A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
It’s mid-summer and a man’s fancy turns to what’s happening in OSHA these days. Let’s update you all before you (and I) head out on vacation: Assistant Secretary: Tomorrow will mark a full 18 months of this administration and still no Assistant Secretary at OSHA. Scott Mugno, who has gone through a Senate confirmation hearing…
Too many workers are dying in the states of Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, according to OSHA Region VII, and employers need to do something about it. An OSHA alert has gone out from the region, “seeking to stem a recent increase in workplace fatalities in Kansas, Missouri, and ebraska.” The press release cites “an increase…
Criminal Conviction Upheld: DNRB, a Missouri warehouse construction contractor (doing business as Fastrack Erectors) was confirmed to be criminally liable for the fatal fall of an employee, according to the Eighth Circuit, affirming a previous guilty verdict. 22 year-old Eric Roach died July 25, 2014, after falling 30 feet from a building under construction. Roach…
And in our continuing series of posts about why Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court would be a disaster for workers: The San Francisco Chronicle reviews Kavanaugh’s dissent in the SeaWorld case that we wrote about last week (here). Bob Egelco writes that “The appeals court ruling in SeaWorld vs. Perez stands as an illustration…
Peggy Frank, a 63-year-old California postal worker — and also a mother and grandmother — died last week while working her usual route in unusually hot weather. Frank’s heat-related death was not a freak occurrence, nor was it unusual. “An average of more than 2.2 million workers in the agriculture or construction industries worked in extreme heat each…
Steve Bannon may have moved out of the West Wing, but he left his goal of “deconstructing the regulatory state” behind. And we all may pay the price. As I wrote a couple of weeks, we just passed the 5-year anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster that incinerated 47 persons when an un-manned runaway “bomb-train” derailed…
1 worker killed, 1 hurt after Dumpster falls at NC Campbell’s Soup plant, reports say MAXTON, N.C. (WNCN) – One worker died and another was hurt in an incident involving a large trash bin at the Campbell’s Soup plant in Robeson County on Sunday, media reports said. WMBF reported that a Dumpster fell on two…
“In a June 2017 meeting with Tesla employees, CEO Elon Musk solicited their complaints about safety issues and promised to address their concerns, so long as they refrained from trying to organize a union, the National Labor Relations Board alleges.” Elon Musk is getting on my nerves. We’ve written before about Musk and the health…
After President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, I wrote a post describing his anti-worker dissent in the SeaWorld case. In response, a commenter called me “a far left activist [who] has always opposed any politician, judge, or person who has an alternative view.” Well I would heartily disagree with that characterization, but…
While most of the discussion of President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court focuses on the possibility that he will be the deciding vote to repeal Rowe v. Wade or that the will bend over backwards to help Trump out of the Russia investigation, there is clear evidence that Kavanaugh is overly…