Workplace Safety: DO SOMETHING!

Among the many rousing speeches and resounding cheers at last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago was the one delivered by former First Lady Michelle Obama.  She called on the crowd – and all of us – to DO SOMETHING!  She was urging the electorate to take action around November’s presidential election and the congressional races for House and Senate seats.  “Don’t just sit around and complain…DO SOMETHING.”

She urged us “to be the solutions that we seek…and to stand up not just for our basic freedoms but for decency and humanity; for basic respect, dignity, and empathy…”

Her words percolated in my brain over the next day or so, and today I woke thinking about what they might mean for doing something on worker safety and health.  Actions that acknowledge, support, and advocate for the needs and rights of our nation’s workers, with the respect, dignity, and empathy they all deserve.

Although we have made a lot of progress over the years, still too many workers are injured, sickened, disabled, and killed on the job.  5486 workers were killed on the job in 2022, and an estimated 120,000 died from occupational disease. Employers report 3.5 million work-related injuries and illnesses in 2022, a figure that significantly underestimates the true toll of workplace safety and health.

So clearly, more needs to be done. And it won’t get done by itself.  To protect health and safety of our  loved ones and all the workers who provide us with the things that sustain, power, and enrich our lives, we all need to DO SOMETHING!

SOMETHING TO DO

There’s a lot to do, and this is not an exhaustive list.  But here are some actions our elected representatives could take.

Congress could and SHOULD:

• Provide OSHA the budget and staff resources it needs to robustly fulfill its statutory duty to “to assure America’s workers have safe and healthful working conditions free from unlawful retaliation.” This includes enacting needed standards on heat, workplace violence, and infectious disease, as well as them ability to impose higher penalties for serious violations.
• Ensure that NIOSH has the budget and staff resources to adequately conduct research and provide advice on the changing nature of work, the workplace, and the workforce.
• Pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) which will make it easier for workers to organize unions.
• Pass the Protecting America’s Workers Act which will increase OSHA penalties, cover public employees, and make anti-retaliation protections more effective.
• Increase employer penalties for fatalities and serious violations of health and safety, child labor, environmental and wage & hour laws so they aren’t just the cost of doing business.
• Update the nation’s antiquated child labor laws
• Modernize our nation’s unemployment insurance system (more on this here).

At the state level, our elected officials could and SHOULD:

• Vigorously enforce occupational safety and health laws/regulations and strengthen child labor laws instead of weakening them as some states are doing
• Make their states places where workers and their families want to reside and work
• Set a living wage rate that exceeds the required minimum wage
• Issue heat protections and other workplace safeguards for workers in the absence of a federal OSHA standard.
• Pass laws providing OSHA coverage to public employeesin the 23 states where government workers still have no right to a safe workplace.

And we, too, can and SHOULD do something.  For example,

• Become or continue to be vocal advocates for worker health and safety. (Some advocacy tools and resources here, and a list of local COSH groups and activities here.)
• Participate in public hearings; provide comments or information for relevant proposed rulemaking processes
• Support and vote for pro-labor, pro-worker candidates for public office
• Make our displeasure known when elected officials are silent or oppose policies that advance worker safety, health, and well-being
• Smile and say thank you to the workers you encounter in the course of your day. You know: the ones who ring up your purchases; stock the shelves; serve you a meal; fill you tank; provide your transport; deliver your mail; pick up your trash; provide your health care, your child care, & care for your aging parent/partner/friend; and those who keep the power on and maintain the roads
• Watch out for safety and health hazards in your neighborhood – workers down in deep unprotected trenches, up on roofs without fall protection and being exposed to silica dust. (Check out the handy Confined Space “Do It Yourself Guide” here.)
• Get engaged in the 2024 local and national political campaigns to the extent you can – with time, money, ideas, conversation, writing letters, and ADD YOUR IDEAS HERE.
• And be sure to vote in November. Every vote matters.

P.S. I dedicate this blog to my three brothers who all worked hard for a living and whose various jobs included meter reader, electrical lineman, bicycle repair shop owner, house painter, and  garbage collector.  Though they didn’t always get the respect they deserved, they always worked with pride,  dignity, and empathy for their fellow workers and the people they served.