A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
The US Department of Agriculture has always struggled to balance a split personality: on one hand it’s supposed to “Provide all Americans access to a safe, nutritious and secure food supply.” While on the other hand, it is supposed to “Maximize the ability of American agricultural producers to prosper…” and “promote American agricultural products and…
In a fiery rebuttal of Republican and employer attacks on OSHA during the Obama administration, former Assistant Secretary Dr. David Michaels yesterday rejected assertions that OSHA had focused only on confrontation over cooperation, and or that the agency had flouted the law and good safety practice when it came to enforcement, standards and media campaigns.…
The moral of this week’s stories is that if you find yourself eating pork chops at your fancy seaside hotel in a hurricane ravaged part of Florida, you need to re-evaluate your life. Trumpworld to Government Scientists: No Science for You! This falls into “The Onion or Real News” category. Imagine my alarm when I…
In a surprising and disappointing apparent rollback of OSHA’s enforcement policy related to poultry inspections, Acting Assistant Secretary Loren Sweatt has rejected recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) designed to address findings that poultry workers are intimidated about reporting health and safety problems to OSHA, particularly about their inability to get bathroom breaks. The GAO…
Tesla may make shiny, new, innovative, futuristic American automobiles, but the relentless pace at which it pushes its workers is producing the same old, tired, painful, debilitating and disabling injuries that we’ve always seen in the auto industry. I take that back. Not the “same” injuries, but more of the same injuries. Worksafe, a California-based organization…
Less Than Chickens In a MUST-READ article, Pro Publica’s Mike Grabell describes the plight of Case Farms poultry workers, most of whom are undocumented refugees from Guatamala. Just a sample of Grabell’s compelling article: Guatemalan immigrant, Osiel was just weeks past his 17th birthday, too young by law to work in a factory. A year…
♦ From Mitch to Donald, with Love: Looks like we may have a Secretary of Labor by Thursday. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is preparing a gift for the President making sure he has a full cabinet before his 100 Day anniversary. McConnell filed for cloture (ending debate) Monday on Alexander Acosta’s nomination. The Senate is expected to vote…
The Senate will vote next week on repealing the Volks rule and thereby making it impossible for OSHA to cite patterns of recordkeeping violations. The Volks rule restored OSHA’s traditional ability to require employers to maintain accurate records for five years. Throughout OSHA’s history, Republican and Democratic administrations have issued major citations for widespread…