Democrat Gray Davis. In fact, CalOSHA has not had a permanent Chief since July 2002 when former Chief John Howard was appointed by President Bush to head NIOSH.

It is not surprising, then, that Cal/OSHA staff members frequently complain of overwhelming caseloads. In November 2001 the California Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee held a hearing on Cal/OSHA’s response to workplace fatalities. In that hearing, Cal/OSHA was presented with a list of problems, ranging from a lack of bilingual staffing to delayed response times after worker injuries and deaths.18 Cal/OSHA representatives attributed many of the problems to staffing shortages; and they also cited noncompetitive salaries for state-employed engineers, namely, 20 percent lower than the salaries of state-contracted engineers from private consulting firms.

Even the conservative Sacramento Bee came to CalOSHA's defence in December following a fvorable article about CalOSHA in the NY Times:

At a time the state is reeling from a budget crisis of historic proportions, its worker safety law and aggressive enforcement sets California apart and above. That is something to be proud of and to protect. It also is a standard the rest of the nation would do well to emulate.

While most attention is paid to funding and program of federal OSHA, it is important to also focus on the status of workers in the 23 state plan states. Remember, it's not just a Presidential election year. Local elections are where state priorities are made. If you're in one of the other state plan states, check out your state OSHA budget and staffing.

Labels: CalOSHA

OSHA Training Grant Program: Something Missing?

I wrote last week of OSHA's repeated attempts to replace the highly successful $11 million Susan Harwood Training Program with a $4 million web and electronic training program.

If that's not bad enough, check out OSHA's press release about it's FY 2005 budget.

Revised Training Grant Program

Under the President's proposed budget, OSHA would revise the Susan Harwood training grants program to focus on new technologies and emphasize development of training materials rather than delivery of training. The program would be open to colleges, universities and community colleges; faith-based and community-based groups; and professional organizations. Training products could be delivered through new technologies, such as the web. Developers would track and evaluate the use of the training.

Notice anything missing?

LIKE LABOR UNIONS?

OSHA has been phasing unions out of the worker training grants. Out of the 50 new grants that OSHA announced in 2003, only 4 (or 8%) go to unions or labor-management coalitions, while 14 (or 28%) go to businesses or business associations.

On the other hand, maybe it was just an oversight. Workers are so easy to forget about these days at the Department of Labor.

Four Workers Killed in Two Crane Accidents

Three workers were killed when a crane collapsed in Toledo Ohio, and another was killed when two cranes collapsed in Connecticut.

In the Toledo area’s worst construction accident in decades, three ironworkers died and five other workers were injured yesterday after a 2-million-pound crane collapsed at the southern end of the new I-280 bridge in East Toledo.

Rescue crews spent four hours recovering the dead as fellow construction workers held vigil in 20-degree weather and onlookers stood stunned at a construction project touted for its engineering ingenuity and safety record.

"It just looked like you pulling an erector set apart," witness Lee Timmons of East Toledo said.

Dead from the 2:22 p.m. accident were Robert Lipinski, Jr., 44, of Grand Rapids, Ohio, Mike Moreau, 30, of Lambertville, and Mike Phillips, 42, of South Toledo.

In Connecticut, the cranes collapsed at at the new Sikorsky Memorial Bridge on the Merritt Parkway.

The cranes were lifting a girder at about noon when one crane fell off its barge and into the Housatonic River, said Chris Cooper, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation. The boom of the other crane snapped back, Cooper said.

Information on crane safety here.

Update here.

EPA Cuts Funding For Cleanup of Asbestos-Contaminated Libby, MT

We have frequently mentioned the tragedy of Libby, Montana, the town contaminated with asbestos-laden wastes from vermiculite mined by the Grace Corporation.

When Grace started losing lawsuits filed by sick residents, the corporation spun off its profitable assets and went bankrupt in 2001, leaving the town and taxpayers holding the bag.

The death toll is 200 so far in Libby, and nearly 2,000 locals have been diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases. Residents fear that the longer the cleanup takes, the more people will take ill.

More than 180 residential and commercial properties have been cleaned, including the mine's old processing plants and the school track. But this budget year, the Bush administration gave the Libby cleanup $4 million less than the $19 million dispersed the year before and $6 million less than the local EPA requested. That means the families of Libby will remain at potential risk -- not for five more years as originally promised, but for as many as 12, residents say.

And to add insult to injury,

In another slap at Libby last month, cleanup workers learned at 4 in the afternoon that their hourly wages would be cut starting the next day, from a minimum of $24 to $14. With workers complaining, the EPA now is considering raising their pay back to $19 an hour. Still, residents are afraid the pay cut will damage morale and undermine the quality of the cleanup.

At the peak of the cleanup last summer, 120 people were working for EPA contractors in Libby, and these were some of the best jobs in the economically depressed town.

“We have a very dedicated workforce,” Sullivan says. “These are people who really give a hoot. Why is the EPA hurting their pride?”

If you somehow missed the Libby story, check here, here and here.

Labels: Asbestos

"20 Tonnes of Death Coming out of the Darkness"

4 Railway Workers Killed in England

Four British railway workers were killed when a runaway train wagon weighing several tons and travelling 40 miles per hour rolled downhill for four miles and ploughed into them as they worked on the tracks. No lookout had been posted because the track was "closed."

The wagon is thought to have broken loose at 6am and gathered speed as it rolled down a four-mile sloping section of track, hitting the 10-strong gang at about 45mph.

It rolled another mile before coming to a halt.

The four were killed instantly and three were injured, one seriously. Three others managed to jump clear.

Their 40-year-old friend, too upset to be named, said: "This was the worst nightmare for any railman, an unmanned wagon coming straight at you out of the pitch darkness.

Meanwhile, the wife of one of the dead workers told of her husband's concerns about safety equipment before the accident:

The wife of one of four railway workers killed by a runaway wagon on Sunday has revealed how he had complained before the accident about safety equipment.

Christine Waters, 50, said her husband Chris had told her that he and his fellow workers could not hear when wearing new helmets and feared they were "more of a danger than safety".

Reports on Monday suggested the men could not hear the wagon approaching and also that they could not hear mobile phone calls from colleagues further up the line trying to warn them of the danger.

Travellers: On Vacation From Civility?

Violence Against Travel Industry Employees on the Rise

The New York Times addresses abuse of flight attendents and other travel industry service workers and the stress it causes. And it's not just isolated to the airlines.

In a survey of 875 airline, bus, train and highway employees late last year, the nonpartisan public opinion organization Public Agenda found that 54 percent of travel workers feel that passenger rudeness is a top cause of job-related stress and tension. Nearly half said that they had seen a situation where disrespectful behavior threatened to escalate into a physical confrontation, and 19 percent said they had observed violent acts.

Often, employees don't feel they are getting the support they deserve from management.

"Sometimes it seems like the enemy is not the passengers but senior management," said Ms. Terry, the US Airways customer service agent and union local president. "On the issue of passenger disrespect, management does not want to support us. They prefer to avoid conflict and possible litigation and put their heads in the sand."

Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for the airline, disputed that assertion. "We have had a history of supporting both our ground agents and our flight crews when it comes to instances of air rage," she said. "We rigorously pursue and prosecute passengers who engage in such activities."

In one case where an employee was physically attacked, however, the employee had to file charges with the police because airport management refused.

Labels: Workplace Violence

Worker-Owned Home Health Care

Interesting article in the NY Times about a worker owned home-health care company and the difference between the way it treats its employers vs. the traditional for-profit firms

"There were no benefits, no nothing,'' Ms. Pillot said. "They didn't care about you, and if you had a family problem, like my son having asthma, you had to take care of it yourself.''

But she is far happier since she landed a job with one of the nation's most successful worker-owned companies, a home health agency in the South Bronx that has won widespread acclaim for how it treats its 780 employees. Her agency, Cooperative Home Care Associates, is unusual not just because it is employee-owned - workers can buy one share of the company - but also because many management analysts and health care professionals are studying it as a model for other low-wage workers.

"The worker is at the center of everything we do,'' said Michael Elsas, Cooperative's president. "Everything else revolves around that."

Cooperative generally pays its workers 20 percent more than other New York home care agencies do. Its workers get $6.80 to $9.50 per hour, with the average at $8.60. It gives aides comprehensive health insurance and what is considered the best training program in the business, providing at least four weeks of training (most agencies provide two weeks).

Many home care agencies charge new employees $300 for training, while Cooperative provides it free, an important sweetener considering that two-thirds of its aides used to be on welfare.

Cooperative subsidizes its employees if they want to take college courses to become nurses. It guarantees aides at least 30 hours of work a week, while many other agencies give their aides only 15 or 20 hours, far too little for them to live on.

If Cooperative's workers arrive late to their home care cases because of child-care problems, the agency's counselors help employees track down child care. When workers have a complaint, they can easily arrange a one-on-one meeting with Cooperative's president.

And to top it off, they just organized with SEIU, which should prove "interesting."

So now the union representing health workers is supposed to bargain with the company owned by health workers. That makes management uneasy, and not only because Cooperative already provides better wages and benefits than most other agencies. [Board Chairman Rick] Surpin warns that it might be hard for Cooperative to adhere to multiyear pacts and to match percentage raises given by agencies that pay less.

"We present a problem for the union, and the union presents a problem for us,'' Mr. Surpin said. "But the union has come to see that we're dead serious about doing what's best for the workers.''

Officials at 1199 agree that it can be an awkward pas de deux.

Around The Blogs

Jeanne d'Arc trys to explain to her child about grocery store strikes and the evils of Wal-Mart (via The Mad Prophet).

The Yorkshire Ranter has more on the gangmasters who killed 19 (or more) Chinese immigrant cocklers in Britain. (And check out the comments at the bottom as well.)

rawblogXport has a tragic story about child slave laborers harvesting cocoa that goes into our M&Ms.

Nathan Newman about NY Times Columnist Frank Rich's exposure of the REAL scandal of the Superbowl Half-Time show. And it wasn't Nipplegate.

Tim Lambert writes about right-wing blogger Steve Malloy's definition of "Junk Science"

Unsuspecting visitors might think that Milloy’s site is devoted to criticizing shoddy science, but they would be wrong. If you look at what he “debunks” you will find that the real criterion for deciding what is “junk science” is not the quality of the work, but the political agenda that it might support. Studies that support a right-wing agenda are endorsed, while studies that don’t are harshly criticized.

(Via Chris Mooney)

OSHA Web Page Hours Conspiracy

I've written a couple of times about OSHA shutting down it's Inspection Data website (here and here) on weekends and between the hours of 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. weekdays.

So last night I'm trying to do a little research (yes, I do actually research some of my stories) and, of course, I got the same message again about the Inspection Data webpage being shut down at night and over the weekend. OK, I'll just do it some other time, like...... Wait a minute. When is the research staff at Confined Space (all of whom have day jobs) supposed to do any research on OSHA's web page? The OSHA webpage hours correspond to the exact times when Confined Space is not posting -- when I'm at work.

I had a comment after my first post on this topic from Sara Markle-Elder saying "They're on to you. They know you do this in your free time." I laughed at the time. But no more.

Coincidence you say?

I think not.

Trench Death an "Accident"

But What's An "Accident?"

The Fire Department of the City of Zanesville, OH, has determined that the death of James Carpenter in a trench collapse last November was "an accident." And they're right, as they define accident.

We handle the criminal portion of the investigation," [Zanesville Fire Chief David Lacy] said. "We determine if the accident was caused intentionally -- such as an employee took a backhoe and intentionally threw dirt into the ditch to bury him. OSHA handles the civil portion of the investigation."

OK, so let's look at the definition of the word "accident." According to Webster, "accident" has several meanings:

1 a : an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance
b : lack of intention or necessity: CHANCE
2 a : an unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance

The city is clearly using definition 1b: "lack of intention or necessity." The problem is that the public perusing the headline would generally think of definition 1a: "an unforseen and unplanned event or circumstance." In other words, shit happens, too bad, bad luck, nothing could have been done to prevent it.

We here at Confined Space know better, of course. We prefer definition 2a: "An unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance."

...And punishable by a considerable fine and perhaps jail time, as opposed to the $4,500 penalty that OSHA has issued against the company.

Labels: Trench Hazards

They're Back....

OMB Again Calls For Review Of Regulations

The White House Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is once again asking "the public" to identify regulations (such as OSHA standards) that they believe impede competitiveness in the U.S. manufacturing sector.

This review is allegedly due to the White House's concern about job loss in the manufacturing sector. The White House is particularly concerned about small business.

The National Association of Manufacturers was quite pleased:

"Regulatory compliance costs faced by U.S. manufacturers are generally much higher than those faced by overseas competitors, so we very much welcome OMB's initiative," said Jerry J. Jasinowski, president of the NAM.

Translation: "if only we could run our businesses like they do in China."

(If you're really interested in NAM's reasoning behind this statement, you can check out their report "How Structural Costs Imposed on U.S. Manufacturers Harm Workers and Threaten Competitiveness" which complains about how much it is costing businesses to clean up (the environment) after themselves, assure the public that they are not stealing from their stockholders and employees, and keep their workers alive and healthy...all of which sound vaguely reminiscent of lessons that some of us learned in Kindergarten.)

The Small Business Administration was also quite pleased:

"You have to figure out any possible way to get rid of barriers to job creation," said Thomas M. Sullivan, chief counsel for advocacy at the SBA.

Sullivan, you may remember, was the former Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses before he was appointed to his current position by President Bush in 2002. He is also a winner of the coveted Confined Space Quote of the Week award for the following statement:

"I am doing the exact same thing as chief counsel for advocacy," Sullivan said, "only NFIB does not have to pay me now."

How nice for them.

OMB has not pleased everyone, however:

Critics of the Bush administration see the review as another attempt to roll back health and safety rules.

"It's an out-and-out appeal to the manufacturing sector to give OMB a wish list of regulations to be undone. It's a call for a new regulatory hit list," said Lisa Heinzerling, a professor at Georgetown Law Center who recently published a book, "Pricing the Priceless," which criticizes how cost-benefit analysis is applied to health and environmental policy.

Seattle Cab Drivers Stage Work Stoppage Over Safety

More than 200 Kings County, Washington cab drivers staged a two hour work stoppage yesterday to call for better safety conditions. The recent shooting death of a cab driver sparked the protest. Drivers report being routinely shot, threatened, bitten and ejected from their cars.

Some drivers want bulletproof shields, but many said the shields make them feel isolated. Other drivers want video cameras in the cabs. Some want police to investigate crimes against cabbies more thoroughly.

Deb Duggan, a cabdriver for more than 10 years, said she wants more training for drivers in how to defuse a potentially violent situation. She wants cabs to have a sign discouraging robbers, by saying cabbies carry only a certain amount of cash.

Cab drivers are 60 times more likely to be slain on the job than other workers, according to a 2000 study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

On Jan. 31, someone got in the Yellow Cab of Hassan Farah shortly after he started his 4 a.m. shift and killed him near Boeing Field. Police have made no arrests.....[Duggan] said she heard that Farah, a 39-year-old husband and father, had gone to a dispatched call from a McDonald's parking lot at 4:30 a.m. With more training, she said, somebody might have red-flagged that call as suspicious.

"You got to wonder why they called from there," said Duggan, an organizer with the Cab Drivers' Alliance of King County, which arranged yesterday's work stoppage.

Minneapolis cab driver staged a protest action last summer following the shooting of a driver there.

Check here and here for more information on cabdriver safety.

Labels: taxi drivers

Disneyworld Worker Killed

A worker at Walt Disney World in Florida was killed during a parade on Wednesday. Javier Cruz, 38, who was wearing a Pluto costume, was the father of two and had worked at the park since 1995.

Marin, his sister, said someone who worked with her brother told her that he tripped in front of the float and there wasn't enough time for him to move.

'It's not acceptable'

"We believe it could have been prevented. I believe they should have kept a distance between him as a character and the float," she said.

"OK, it's an accident, but it's not acceptable. They should have prevented this."

Employees later reported that

Cruz was facing forward when his foot got caught on the lower part of the float. When the vehicle began to move, his body was twisted around and he fell down. The third section of the vehicle ran him over and trapped him. Other Disney workers used a forklift and hydraulic lift to get the vehicle off Cruz, according to the report from the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

Norman Smith drove the vehicle by electric power from the first section of the float. Smith told investigators he couldn't see the other sections but relied on the guidance of another worker on foot to tell him when to move the vehicle. He also depended on radio contact with other parade marchers.

In 1999, an employee was killed at Disneyworld when he fell from the Magic Kingdom's Skyway ride. OSHA fined Disney $4,500.

Back Pain? Shut Up And Deal With It!

Sometimes you get a gift. I had missed this article about back pain in the New York Times on Tuesday. I finally read it after someone pointed it out to me, and noted that several of the experts quoted were leaders of the campaign against the ergonomics standard. Stanley Bigos and Norton Hadler who come up with gems like this:

Other studies have indicated that the development of abnormal disks is usually inherited. But there were no links to occupation, sports injuries or weak muscles, said Dr. Norton Hadler, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina.

Ah, another evening ranting and raving at my computer, I thought. But lo and behold, I was saved the effort by Darryl Alexander, Director of Health and Safety at AFT. She left a comment attached to my posting about the Detroit News column on ergonomics "science."

Interesting that the "scientists" used by the Chamber, NAM etc. recently surfaced in an article by Gina Kolata in the NY Times on the mystery of back injury cause and treatment. Dr. Hadler that well-credentialed expert was quoted as well as Stanley Bigos - both stating that we really don't know what is causing all these back problems and that "no treatment" seems to work as well or better than expensive treatment to getting workers back to work. Not a word in the article about work-related association of back injuries and returning workers to the same jobs that caused the problem in the first place.

We are in real trouble if these characters get front page exposure and credibility from the NY times.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Brought back memories of the OSHA ergonomics hearings where these so-called experts futilely tryed to explain how there was no association between back pain and jobs that required heavy lifting, as if the high incidence of back pain among nursing home employees was a product of pure coincidence. (Or maybe people with a previous history of back pain are naturally attracted to nursing, just as people with pre-existing neck and wrist pain are naturally attracted to chicken processing.)

And they complain about "junk science." Makes you want to scream.

Labels: Ergonomics

OSHA Training Grant Program: The Unkindest Cut

I have written numerous times about OSHA's attempt to gut one of the agency's most successful programs, the Susan Harwood Training Grant Program. Under the program, millions of dollars are granted to unions, colleges, business associations, COSH groups and other non-profits each year to provide direct training to hundreds of thousand of workers. In recent years, the focus has been on Hispanic workers. The grant programs have spawned valuable training programs tailored to adult learners at the level and in the language that the workers could understand. The grant programs produced excellent publications and innovative train-the-trainer programs that have prepared a cadre of health and safety trainers who multiply the benefits of the program.

Every Bush budget has attempted to cut the program from $11 million to $4 million, changing the program from proven direct worker training to an internet-based creation. And every year, Congress has restored the full $11 million.

Once again, Bush is attempting to cut the program down to $4 million. But, in an interview in Inside OSHA, OSHA Chief John Henshaw, channeling the ghost of George Orwell

rebuked assertions that the administration is cutting the training grants program.

“I would not use the word ‘cutting',” Henshaw said referring to the proposed $6 million decrease in the training grant program. “We do not feel the training program should be based on one-on-one training. We are developing materials and technology to get information out to more people.”

We Interrupt This Program For a Short Musical Interlude

It rained so hard the day I left,
The weather it was dry,
The sun so hot, I froze to death,
Suzanna don't you cry.

I'm sorry. Now where was I?

Henshaw went on to extoll the virtues of internet based training, especially for Hispanic workers, "the fastest group entering the internet."

They'd better be fast. After working a 12-hour day in the poultry processing plant, they'll need to rush home on the bus to the trailer part, where, after making dinner, helping the kids with their homework, getting them to bed, then having the whole rest of the evening to relax in front of their Pentium XXVII computers with their high-speed internet connections, training themselves on how to prevent their necks and limbs and backs from disintegrating from hanging 20,000 live chickens above their heads every day.

Back in the days when we expected the federal government to follow the letter and the spirit of the law, health and safety training was done on worktime, with live trainers who could actually answer questions and engage the workers in learning instead of sticking them in front of a computer or expecting them to take a CD home with them.

And good workplace safety and health training is about more than just facts about hazards and how to prevent them. It's also about how to change the conditions in the workplace so that injuries and illnesses don't happen. And even if that information is accurate and understood, it isn't too useful for workers who have little knowledge of OSHA and little understanding of their rights. No matter how good the web page is, you can't do that kind of training over the internet.

John Henshaw and Elaine Chao will soon go before Congress and attempt once again to defend these cuts that are not cuts. They will try to argue that internet training is somehow better than face-to-face interactive training, and that all of this is particularly beneficial for Hispanic workers.

Let's just hope that Congress once again has the wisdom and courage to tell the agency they're full of crap.

Southern California Grocery Strike: A War for the Whole Country

Update in the NY Times about labor raising the pressure on the supermarkets in the Southern California strike over health care.

"This is not a battle about Southern California; this is a war for the whole country, particularly over health care," said Ron Judd, West Coast regional director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "This should be seen as the poster child of what employers are willing to do to take away health care."

The union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, describes its action as a goal-line stand against supermarket efforts to reduce benefits while having workers begin paying some of the premiums. Organized labor says that if the union loses here, corporate managers everywhere may be emboldened to cut back on health benefits.

And the hardship on the strikers is getting heavier. Carter Wright over at the Joe Kenehan Center has found some good first-hand information on the strikers' stories. "The courage shown by these people is astonishing."

OSHA Webpage Update

As I reported below, OSHA has closed off its very useful Inspection Data website from 6:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M.

I've heard from several sources that it's due to budget problems. One theory is that they're paying an expensive contractor and the site has been too successful to afford. Another theory is that the Firewall costs too much to run 24 hours a day. I've also heard that OSHA intends to limit access for people who spend too much time on the site.

New York health and safety activist Trina Semorille suspects: "It's because they want to limit access. They know you don't want to do this research during the day, at work, where it can be tracked, allowing whistleblowers and "troublemakers" to be punished. Off the job, no access at all--the site is closed. "

And University of Connecticut Associate Professor Tim Morse suggests, "It is interesting that the times that they cut it back are the times when workers are most likely to access it."

Very interesting, but hardly surprising.

Maybe we should all let OSHA know how stupid this really is. You can do it through the web page or call the main number: (202) 693-2000.

Make Workplace Safety an Election Issue

Quiz: What was the first major piece of legislation signed by George Bush?

Buzzz, time's up. Readers of Confined Space know that answer: The bill repealing the federal ergonomics standard.

It was so long ago, -- pre-taxcuts, pre-deficit, pre-9/11, pre Iraq, pre-Overtime regs, that many have forgotten this first of this administration's many crimes against working people. Long ago, but not far away for the millions of workers who continue to suffer every year from musculoskeletal disorders.

Well, now it's time for payback. Let them know that we haven't forgotten.

The United Auto Workers has just issued its "trade union activist's toolbox filled with facts about the issues that matter most to workers, retirees, our families and communities." One issue sheet addresses workplace health and safety issues. The sheet deals with four main issues:

Ergonomics: Bending to the wishes of the powerful corporate interests that opposed the ergonomics rule — who also happened to be major contributors to the election campaigns of George W. Bush and GOP congressional leaders — Congress for the first time invoked the Congressional Review Act to repeal the ergonomics rule.

Upon repealing the rule, the Bush administration promised a “plan” that would protect workers. After more than a year, and 1.8 million ergonomic injuries, the administration announced it would not issue a mandatory standard. It promised to issue voluntary guidelines in several industries, but has so far ignored the auto and auto parts industries.
GOP Attacks on OSHA: Corporate interests opposed to regulations have turned their attention to the executive branch. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is a part of the White House with authority to delay or block any OSHA standard. The Bush administration appointed a regulatory czar at OMB who favors phony cost-benefit analyses and otherwise obstructs health and safety protections.

OSHA and the Department of Labor are headed by Bush appointees who see their role primarily as protecting corporations from “intrusive” regulations, rather than as protecting workers from on-the-job injuries. Funding cuts to OSHA enforcement personnel and to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have made the situation worse.
Asbestos: Lawsuits by victims seeking compensation for asbestos-related illnesses are backlogged in the courts. Asbestos manufacturers have gone into bankruptcy, some of them phony, leaving many victims without recourse. The UAW supports efforts to develop national asbestos disease compensation legislation that will provide victims fair, timely and certain compensation.

Insurance companies and some corporations supported by some Congressional Republicans, such as Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton Corp., are trying to escape their liability under the compensation system. They are unwilling to pay enough into the fund to properly compensate all asbestos victims. The UAW, along with the rest of the labor movement, is insisting the fund be adequate to pay all claims.
Chemical exposure limits, especially metalworking fluids: Most of the chemical exposure limits used by OSHA were set before 1970, when the agency was established. Since then, OSHA has been able to update limits for 15 agents, but for hundreds of others the standards permit exposures that will make workers ill. The most pressing example for UAW members is exposure to metalworking fluids. The UAW was forced to file suit in October against Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao to compel the Labor Department to resume action on this issue

There are, of course, many other issues that could make it onto union agendas this election year: withdrawal of tuberculosis rulemaking, failure to push for criminal penalties for workplace deaths, failure to issue the payment for personal protective equipment standard, OSHA's refusal to initiate the regulatory process for reactive chemicals, withdrawal of OSHA's nursing home initiatve, lack of action on workplace violence and on and on.

And while we're focusing on the all-important Presidential election, don't forget Congress where most evil is spawned. And while we're focusing on defeating Republicans, don't forget that some Democrats have also betrayed workers. Six Democratic Senators and sixteen Democratic Congresspersons voted to repeal the ergonomics standard. No Republican Senators and thirteen House members voted against repeal. (The Senate vote is here. The House vote is here.)

Workplace safety and health issues need to be raised every time you have a meeting with a candidate. We're pissed, we're hurting and they need to know about it, we need to put these issues on their radar screen no matter what party they belong to.

But there are plenty of other issues important to workers and unions: jobs, health care, pensions, minimum wage, labor law reform, taxes, privatization. In other words, we will need to fight within our unions to get health and safety issues on the election year agenda.... just as the UAW has done.

Labels: Asbestos, Workplace Violence

National Geographic Discovers Dangerous Jobs

Thirty years ago, the Devil's Wind—hurricane force southerlies—swept along the Southern Oregon coast. It was mid-August and many commercial salmon fishermen were baiting their lines miles from the safety of Brookings Harbor. With gusts pushing over 80 knots, every boat on the sea risked capsizing.

"I watched my best friend, John Crook, die when his father's fishing boat was swamped and rolled by the waves near the jetty off the Chetco River," said captain John Fraser, owner of the 42-foot (12.5-meter) wooden fishing boat Njord, based in Harbor, Oregon. "I was only ten years old then. But every time I cross that sandbar near the jetty I still think about it."

National Geographic has a new television series called "Dangerous Jobs." Most of the series seems to deal with the more "exotic" jobs -- underwater photographers, oil well fire fighters, test pilots, and bull fighters, but this article looks at a less glamorous job, hazards of commercial fishermen.

Throughout the 1990s, the fatality rate for commercial fishermen in Alaska was 28 times that of the overall U.S. work-related fatality rate of 4.4 per 100,000 workers a year, according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Between 1992 and 1996, Alaska commercial fishing suffered 112 fatalities according to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, based in Washington, D.C. Massachusetts claimed second place with 32 deaths; Oregon was fifth with 21.

This one may have already been shown. Can't find it on the schedule.

For photos of deep sea fishermen, check out labor photographer Earl Dotter's exhibit here.

Asbestos: It's not just the old exposures

The book reviews of Andrew Schneider's book, An Air That Kills, makes clear, even as we deal with asbestos related disease caused by exposures that occurred decades ago, new exposures to asbestos are still wreaking havoc. Here is yet another story:

When Juan Jimenez traveled from Guatemala to Brooklyn in the 1990s, his reasons were simple: He wanted to be near his brother, Jose, and to make some money.

He earned $4.50 an hour when he started as a general laborer at Atlas Knitting, a now-defunct garment company near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. With the cash from his 70-hour workweeks, he rented a $400-a-month walk-up apartment and eked out a modest existence.

Then, in December 2000, the 33-year-old undocumented immigrant unknowingly put his health — and perhaps even his life — on the line.

In what federal and city investigators said was one of the most egregious incidents of its kind, Jimenez, his brother, Jose, 28, and several more Guatemalan immigrants were recklessly exposed to asbestos when their employer ordered them to use knives or scissors and their hands to remove crumbling insulation from heating pipes in the multistory Prince Street building where the garment company and other businesses were located.

The workers had nothing more than handkerchiefs and pieces of cloth to cover their faces as they pulled more than 2,000 linear feet of aging asbestos from pipes over several days that December.

And, as usual, it's immigrant workers who face the worst

For years, immigrant workers appear to have borne the brunt of illegal asbestos removal. In Guatemala, Equador and Poland, there are many repatriated migrants feeling the effects of asbestosis they actually contracted in the United States, said Lowell Peterson, a Manhattan attorney who represents Local 78 of the Asbestos, Lead and Hazardous Waste Laborers union.

The owners of the business, Marvin and Isaac Rubenstein, were convicted in October 2002 and went to prison ten days ago.

Labels: Asbestos

New Jersey Agrees to Voluntary Industry Chem Plant Security Standards

In a move that is upsetting environmentalists, community activists and Senator Jon Corzine (NJ), New Jersey Governor James McGreevey has apparently agreed to an arrangement with the American Chemistry Council, the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association and the Chemistry Council of New Jersey that would require chemical companies to follow a set of security guidelines written by the American Chemistry Council, or be subject to stricter, unspecified state regulations.

Corzine, who has pushed unsuccessfully for national plant-security standards amid the terrorism fears of the past two years, has said McGreevey's policy would set a bad example for the rest of the nation.

"Securing New Jersey's chemical plants is too important to be left to the industry's voluntary efforts," Corzine's spokesman, Darius Goore, said in a statement yesterday. "Senator Corzine will continue to urge (Department of Environmental Protection) Commissioner (Bradley) Campbell to establish the same kind of strong requirements he is working for on the federal level."

Rick Engler of the Work-Environment Council was upset that the agreement was made behind closed doors. “’I'm a little reluctant to comment until I see a copy of it,’ Engler said. ‘But based on past experience, deals between industry and government that have had no public participation are not very good for the public.’

As reported previously in Confined Space, (here and here) Senator Corzine has introduced a bill that would call for strict security standards and “inherently safer production” that would substitute safer materials and processes for more hazardous ones. Corzines’ bill has fallen victim to a multimillion dollar campaign by the American Chemistry Council. The Bush administration is favoring a bill sponsored by Senator Jame Infhofe (R-OK) that that would require chemical companies to simply submit vulnerability or security-improvement plans to Homeland Security, but not require companies to consider using alternatives to current chemicals and practices.”

Labels: Chemical Plant Security

Green-Collar Workers: Does Just Transition Mean the End of Job Blackmail?

Does tackling global warming mean petrochemical industry workers will lose their jobs? The fight between jobs and the environment is at least as old as the environmental movement, and probably as old as the industrial revolution.

Jim Young writes about a movement that is coming up with a solution to this never-ending debate in an article in Sierra Magazine: "Just Transition"

That conversation has been going on for some time–and has led to a bold plan to reconcile environmentalists with workers who are frightened and angry at the prospect of job loss. Called Just Transition, it advocates financial support, health care, and retraining for employees displaced by environmental regulation, and would be funded by a tax on pollution. One recent transition proposal calls for two years of full, unconditional wage replacement and up to four years of full-time training or educational benefits, stipends for another two years for those who remain in training, health insurance, and retirement contributions

And it's not pie in the sky. Not only are there historical precidents in the GI Bill of Rights and a fund established in the 1950s in the European Coal and Steel Community, but environmentalists and unionists are working together today to make Just Transition a reality:

Just Transition emerged in its latest version from the Blue/Green Working Group, which includes the United Steelworkers of America, District 11; the Service Employees International Union; and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE!). It is led on the environmental side by the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists. They have been building on an idea that originated with the late Tony Mazzocchi, the visionary leader of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union. In 1973, Mazzocchi enlisted support from environmentalists to help OCAW wage a successful strike–he called it "the first environmental strike"–over health and safety issues at Shell refineries in four states. "We were working with this sh--," Mazzocchi once explained, "but we didn’t even know its name."

The principle is simple, according to Les Leopold, director of the Labor Institute in New York City. Leopold calls for a "Superfund for Workers:"

"The basis for Just Transition is the simple principle of equity. We ask that any worker who loses his or her job during a sunsetting transition suffer no net loss of income. No toxic-related worker should be asked to pay a disproportionate tax–in the form of losing his or her job–to achieve the goals of sunsetting. Instead these costs should be fairly distributed across society." Leopold also lamented unions that were "allowing corporations to convince workers that environmental protection can only cause job loss and that there is simply no alternative path."

In fact, say Just Transition backers, environmental protections can produce job gains

In the United States, some persuasive new evidence discredits the old jobs/environment split. For example, a study initiated by the Blue/Green Working Group found that a program with a carbon tax could curtail U.S. release of CO2 by 27 percent by 2010 and 50 percent by 2020. Combined with money recycled through reduced taxes on wages and growth in new energy technologies, the program could create 1.4 million jobs in 20 years, while substantially reducing reliance on imported oil.

All the good arguments in the world won't make it an easy fight when workers are faced with losing their jobs and communities losing their industries. But ultimately, is there a choice?

Read the whole article.

Ergonomics: Living in the Past

When I read this editorial in the Detroit News today, I had to look at the date to make sure I hadn't stumbled across an old article:

Workplace injuries caused by repetitive activities like typing or assembling parts have left many workers in pain, and many employers bearing the painful costs of disability claims.

And yet the science about what causes the injuries and how they can be avoided remains inexact.

Still, a group of scientists wants the Bush administration to plunge ahead with imposing stiff safety standards. The administration proposes additional study of the plan.

Given the huge cost of implementing the new standards, more study to make sure they’ll actually work is reasonable.

The next sentence made perfectly clear why someone dug an old article out of the files:

The scientists recently boycotted a conference on repetitive motion injuries convened by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They argue that a copious body of work already exists on the subject, and that instead of wasting time and money on another conference, the agency should adopt their recommended regulations.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Read the entire column if you miss that feeling of ~~nausea~~ nostalgia.

Not to be left sputtering impotently in my beard (if I had one), I took advantage of their offer to Comment on This Story:

Regarding your editorial on ergonomic regulations and "sound science." Thank you for saving my fingers from the stress of repeated clicking by reprinting the propaganda of the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the anti-worker National Coalition on Ergonomics.

The facts, however, are that the National Academy of Sciences study that you misquoted looked at hundreds of authoritative scientific studies and concluded that working conditions cause musculoskeletal disorders and that ergonomic interventions can prevent them. The fact is that there is more good science on ergonomics than almost any other workplace hazard. And if you don't believe the science, go to any nursing home or chicken processing plant and ask workers about their backs and their wrists and their shoulders. Or better yet, find the people that used to work there, but are not longer able to because their disabled. It shouldn't be hard to find them. Over a million and a half workers lose time from musculoskeletal disorders every year

So please stop repeating the propaganda and start looking at the science and at the facts. It's the least you owe your readers.

That'll make 'em think twice.

You too can Comment on the Story, but I wouldn't rush. Given the obvious source of this column, I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing facsimiles sprouting up all over the country.

Maybe we should be writing our own instead of commenting on theirs.

Labels: Ergonomics

19 Workers -- Mostly Immigrants -- Drown Trapped by Inrushing Tides

In one of the worst workplace disasters in modern British history, 19 mostly immigrant Chinese workers drowned when they were trapped by a rampaging night tide while picking cockles in Morecambe Bay, Great Britain. According to Tony Woodley, general secretary of the British Transport and General Workers' Union,

Morecambe Bay's famously ferocious tide may be a force of nature, but human beings bear the responsibility for yesterday's deaths of 19 Chinese workers picking cockles. "Drowning" will be the word on their death certificate, but it is cowboy capitalism that has caused this dreadful human tragedy.

The situation sounds very similar to the plight of many immigrant workers in this country who work, get hurt and die in high numbers doing dangerous work that most native Americans wouldn't put up with

The cockle pickers involved form part of the growing army of workers employed in a twilight world propping up profit levels across the British economy. The rightwing response can be predicted. They will ask why these workers were in the country, not why they were working - almost certainly for very little - in such dangerous circumstances, and for whom.

This is not a migration issue. It is an exploitation issue. As the local Labour MP in Morecambe said yesterday: "The cockles are worth a great deal of money, but those poor people who lost their lives were making very little of that."

The workers were working unregulated "gangmasters." According to Hazards Magazine,

Successive governments have rejected union calls to regulate the gangmasters. Instead, clampdowns like "Operation Gangmaster" in the mid-1990s have resulted in little action against the gangmasters. Instead, most enforcement action has hurt the exploited workforce, targeting benefit fraud or immigration offences.

Hazards reports that the ganmasters were deregulated in the 1990's in favor of "weak voluntary codes that leave gang workers at risk of injury, excessive hours, low pay and intimidation. It also means that the government and the authorities cannot keep track of gangmasters' activities. " The Labour government was wary of increasing the regulatory burden on business, dangerous reasoning that sounds frighteningly familiar to those of us on this side of the Atlantic.

More here.

Book Reviews: The Neverending Tragedy of Asbestos

I've written several times of journalist Andrew Schneider's stories about the asbestos contamination of Libby, Montana, as well as areas, such as St. Louis, where the vermiculite from Libby ended up.

Schneider has just written a book, An Air That Kills, about the tragedy of Libby. NYCOSH's Jonathan Bennet has written a review

An Air That Kills begins with an eyewitness account of what happened in Libby, documenting how Grace suppressed the knowledge that the vermiculite from its mine was mixed with asbestos, which was so toxic that it not only poisoned Grace employees, but also people whose only connection to the mine was to live in the vicinity. Grace was able to get away with its deception for decades, in part because of the complicity of the local establishment, including the town's doctors and its hospital, and in part because asbestos-related disease develops decades after exposure, and often is not recognized for what it is.

But Libby's epidemic is not confined to a corner of Montana. Hundreds of townspeople are only the first wave of the afflicted. The second wave is already well under way, and its victims, who, by Grace's own very conservative estimate, are likely to number 30,000, have never been to Libby.

But as Bennet says, the stuggle continues beyond Libby

The same forces of greed, carelessness and indifference that victimized Libby are still at work in Congress, in the regulatory agencies, and the boardrooms, striving to prevent corporate or official accountability and to maximize profits. The ongoing cleanup of Libby and the townspeople's success in winning some medical care and compensation represents an important victory for one group of victims. But An Air That Kills reveals that uncontrolled exposure to asbestos from Libby and elsewhere is a daily reality for millions of Americans.

Is it possible that with so many people at risk, a groundswell could develop to ban asbestos, to control exposure to what is already in place, and to ensure that those who are sick will be fairly compensated? The need is clear, but so is the power of those with another agenda.

And another Seattle Post Intelligencer review here:

When the boss says, "Asbestos, asbestos, all asbestos," we know exactly what we're meant to feel. Could there be a more sinister term in this Chemical Age? Not only are most of us aware of asbestos and its toxic qualities, but we also believe it has been banned, regulated and cleaned up by cadres of haz-mat Martians from the Environmental Protection Agency and armies of Superfund contractors.

As this devastating book proves beyond a microfiber of a doubt, we are dead wrong. We don't have a clue how dangerous asbestos really is, and asbestos is neither banned nor reliably regulated -- and is far, far from being cleaned up.

Read the reviews. Read the book.

Labels: Asbestos

The Weekly Toll

Worker Asphyxiated in Tanker Truck

An investigation is under way in the death of a 23-year-old Battle Ground, WA man who was killed in an industrial accident in Portland.

Curtis "Curt" Claflin had been working inside a truck tanker at Beall Transport Equipment Co. in Portland on Wednesday when co-workers found him unconscious. He later was pronounced dead at the scene, the victim of asphyxiation, according to the Multnomah County Medical Examiner.

"The air ran out," said his mother, Pam Claflin of Battle Ground. "We don't know exactly how or why."

Curt Claflin's job at Beall was to clean, repair and inspect truck tankers, his mother said. She did not know whether he was wearing a breathing apparatus or whether someone had been watching while he was inside the tank.

Worker Killed at Landfill

WHITE TWP. NJ -- The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration will investigate the death of a tractor-trailer driver Wednesday at the Warren County landfill.

Slobodan Barbulovic, 39, of Glendale, N.Y., was attempting to unhook a tarp from his trailer as the rig was stopped on the landfill weigh station when the 2:39 p.m. incident occurred, state police said.

The tractor-trailer rolled forward and Barbulovic apparently lost his footing, slipped and was crushed beneath the tires, state police said.

Hardhat dies in 8th floor fall

A construction worker died yesterday after he fell from the eighth-floor window of a new apartment building in the Bronx, police said.

Jose Viscano of Queens was removing debris from the top floor of 1240 Washington Ave., in Morrisania, when he apparently slipped about 9 a.m., said Ilyse Fink, a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings.

City building inspectors issued Joy Construction Corp. a violation for failing to install guardrails on several windows on the eighth floor and a safety railing on a sixth-floor setback, Fink said.

Man killed in machine

TOWNSEND, MA -- A 25-year-old father of three died Saturday after he got stuck in an injection molding machine at his job at Sterilite Corp.

Paramedics pronounced Sixto Otero, of 21 Francis St., Fitchburg, dead after they arrived at the Main Street plastics company at about 11:30 a.m.

"Initial investigation and statements from witnesses indicate that Mr. Otero became lodged in the molding machine while attempting to dislodge an obstruction from the machine," Townsend Police Chief Erving M. Marshall Jr. wrote in a press release.

(Bad couple of weeks for machinery deaths. Check out these two here and here.)

Two men killed at Murrieta construction site

MURRIETA, CA ---- Two men died Thursday morning when they were electrocuted at a construction site in Murrieta, authorities said.

Daniel Maxwell, 18, of Perris and Mike Pillow, 41, of Hemet were pronounced dead at the scene of the industrial accident, according to the Riverside County coroner's office.

"(Maxwell) was apparently trying to swing the crane around to pick up a hydraulic cylinder" to be used in repairing the earthmover, Whisenand said.

"It looks like he may have raised the crane too high and the crane hit some power lines," the chief said.

A charge arched back through the crane and energized the ground, electrocuting the two men ---- both of whom died instantly, Whisenand said.

Interestingly, this incident comes at almost the same time that OSHA completes and investigation of a simlar incident that occurred three months ago:

ALLENTOWN, PA-February 4, 2004 — A three-month federal investigation has concluded that a crane accident that killed three men in Telford in Bucks County last summer was caused by human error.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration report says 68-year-old crane operator Robert Forepaugh of Bensalem Township failed to maintain a ten-foot clearance from overhead electric lines and made contact with charged wires, energizing the crane.

Two co-workers died trying to save Forepaugh, who was hurled from the cab in the accident August 21st at JDM Materials Company. Forepaugh's nephew, 41-year-old George Frederick of Philadelphia, began administering CPR, but another worker, 29-year-old Daniel Evans of Philadelphia, touched the still-electrified crane, sending a deadly jolt through all three men.

Large Concrete Slab Fatally Crushes Fla. Construction Worker

PERDIDO KEY, Fla. -- A construction worker died Thursday when a large concrete slab was accidentally lowered onto his head by a crane.

Frank Scott, 47, of Mobile, Ala., was bending underneath the slab when a foreman radioed the crane operator to lower the concrete about 2 1/2 feet to the ground, according to the Escambia County Sheriff's Office. More here.

Mine Worker Killed

Kentucky has lost its first miner of 2004. State officials say a worker died after a 21-foot fall at a Leslie County mine Tuesday.

A spokeswoman with the state Department of Mines and Minerals says James Asher was attempting to tear down a metal building structure on the surface area of an underground mine around 4:30 p.m. when he fell from a bucket truck. More here.

Worker Dies In Rail Car Accident

PLANT CITY, FL - An employee at the Gerdau Ameristeel plant at 4006 Paul Buchman Highway was killed shortly after 6 a.m. Tuesday in an accident involving a rail car.
Brian C. Gilbert, 30, of 18644 Hamilton Road, Dade City, was helping to back in railroad cars at the plant when the accident occurred, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said.

A co-worker discovered Gilbert under a railroad car with his arm severed, the sheriff's report states.

According to the report, Gilbert went in to cardiac arrest and, despite the efforts of fire rescue workers, died at the scene.

Valve Explosion Kills Power Plant Worker

Bill Bowers advised, "Just be." He died Friday after a valve exploded Thursday at Progress Energy Florida's Crystal River complex.

At Progress Energy Florida's Crystal River complex, Bowers was a plant operator, and everybody liked him.

So news of the accident that led to his death Friday hit hard.

He had been opening a valve on a high-pressure pump in a coal-burning plant about 8 p.m. Thursday. The valve exploded, workers said.

Bowers, 49, was airlifted to Tampa General Hospital.

His skull was fractured, his brain was bleeding and his right arm was almost severed, according to Bowers' "life partner" of almost six years, Cathleen Foley, 54. She said head trauma from the explosion caused his death.

Worker crushed by cement truck

A worker was killed when a cement truck ran over him in the Gaslamp District yesterday, police said.

The accident happened shortly before 9 a.m. on Ninth Avenue just south of J Street, San Diego police said. The victim, a 60-year-old man from Los Angeles County, died instantly. His name wasn't immediately released.

Worker pinned between forklifts in A.C.

ATLANTIC CITY - -- A Pleasantville woman suffered a possible broken pelvis Friday when she became pinned between two forklifts while helping remove equipment from the Convention Center after the Pool and Spa Show.

Victim Annabelle Ross, 61, a member of Teamsters Local 331, was operating one of the forklifts. She became caught in the rear wheels of one the forklifts and was pushed into the other's wheels, becoming briefly trapped before the machinery was moved off her, police said.

Rail car accident kills worker at Westside mill

A grain mill worker was killed Wednesday morning when a rail car pinned him against a wall on the Westside, officials said.

Dwight A. Holderman, 44, of Fishers, was working with a 200,000-pound rail car, which left the tracks at Cargill Dry Corn Ingredients, 1730 W. Michigan St., about 11:30 a.m., police said.

Holderman died at the scene. Police said a crane was summoned from Ohio to move the rail car so the man's body could be freed. More here.

Kiewit employee dies after 25-foot fall from bridge

Pipefitter's aide's harness was not hooked up

An employee at Kiewit Offshore Services Ltd. died Monday night after falling 25 feet from a piece of a bridge he was working on, the company's president said.

Damon Tucker, 20, of Ingleside, was working as a pipefitter's helper shortly after 7 p.m. Monday when he fell from the bridge structure. Police responded to the call at 7:23 p.m. and found Tucker dead at the scene.

"It looks like it was an accident," San Patricio County Sheriff Leroy Moody said.

Tucker was wearing a safety harness before he fell, but he was not hooked up, Moody said.

Trucker found in tanker, dies

EAST LIVERPOOL, IN — A truck driver found in the bottom of his tanker at VonRoll/WTI Monday afternoon has died, according to company officials, who would not release the driver’s name.

According to a release from VonRoll, a company employee was unloading a tanker truck containing lime slurry just after 2 p.m. when he found the driver in the bottom of the tank, which still contained some of the product.

The employee who entered the tank to remove the driver also was taken to the hospital in a second ambulance, both of which were en route to the hospital by 2:30 p.m., according to VonRoll officials.

Spokesman Raymond Wayne said he did not know how the driver ended up in the tanker, and said that is one of the aspects of a comprehensive investigation that is under way. More here.

State to probe Davenport (IA) construction worker death

A Honduran immigrant who died at a Davenport construction site last week may not have been wearing a hard hat, contrary to a policy of the general contractor that required him to have one, police and a company official said.

While co-workers who were on the site when Santiago Cano, 43, fell to his death Friday say he was wearing the protective headgear, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and police did not see it and could find no evidence of it when they retrieved his body and looked through his personal belongings at the hospital, according to a police report.

Cano fell 12 feet onto his head, breaking his neck and his right arm at the wrist in the mid-morning accident, according to police. He was pronounced dead after being taken to Genesis Medical Center-East Campus.

Cano was the third person to die in an industrial accident in the Iowa Quad-Cities since mid-December.

Michael W. Dudley, 39, of East Moline, died Dec. 15 after getting caught on a conveyor belt at LeClaire Manufacturing in Bettendorf. Lawrence Erbst, 37, of Davenport, was found dead Dec.19 inside a hopper at Holland International Manufacturing of Brave Foundries LLC., Davenport.

Labels: Weekly Toll

Wal-Mart Nation World

This makes you stop and think:

As capital scours the globe for cheaper and more malleable workers, and as poor countries seek multinational companies to provide jobs, lift production and open export markets, Wal-Mart and China have forged themselves into the ultimate joint venture, their symbiosis influencing the terms of labor and consumption the world over.

With sales of more than $245 billion a year, Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the United States, still the ultimate consumer market. China is the most populous country, with 1.3 billion people, most still poor enough to willingly move hundreds of miles from home for jobs that would be shunned by anyone with better prospects. The Communist Party government has become perhaps the world's greatest facilitator of capitalist production, beckoning multinational giants with tax-free zones and harsh punishment for anyone with designs on organizing a labor movement.

More than 80 percent of the 6,000 factories in Wal-Mart's worldwide database of suppliers are in China. Wal-Mart estimates it spent $15 billion on Chinese-made products last year, accounting for nearly one-eighth of all Chinese exports to the United States. If the company that Sam Walton built with his "Made in America" ad campaign were itself a separate nation, it would rank as China's fifth-largest export market, ahead of Germany and Britain.

So why are we bothering negotiating "free" or "fair" trade agreements with other counties when we could just travel to Arkansas and negotiate with Wal-Mart?

And what's so attractive about China?

For Wal-Mart and other multinational companies doing business in China, a stable currency, political peace and a compliant workforce are nearly as important as low costs.

"There might be places in other parts of the world where you can buy cheaper, but can you get [the product] on the ship?" Tsuei said. "If we have to look at a country that's not politically stable, you might not get your order on time. If you deal in a country where the currency fluctuates, everyday there is a lot of risk. China happens to have the right mix."

Labor activists in China and abroad say that mix includes the ruling party's ban on independent trade unions -- workers may join only the party-run union -- as well as courts and regulatory agencies controlled by local party officials who are often willing to overlook labor violations to appease businesses that can be milked for taxes, fees and bribes.

The activists argue that as Wal-Mart pits suppliers against one another and squeezes them for the lowest price, the workers suffer.

"Wal-Mart pressures the factory to cut its price, and the factory responds with longer hours or lower pay," said a Chinese labor official, who declined to be named for fear of punishment. "And the workers have no options."

But Wal-Mart audits its suppliers, doesn't it?

Ah yes, but things are often not what they seem....

Wal-Mart portrays itself as a force for good in China. The company says it enforces labor standards for its suppliers and insists that they comply with Chinese law.

"We look at safety. We look at health, and this comes with a cost. We ensure people get paid above minimum wage. They have to have fire extinguishers, fire exits," Tsuei said. "There are people out there who cannot have those things and offer a lower price. We do not do business with those people."

Wal-Mart employs 100 auditors who annually inspect every supplier's factory. Last year, the company suspended deals with about 400 suppliers, primarily for exceeding limits on overtime, Tsuei said. Another 72 factories were blacklisted permanently last year, he said, almost all for employing children under China's legal working age of 16.

But Wal-Mart does not conduct regular inspections of smaller factories that sell goods to the company through middlemen. Nor does it inspect all its suppliers' subcontractors or the Chinese manufacturing operations of U.S. suppliers such as Mattel Inc. and Dell Inc.

"The inspection system is not effective," said Li Qiang, a labor organizer who has been in contact with workers at more than a dozen factories that supply Wal-Mart, and who worked in one himself before leaving China three years ago. "The factories are usually notified in advance, and they often prepare by cleaning up, creating fake time sheets and briefing workers on what to say."

Li said these factories often require employees to work as many as 80 hours per week during the busy season for $75 to $110 per month, violating Chinese labor laws. If Wal-Mart really wanted to monitor conditions among its suppliers, Li said, it could do so with surprise visits, longer inspections and independent auditors. "But if they did that, prices would definitely go up," he said.

Sing Along: "Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Program Activities"

Who woulda thought you could make a toe-tapping song out of "Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Program Activities?"

Bill Maher, that's who.

Click here if you don't believe me. You won't be sorry. Thanks to Calpundit for the tip.

Update: Oops, the link expired. Too bad. Here are the words of the first stanza:

Hi my name is Koby Teeth, and when I first heard President Bush say those words, "Weapons of mass destruction related program activities and significant amounts of equipment," it made my blood boil. So I wrote this song...

Well Old Lady Liberty won't stand idly by
While you piss on her leg and spit in her eye,
So let the word travel forth from Baghdad to Tikrit,
We got an ice-cold mug of whup-ass with a chaser of shit,
I'm pissed off about those damn "related program activities"
(and significant amounts of equipment!)

Shocking Discovery: Water Is Wet!

Oh, yeah, and Bush Favors Business

Now sit down, this may come as a shock to you (who have been hiding under your beds with your eyes closed and your ears plugged for the past three years), but it turns out, according to a Washington Post "analysis" by Thomas Edsall, "In Bush's Policies, Business Wins."

I know this is truly hard to believe, as is the following observation: "In many areas, the Bush administration is more in sync with corporate America than were the Clinton administration and earlier Democratic presidencies."

Edsall starts with Bush's immigration proposal noting that the

unquestioned beneficiaries are U.S. employers. If the proposal becomes law, they will have a vastly enlarged pool of prospective workers, many willing to perform the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks for low pay....The immigration proposal fits a broader pattern encompassing Bush's tax legislation, regulatory decisions, labor policies and economic strategies

More shocking is the fact that Edsall is apparently not the only one who shares this crazy opinion:

"Since 1932, we have not had a president who has been more closely allied with business and more sympathetic to large and powerful corporations," said Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley, a specialist in the American presidency.

"It's hard to think of anyone [in the 20th century] who has been more connected to the corporate world than maybe Herbert Hoover" in the 20th and 21st centuries, said Robert Dallek, professor emeritus at Boston University and a prominent presidential biographer.

Even the Chamber of Commerce agrees:

On "the major areas of concern, I don't think there is much separation at all," said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs of the Chamber of Commerce. "Some shading, but, largely speaking, we are on the same page."

The president and the Chamber of Commerce are in harmony on several issues as well, including pay regulations that could exclude thousands of workers from overtime benefits, and Medicare legislation backed by the pharmaceutical and health industries.

One of the administration's most significant domestic achievements -- enactment of three tax cuts -- was boosted by massive lobbying efforts from business coalitions that overcame alliances of labor, civil rights, women's groups and other liberal interest groups.

And while we're at it, lets not forget the repeal of OSHA's ergonomics regulation, and subsequent suppression of recordkeeping for musculoskeletal disorders, the withdrawal of OSHA's tuberculosis proposal, cessation of OSHA's nursing home initiative, OSHA's refusal to initiate the regulatory process for reactive chemicals, despite a recommendation by the Chemical Safety Board, opposition to the European union's attempt to effectively control the safety of chemicals, opposition to effective regulations that would address chemical plant security, gutting of clean air rules, allowing private contractors to write nuclear weapons plants’ safety rules, attacking the scientific underpinnings of any future worker or environmental protectins, opposition to extending unemployment benefits, pushing for social security privatization, pushing an anti-worker, anti-family bankruptcy bill as well as tort "reform" legislation that would reduce people's right to sue corporations for unhealthy products, loosening rules on ownership of multiple media outlets, privatizing federal government jobs, pushing an energy bill that favors Halliburton, polluters and is so full of pork that even some Republicans couldn't stomach it. I could (and often do) go on and on, but you get the idea.

Of course, the Administration's pro-business proclivities haven't exactly been a secret, even from the semi-mainstream press. Bill Moyers has certainly noted it, as has David Broder and previous Washington Post articles. It fact, it's gotten so obvious that even the non-Howard Dean presidential candidates have caught on. Who's next? Hopefully, a good chunk of the 47% of the population that still finds some reason to support the man living in the White House.

Maybe not that it's become a "fact" that the administration of George II favors business, journalists should start writing something like this in every article: "President George W. Bush, whose policies consistently favor small business, announced today that blah blah blah blah...." Or, "On the agenda of this nation's lawmakers this week will be George Bush's pro-business [energy, tax, labor, trade, immigration, environment, etc., etc.] agenda.

Labels: Ergonomics

This is a bit more like it: $475,000 Fine For Workers' Deaths

"When employees die because employers have not complied with worker safety laws, it's more than just an accident, it's a crime."

So said Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Holtzman as he handed down a $475,000 crminal penalty on Spectrum, a Petaluma, CA, health products company where two workers died in a 2002 industrial accident. Spectrum admitted to willfully violating the law.

Javier Del Rio, 42, and Francisco Estrella Galvan, 24, were asphyxiated while cleaning a 12-foot tall steel tank used to filter flax seed oil that Spectrum uses in a variety of organic food and health products. The tank had been filled with argon gas, which displaces oxygen.

Immediately after the April 25, 2002, accident, and again on Wednesday, Spectrum officials said they had the right training and equipment in place and expressed anguish over the deaths.

This is an interesting statement, considering Spectrum "admitted to willfully violating the law." And considering that

it's believed Galvan tried to rescue Del Rio after the older man fell unconscious after entering the tank. Petaluma police and Cal-OSHA investigators found the men lacked safety harnesses, oxygen monitors and breathing apparatus, all required under state regulations governing confined spaces, such as the tanks.

And how were they "trained" to test for oxygen deficiency? Throw a lighted match into the tank. I guess if it went out, there was no oxygen. This was probably a good way to tell if a confined space contained oxygen -- 100 years ago.

Spectrum was charged with two felonies, one count of violating the confined space law for each of the men. The fine was a result of a settlement where Spectrum agreed to pay over $200,000 to worker safety and confined space training programs at the Petaluma Police and Fire departments.

California, according to the NY Times series, When Workers Die, is a state that actively pursues criminal prosecutions against companies that kill workers.

State law changed in 2000, increasing potential penalties for workplace safety violations resulting in deaths from $75,000 to $1.5 million. The law also increased the exposure to criminal liability of a company and its officers

"Outrageous" Strikers in L.A? Give Me A Break!

The Mad Prophet, (a.k.a. C Bryan Lavigne) is one of the few bloggers who gets more outraged at absurd, right-wing, anti-worker crap than I do. Read this about an L.A. Times column whose writers whine about "coercive" unions (a.k.a. striking grocery store workers in L.A.) violating employers' and workers' rights

Chemical Safety Board Blasts OSHA

Chem Board Found To Be One of Few Government Agencies Not Comatose

Calling OSHA's inaction "unacceptable," the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) today criticized the agency for not taking action on reactive chemical hazards despite hundreds of incidents, some catastrophic, that have killed more than 100 workers over the past decade. The CSB recommended in September 2002 that OSHA revise its Process Safety Standard (PSM) to include reactive chemicals. In November 2003, OSHA responded that it had not yet decided whether to revise the PSM standard because no consensus on a best approach had emerged.

According to the CSB press release

In a letter to John Henshaw, Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, CSB Chairman Carolyn Merritt said the Board voted unanimously on Feb. 2, 2004, to designate OSHA's response as "Open -- Unacceptable Response." By designating the recommendations "open," the Board indicated it will continue to seek action from OSHA on the requested actions. Chairman Merritt said the Board was "disappointed" that OSHA had given no indication when it might make a decision on moving forward to extend coverage of reactives.

In the letter to Secretary Henshaw, Chairman Merritt wrote, "While the Board commends OSHA on increased outreach efforts designed "to heighten awareness of hazards associated with reactivity," Board members continue to believe that the evidence compiled by the CSB"s investigation strongly indicates that a revision of the standard is necessary."

The Board voted in Oct. 2002 to make the recommendation to OSHA, which is required by law to formally respond to the CSB. The recommendation followed the release of a two-year CSB hazard investigation entitled "Improving Reactive Chemical Management." The study called reactive chemical accidents a "significant chemical safety problem" that are responsible for continuing deaths, injuries and environmental property damage nationwide. The study focused on 167 serious accidents over 20 years, which caused 108 fatalities and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage.

Reactive hazards exist when a single chemical or a mixture has the potential to undergo a violent, uncontrolled reaction when improperly processed or combined. The chemical reactions can release large quantities of heat, energy and gases, causing fires, explosions or toxic emissions. Reactive chemicals and mixtures often appear harmless until exposed to specific processing or storage conditions, such as elevated temperature.

The Board is currently composed of three appointees of President Bush, and one holdover from the Clinton Administration. Board Member Gerald Poje, a Clinton appointee, noted that New Jersey had recently issued a reactives regulation and praised the state for showing the leadership instead of waiting for a consensus was achieved.

Five unions originally petitioned OSHA for a revised PSM standard in 1995 following an explosion and fire that year that claimed five lives at a Lodi, New Jersey plant. Under the Clinton Administration, OSHA had planned to issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to collect additional information on reactive chemical hazards as a first step toward revising the standard, but the Bush Administration removed it from the regulatory agenda in December 2001. Last June, a group of labor unions and environmental organizations again petitioned OSHA to address reactive hazards in the PSM standard.

OSHA's administrator, John Henshaw, responded to the Board's letter stating

"Our goal is to be sure that workers are safe and healthy and we will continue to work with chemical safety stakeholders to prevent incidents in the future."

Since the Boards' report was released in 2002, OSHA has initiated a number of educational efforts to educate the chemical industry about reactive hazards and has participated in roundtable discussions with industry, labor and environmentalists in an effort to reach a consensus. CSB Board Chairman Merritt pointed out, however, that her years in industry showed that regulations were much more effective in changing behavior than voluntary measures.

The Board's letter stated that

Board members continue to believe that the evidence compiled by the CSB's investigation strongly indicates that a revision of the standard is necessary. Board members do not feel that a consensus on the best approach should be a condition for deciding the baseline question of whether a revision of the PSM standard is necessary. There is certainly no lack of ideas or opinions concerning how the problem can be solved. OSHA has under its authority ample means to gather the information and advice needed to determine how best to approach revision of this standard. These include an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, development of a proposed rule, as well as comments, public hearings and post hearing comments on that proposal.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the Board's decision

a serious indictment of the Bush Administration's dismal worker safety and health record. It shows that even in the case of deadly hazards the Bush Administration sides with giant corporations and refuses to act to protect workers....Putting corporate interests over worker safety is leaving workers in serious danger. The Bush Administration should act now to regulate reactive chemicals before more workers' lives are lost.

Labels: Chemical Safety Board

Hey Harry, Get Out the Dead Worker Template Again

Here's another article about the sewer worker, Jacob Britt Anderson, who was crushed to death earlier this week when the walls of an 18 foot deep trench collapsed on top of him. This article left me rather upset, and National COSH Coordinator Tom O'Connor captured my feelings in a comment:

I read this news article too and what most struck me about it was that the news story contained no question as to what the hell the employer (who was right there operating the backhoe) was doing sending the guy into an unprotected 18 foot trench. Nor did it question the owner's putting the blame on the victim who he claimed wasn't supposed to go beyond the safety area. Instead, the article focused entirely on what a swell job the firefighters did responding and how the local people helped out by giving them coffee.

To which I say "amen."

I've thought about this before, but I'm thinking it would be nice to set up a training program for journalists, especially local journalists who get assigned to cover stories like this. Maybe encourage them to do a bit of research into regulations and best practices, into the background of the company. Have they ever been cited by OSHA? Maybe even talk to some of the workers to see if this the conditions that killed their co-worker was unusual, or whether they risk their lives every day. Are they free to complain about the safety of their jobs and suggest improvements without being retaliated against? Any recent injuries or close calls? Do workers get any training? If so, what do they learn? Are they free to report injuries or illnesses?

Right now, it seems that covering workplace fatalities is one step above (or maybe the same step) as writing obituaries. They all sound basically the same:

(Name) or "An unidentified worker" (age __) was killed today when a (x foot deep) trench collapsed on top of him. The worker was dead when rescue personnel arrived.

(Name), owner of (company) said he couldn't be more sad about the death of (name). "My workers are like family to me. This is just a terrible loss, and terrible shock." He added that he couldn't figure out for the life of him how this could have happened. (Supervisor) said that (dead worker) was told not to go down into that trench. "I don't know what made him go down there," (supervisor) said.

(Mayor's name) praised the local fire and rescue department for their swift response. "It's just too bad that they were too late." He added, however, that during his administration, the fire and rescue department was able to purchase (name of equipment) and (name of equipment) which it has utilized in several other local trench tragedies this year.

(Dead Worker) had (number) children. His co-workers considered him to be (choose adjective: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean or reverent). "He was the greatest, most loving guy," said (co-worker). "We're really going to miss him."

The police department has ruled the death an accident. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating to determine whether or not federal regulations were violated.

Father and Son Story

Anyone who thinks that we don't need regulations or stiff criminal penalties for workplace crimes or that this type of thing doesn't happen in the 21st century in the U.S.A. needs to cut out this article and put it on the refrigerator.

Over a decade, Alexander Salvagno and his father, Raul, operated one of the state's largest asbestos removal firms, working on 2,000 projects from Buffalo to Long Island, often with a specific lab that vouched for their results.

Now, federal prosecutors say their work was the heart of a conspiracy in which they ordered crews to crudely rip asbestos from walls while the lab faked air tests, putting potentially thousands of people at risk of disease and death.

In what prosecutors say is the largest federal prosecution of its kind, the Salvagnos are charged with racketeering - including running a criminal enterprise - and conspiracy to violate the federal Clean Air Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act. An indictment alleges that the Salvagnos, who owned AAR Contractors of Latham, N.Y., in Albany County, did not bother with even minimal precautions that would keep toxic asbestos fibers out of the air.

The indictment charges that Alexander Salvagno was the secret and illegal owner of the lab it often worked with, and that it faked tens of thousands of air samples and test results. The buildings included elementary schools and private homes. Large manufacturers, a hospital, bank, convent and even the New York State Department of Labor Building - which houses the Office of Asbestos Control - are among the 39 buildings specified in the indictment.

According to testimony by former employees and investigators in the trial, which began in November, as many as 1,555 buildings from that 10-year period are suspect, because the asbestos removal firm and the laboratory collaborated. The Salvagnos, who could face lengthy prison terms, earned millions in the scheme, according to the court documents.

Also note that the penalties and jail terms the men face come result from violating EPA, not OSHA regulations.

Labels: Asbestos, Criminal Prosecution

DC Water Agency Manager Fired for Revealing Lead Threat

Last week the Washington D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) revealed that it had known since 2002 that thousands of D.C. residents were drinking water that contained lead levels far above EPA standards.

Now it has been revealed that WASA fired a manager who had warned the agency and EPA of the lead contamination.

The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority fired a high-ranking manager last year who had repeatedly warned top agency officials and federal authorities of lead contamination in the city's tap water before tests last summer revealed that the lead exceeded federal limits in thousands of homes.

Seema S. Bhat was WASA's water quality manager from 1999 until she was fired in March after her bosses decided that she had too often reported lead problems directly to the Environmental Protection Agency. A federal investigator who reviewed the matter last summer ruled that Bhat was improperly terminated and ordered WASA to rehire her and pay her damages. WASA has appealed and the case is in litigation.

In an interview yesterday, Bhat and her attorney, Brian J. Schwartz, said WASA officials constantly reprimanded her for raising the issue of lead contamination with the EPA -- even after it was clear that the city would exceed a federal guideline.

Bhat said she was keeping the EPA informed because she wanted WASA to launch an aggressive campaign to replace lead service lines and inform the public of the problems. Instead, she said, her superiors told her to be more patient and enrolled her in a training course designed to teach her to respect the chain of command.

"I had to deal against the whole bureaucracy," said Bhat, 57, who lives in Columbia. "I was all alone."

Companies Stand To Save Billions On Asbestos Victims Bill

While the U.S. Continues to Import and Use the Deadly Material

Think asbestos exposure was a thing of the past? Think again

Most of the industrialized world has banned the use of what were once called "miracle fibers" for their fireproof properties. But Commerce Department figures show that U.S. importation of asbestos has increased 300 percent in the last decade, with much of the cancer-causing material being used in automotive brakes.

The Environmental Protection Agency has cautioned millions of homeowners who may have vermiculite insulation contaminated with asbestos to stay out of their attics.

And federal health investigators have begun a survey of 250 plants that handled asbestos-contaminated products from a vermiculite mine in Montana. They are warning people that were involved with the operations in any way to see their physicians.

Meanwhile, we're still paying the price of decades of illness caused by asbestos exposure in this country. We've discussed here several times last year's failed attempt in Congress to pass asbestos compensation legislation that would bring some order to the hundreds of thousands of asbestos suits that have been filed. There is little doubt that some attorneys have been using people who are not sick to exploit the problem, while the courts are so clogged that truly sick people wait years to be compensated or die before their case is heard. The idea behind the legislation was that, instead of unending lawsuits driving large and small companies bankrupt, there would be a fund upon which truly affected people could draw.

Last year's bill floundered for two reasons: the size of the fund, and the medical criteria used for determining who would be eligible for compensation. The fund that the companies and the insurance industry settled on was too small, according to labor. And then experts from the the industry got together to determine their own criteria.

"The criteria they adopted excluded almost all the recommendations made by those of us without ties to industry. What remains is criteria that excludes thousands and thousands of people actually ill with asbestos-related disease," said Dr. Mike Harbut, one of the nation's leading asbestos specialists.

As originally written, the criteria exclude thousands of people in Libby, Mont., whom federal testing showed had clinical signs of asbestos disease from a contaminated vermiculite mine. It would have excluded a Libby woman on her death bed in a Seattle hospital, because Hatch's act only allows those with occupational exposure to bring suit. The fact that the woman had been contaminated with asbestos that her late husband had carried home from the W.R. Grace mine would have made no difference.

(For more on the tragedy of Libby, Montana, see here, here, here and here.

Despite the problems, President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have declares passage of an asbestos comp bill a major priority. "The torrent of asbestos litigation has wreaked havoc on asbestos victims, on American jobs, and this havoc has extended into our economy," said Frist. "

But St. Louis Dispatch reporter Andrew Schneider, who originally broke the Libby story, thinks that while bankruptcies may be a problem, chaos and havoc may be overstating the problem just a bit.

The Post-Dispatch found that a different picture emerges in Securities and Exchange Commission filings and press releases from the five largest asbestos targets who have filed for bankruptcy. The most recent reports from Armstrong, W.R. Grace, Federal Mogul, Owens Corning and U.S. Gypsum show that with a single exception, all have increased sales and have the same or a greater number of employees than before they filed Chapter 11.

Hatch's act not only would prevent most future suits against enormous corporations, it also would put some of them billions of dollars ahead of the game.

For example, in December, 2002, the Halliburton Corp. reached a settlement of $3.6 billion with thousands of people with asbestos diseases who had sued one of its subsidiaries.

Documents submitted to the Judiciary Committee say that under the proposed fairness legislation, no company would be forced to pay more than $25 million per year for 27 years into the compensation fund. Thus, the most a corporation would have to shell out would be $675 million. In Halliburton's case, it would have saved nearly $3 billion if the legislation goes into effect.

And then, ask some Congressional leaders, why are we spending all of this time and energy fighting about how to compensate past victims, when we're still importing and using asbestos in this country. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), supported by Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT), has introduced a bill to ban asbestos, but has so far gotten no Republican support.

"It would be irresponsible for Congress to consider a bill addressing the fallout from asbestos exposure that does not include a ban on its future use," said Leahy, who co-sponsored Murray's bill. "Too many innocent people have been poisoned by asbestos already."

Labels: Asbestos

Worker Killed in 18 Foot Deep Trench

GREENVILLE, Ala. -- Police in Greenville say a worker died Sunday afternoon after a wall of dirt collapsed on him. Police Chief Lonzo Ingram said 26-year-old Jacob Britt Anderson of Kinston was in an 18-foot trench at the time of the accident, which was reported shortly after 3 p.m.

Ingram said Anderson was working on a sewer line. He was employed by Johnson's Excavation and Construction of Opp. Greenville firefighters spent about five hours trying to dig Anderson out.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating the industrial accident( sic).

Excuse my language, but 18 fucking feet deep? That's only three and a half times the legal limit.

See that blue comment link at the bottom of this post? Can anyone give me one good reason why these Johnson guys shoudn't be in jail? Come on, I'm waiting. One good reason.

18 feet!

Come on. One good reason, right here:

Labels: Trench Hazards

OSHA Cuts Web Access

Computers Refusing to Work Overtime?

OSHA has one of the more useful government websites. If you click on Inspection Data, you can look up citations by employer, by SIC (industry) code, and citation number. You can find out what the most cited violations in any given industry sector, you can look up accident investigations and even General Duty Clause citations -- and until just recently, you could do it 24 hours a day.

But no more.

Late this evening I was looking up a certain employer who should be in jail (see above) to see if he had any previous citations, and this is the message I received:

Effective Immediately
This application will be available only on weekdays
between the hours of 0800 and 1800 Washington, DC time

I'm not entirely sure what's going on here, but my theory is that Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has told the computers that because of DOL's new overtime regulations, the computers would no longer be receiving overtime pay. So they went on strike. Or were locked out.

Or maybe Bush's budget cuts have really hit home and DOL is trying to save money on electricity?

Maybe it's some kind of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, John Ashcroft, terrorist, Iraq, Al-Queda, Weapons-of-mass destruction-related-activity kind of thing. (Note the suspicious use of military time....)

Maybe this isn't about computers. Maybe entire factories of South Asian children were looking up the information and typing it in, and now, thanks to Elaine Chao, they're working eight-hour days with health care benefits. Yeah, human rights, that's the ticket.

What's going on? Has anyone ever heard of a computer database clocking out at 5:00? And that's "Washington D.C. Time," (known to the rest of the world outside the beltway as "Eastern Standard Time"). Tough luck for you Hawaians. Better get your work done in the morning.

This is one of the most bizarre things I've seen yet. What's next, holidays and snow days for computers?

Hey Johns (Kerry and Edwards), are you listening? If this isn't an election issue, I don' t know what is! The first one to speak out gets my vote.

Budget Humor

You gotta hand it to the old Chimpster in the White House. The guy's got a sense of humor. If he loses the election, there's always Saturday Night Live. He's so funny, he can even liven up the Federal Budget.

Mark Schmitt at the Decembrist found these. I thought they were a joke, but they're real. Check it out here. Read the captions.

Hoo, ha ha. What a guy!

And, I hate to give it away, but here's the punch line:

Improving education for all children, strengthening Medicare, working towards a cleaner environment, and extending compassion and a helping hand to those in need are key to supporting the values that make our Nation strong. The agency chapters that follow describe in more detail how President Bush’s Budget proposes to address the challenges we face in upholding these and other important American values.

FY 2005 Budget Proposal

Planned Cut In Training Grants Again

President Bush's FY 2005 (October 2004 - Sept 2005) budget proposal was released yesterday. Details to follow, but basically OSHA's funding is fairly flat -- except for the annual planned decrease in the worker training grants from $11 million for direct worker traiing to $4 million for computer training. This is the fourth year Bush has proposed this cut. In every previous year, the money has been restored by Congress.

We'll see what happens this year...

OSHA Budget Passed

Training Grant Money Saved

Included in the Omnibus Appropriations Bill for FY 2004 which the Senate passed last month was the Labor- HHS Appropriations bill which included funding for OSHA, MSHA and NIOSH. As you now, the bill unfortunately did not include a measure blocking the DOL overtime regulation (despite votes to that effect in the House and in the Senate) which will result in reductions of overtime pay for 8 million workers.

OSHA received a modest increase, allowing it to maintain current program activities. FY 2004 funding for OSHA will be $460.7 million, compared to $450.3 million in FY 2003. According to Occupational Hazards, compliance assistance was the biggest winner, gaining, as it did last year, the largest percentage increase in funding. The 10 percent increase, or $6 million, was the largest increase in total dollars among OSHA programs as well. Spending on enforcement programs will rise $4 million to $167 million, while the safety and health standards budget remains constant at $16 million.

The best news is that the bill maintained OSHA training grant funding ($11.1 million) and included legislative language mandating that OSHA fund the Institutional Competency Building Grants for another year at current levels. This is a major victory as the Bush administration has attempted to cut short the 5-year grant program initiated during the Clinton administration. Despite all odds we've been able to maintain funding for these programs for the full five year term and maintain the entire program at $11 million despite the Administration's attempt to cut the program down to $4 million and replace it with a program that would emphasize web sites and CD's instead of direct worker training.

The bill sets funding for MSHA at $270.8 million, compared to $272.9 million in FY 2003. (However, the FY 03 appropriation included a onetime appropropriation of $9.9 million for mine mapping).

For NIOSH, the bill provides a total of $278.9 million (including $41.9 million for NORA), compared to $273.4 million for FY 2003.

Vote Early, Vote Often

The voting still seems to be open for Best Single Issue Blog. It's not too late. It's your chance to strike a blow for all the blow strikers.

Department of Energy Decides When It Comes To Safety, Contractors Know Best

Bush Administration Wants To Let Contractors Decide Their Own Safety Standards

A remaining legacy of the Cold War are defense nuclear facilities that make materials for nuclear bombs, but are run by contractors for the Department of Energy. Oversight of workplace health and safety conditions at these plants comes under the jurisdiction of DOE, rather than OSHA. Traditionally, while DOE contractors were required to comply with all OSHA regulations, DOE did not have the authority to fine contactors for violations....until the 2003 Defense Authorization Act was passed, requiring DOE to fine contractors who violated OSHA regulations.

Last month, the DOE issued draft regulations implementing this new law. Instead of following the intent of Congress which was to strengthen health and safety protections for workers at these facilities, DOE has twisted its reading of the law to issue a regulatory proposal that significantly weakens worker protections.

First, requirements that contractors comply with OSHA standards would now become unenforceable guidelines. Second, instead of being able to fine contractors for violating any OSHA standard, DOE would only be able to fine contractors that violate health and safety standards that the contractors themselves have decided they want to comply with. Their health and safety programs would have to be approved by DOE.

What's the problem with that?

The government often gives contractors financial incentives to complete projects ahead of schedule, and tough safety standards could slow contractors down, said Leon Owens, a worker and past president of the local union at the government's uranium plant in Paducah, Ky.

"I don't feel that a contractor would be as inclined to develop rules that would go the extra length to provide adequate protection for workers," Owens said.

In other words, according to Richard Miller of the Government Accountability Project, "It's like you're driving to a meeting, but you're late, so you get to change the speed limit to 80 mph to get there on time."

The new rules would prohibit DOE from citing or even inspecting for hazards that the contractor decides are not covered in the plan. Miller's testimony pointed out that if the a workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation were exposed to toxic fumes venting from tanks that had not been included in the contractor's original plan, DOE would not be able to inspect or cite the contractor even if the exposures exceeded OSHA limits. "Please explain why this exemption makes for good safety policy, or will keep workers from getting sick from workrelated exposures," Miller asks.

According to Assistant Secretary of Energy, Beverly Cook, the proposed regs are part of a continuing effort to get contractors to focus on hazards specific to their sites rather than on dangers that don't exist everywhere.

"But why," Miller asks, "Should DOE contractors not have to comply with the same health and safety floor that every other employer in the U.S. has to comply with?"

The DOE proposal has not only been criticized by Democratic Congressman Ted Strickland (OH), but also by conservative Republican Jim Bunning (KY).

And Jack Conway, chairman of Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an advisory panel that oversees safety at the Energy Department, said the proposal would weaken safety standards covering more than 100,000 workers at the facilities. "The way it's written, I don't like it at all," said Conway.

Private contractors are writing their own safety regulations, corporate lobbyists are writing environmental regulations, small business association representatives are bankrolled by taxpayer dollars.

I'm not sure what form of government this is, but somehow it doesn't seem like the kind of democracy that most people still think we live under.

Not-So-Sound Science

Around the Blogs

Workers Lose Cancer Lawsuit Against IBM

Highlighting the Obvious

Financial Times of London Picks Up Confined Space OSHA Web Story

Workers Memorial Day 2004

La Guardia Baggage Screeners Protesting Workplace Conditions

Training, Safe Operating Procedures? Nah, Just Get The Job Done

Scandal at Hanford: And Workers Pay The Price

Restaurant Workers, UNITE Unions to Merge

Let Children Be Children

L.E. Myers and MYR Group: Losing Lives 'While Winning With Safety'

NIOSH Creates Worker Notification Page

(Yet) More McWane

Getting Serious With Workplace Killers

DOE Backtracks on Contractor Safety Policy

Silica Cover-Up at DOE Facility in Nevada

DOE's Really Stupid Workplace Safety Policy

Koufax Award Results

You, too may be a terrorist

Describing the Lives of Workers

The Weekly Toll

Smart Thinking, Bush Guys

Workers At Risk (Still, Yet, Again) at Federal Nuclear Reservation

Mercury is now a vegetable

Coming Soon to a Location Near You: Union Busting, Federal Style

Scientists Say Bush Distorts Science

Train Wagon That Killed 4 Secured by Two Small Pieces of Wood

Crane Collapse Updates

Workers Comp Insurers Show Record Profits

Iranian Train Blast

Labor and Enviros Together Against Bush, Oh My!

Wither CalOSHA?

OSHA Training Grant Program: Something Missing?

Four Workers Killed in Two Crane Accidents

EPA Cuts Funding For Cleanup of Asbestos-Contaminated Libby, MT

"20 Tonnes of Death Coming out of the Darkness"

Travellers: On Vacation From Civility?

Worker-Owned Home Health Care

Around The Blogs

OSHA Web Page Hours Conspiracy

Trench Death an "Accident"

They're Back....

Seattle Cab Drivers Stage Work Stoppage Over Safety

Disneyworld Worker Killed

Back Pain? Shut Up And Deal With It!

OSHA Training Grant Program: The Unkindest Cut

Southern California Grocery Strike: A War for the Whole Country

OSHA Webpage Update

Make Workplace Safety an Election Issue

National Geographic Discovers Dangerous Jobs

Asbestos: It's not just the old exposures

New Jersey Agrees to Voluntary Industry Chem Plant Security Standards

Green-Collar Workers: Does Just Transition Mean the End of Job Blackmail?

Ergonomics: Living in the Past

19 Workers -- Mostly Immigrants -- Drown Trapped by Inrushing Tides

Book Reviews: The Neverending Tragedy of Asbestos

The Weekly Toll

Worker Asphyxiated in Tanker Truck

Worker Killed at Landfill

Hardhat dies in 8th floor fall

Man killed in machine

Two men killed at Murrieta construction site

Large Concrete Slab Fatally Crushes Fla. Construction Worker

Mine Worker Killed

Worker Dies In Rail Car Accident

Valve Explosion Kills Power Plant Worker

Worker crushed by cement truck

Worker pinned between forklifts in A.C.

Rail car accident kills worker at Westside mill

Kiewit employee dies after 25-foot fall from bridge

Trucker found in tanker, dies

State to probe Davenport (IA) construction worker death

Wal-Mart Nation World

Sing Along: "Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Program Activities"

Shocking Discovery: Water Is Wet!

This is a bit more like it: $475,000 Fine For Workers' Deaths

"Outrageous" Strikers in L.A? Give Me A Break!

Chemical Safety Board Blasts OSHA

Hey Harry, Get Out the Dead Worker Template Again