A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
I swear, sometimes I don’t know if I’m reading facts or farce. Bloomberg BNA reports that the Labor Department — yes, the same Labor Department that has delayed implementation of OSHA’s electronic recordkeeping rule — is telling the court that unions should not be allowed to intervene in industry’s lawsuit because the Trump administration and…
Representatives of the construction industry, as well as general industry have petitioned Labor Secretary Alex Acosta to reopen the silica standard, workplace safeguards that would save over 600 lives and prevent more than 900 new cases of silicosis each year. This means that for every day implementation of the standard is delayed, almost two workers will die…
Home Sweet Home: Congress is home for two weeks. Hopefully all of you are planning on talking to your Senators and Congresspersons at their office or doing district meetings about how cutting OSHA’s budget will mean that more workers will get hurt and die. Blood on the Steering Wheel: The discussion about the carnage in…
“I was just following orders” has never seemed like a particularly convincing argument throughout history, but that seems to be the platform that Alex Acosta is campaigning on to be Donald J. Trump’s Secretary of Labor, according to Christopher Cook in The Nation. Cook notes that not only has Acosta not stirred the spirited opposition that…
Alexander Acosta, the President’s nominee for Secretary of Labor testified today before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee. If you’re interested, you can watch the entire hearing here, although that would be two and a half hours you will never get back. I’m going to review the parts of the hearing that addressed workplace…