New Congress: New Opportunities
What changes for workplace safety can workers expect from the new Democratically controlled Congress next year? I give my best educated guess at The Century Fund here.
This Day in History: Farmington Mine Explosion Kills 78 Miners
On November 19, 1968, 40 50 years ago today, 78 miners died in an explosion at the Consol No. 9 coal mine in Farmington, West Virginia. At 5:30 in the morning on November 20th, a huge explosion tore through Consolidation Coal’s Number Nine mine. The force of the blast could be felt for miles. There would…
Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Battle for Workplace Safety: Short Stuff
OSHA: The Incredible Shrinking Agency: The number of OSHA inspectors has hit an all-time low according to data compiled by Bloomberg Environment Reporter Bruce Rolfsen. “The agency ended fiscal 2018 with 753 inspectors, compared to 860 at end of fiscal 2014, the personnel data, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show.” And that…
Are Kentucky — And Other OSHA State Plans — Failing Their Workers?
OSHA State Plans: love ’em or hate ’em, but we have to live with them. The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, Ohio Valley ReSource and the Center for Public Integrity have just put out a devastating series of articles and audio reports about serious flaws in Kentucky’s state run OSHA program, and raised serious questions about the…
Weekly Toll: A Few American Workers Who Will Never Come Home
Not a good week to be a worker in Indiana (California and Florida weren’t so hot either.) Construction worker killed in accident near Willmar Holland Township, MN — A man tiling a field in central Minnesota died on Friday morning in a workplace accident. The construction company employee was installing drainage tile in the field…
Interview With Journalist Jamie Satterfield About Workers Poisoned by Coal Ash
Knoxville News Sentinal’s Jamie Satterfield, the investigative reporter who has been following the story about cleanup workers who died and were sickened by their exposure to coal ash in the cleanup of the massive spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Tennessee, was interviewed yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered. You…
Just Doing Their Job — And Now They’re Dying For It
This is one of those horrific stories that you think must have come out of the 19th century or early 20th century. Just before Christmas in 2008, a dike at the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, gave way, carrying away houses and smothering 300 acres of land under a…
Shot, Stabbed and Assaulted: Violence Against Nurses
Check out this excellent video on workplace violence against nurses by Newsy investigative reporter Patrick Terpstra. Aside from the jarring videos of nurses being attacked and the tragic interviews as they recount the attacks and try to recover — physically and emotionally — the video is…
Hiding Injuries at Tesla: Where The Worker Still Doesn’t Matter.
Under-recording of workplace injuries and illnesses is bad, and far too common. But at the automaker Tesla, in Fremont, California, under-recording is more than a paper exercise in deception — at Tesla it means withholding needed medical treatment of injured workers so that their injuries aren’t report on OSHA logs. We wrote previously about reports…
This Day In History: 82 Miners Killed in Millfield Mine Disaster, November 5, 1930
On this day in 1930, at 11:45 a.m., a tremendous explosion rocked the Sunday Creek No. 6 mine near Millfield, Ohio, killing 82 coal miners. Most of the miners were killed by asphyxiation from the carbon monoxide that resulted from the ignition of methane gas. A few miners survived by climbing out a ventilation shaft, and an…