There is a lot happening in the world of workplace safety and health.
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Miners Rally to Force Silica Protections
On Tuesday, Oct. 14, coal miners, members of the Black Lung Association and their supporters will rally in front of the Department of Labor’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in opposition to the MSHA’s delayed enforcement of silica dust protections for miners. Silica dust exposure is a significant factor in the rise in black lung disease. In April 2024, after decades of research conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Mine Safety and Health Administration finalized a rule to protect coal and other miners from silica dust. The rule was supposed to go into effect in April 2025. But instead MSHA blocked the rule, blaming mass layoffs at NIOSH conducted by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When: Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025, at 11 a.m.
Where: Department of Labor, Frances Perkins Building, 200 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, D.C.
Be there!
Mitchell McDaniel Safety Scholarship 
On November 11, 2019, 19-year old Mitchell McDaniel was killed when he was told to clean out an operating, unguarded grain auger. The workplace had no lockout-tagout procedures and Mitchell had not been trained. To add insult to injury, Mitchell was killed on a small farm and OSHA is forbidden to investigate any incidents or cite any employers on small farms that employ ten or fewer employees. So no investigation, no citation, no lessons learned.
Mitchell’s mother, Stacy Sebald, was devastated. “He never got to live an adult life.” But Stacy didn’t just curl up in a ball and die. She decided to fight to make sure that nothing like this would ever happen to anyone else. She has been a major national advocate for farm safety and is fighting to eliminate OSHA’s small farm exemption. She has also served on the Board of United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities (USMWF), a grassroots, family based, national, not-for-profit organization that offers support, guidance and resources to families that have been affected by work-related incidents, diseases and illnesses.
Now Stacy is pay it forward by creating the “Mitchell McDaniel Memorial Safety Scholarship” which would be awarded to an individual who is either looking to build a career in safety or one who is taking safety courses to further their knowledge and may be needing some financial assistance. If you have a bit of disposable income on hand, head over there and drop a few bucks. I did. (And it’s tax deductible)
Tow Truck Deaths
There are few nightmares more upsetting than breaking down on the highway at night. But when that happens, it’s the nation’s tow truck drivers who come to the rescue. But they pay a heavy price: Almost no week goes by when the Weekly Toll doesn’t report a tow truck driver killed on the road while helping a broken-down motorist. To address the problem, tow truck drivers in Kentucky and around the nation are advocating for legislation that would require adding rear-facing blue lights to tow trucks. The Kentucky legislation comes almost a year since tow truck driver Troy Caldwell was struck and killed while working on the side of I-64.
According to Bubba Johnson, who owns and operates Bubba’s Towing & Recovery, “With the ‘move over, slow down’ [law], it just isn’t enough. This would give us one more layer of protection.” “The reality is simple. Every day, tow operators stand within inches of traffic moving 70 plus miles an hour,” Johnson said at a legislative hearing. Similar bills have become law in other states, including Pennsylvania.
Plea Deal in Criminal Trench Death Case
Last December, retired University of Maryland law professor Rena Steinzor described in Confined Space how Travis County Texas District Attorney Jose Garza filed a rare criminal cases motivated by a tragic death in a trench. A grand jury charged D Guerra Construction LLC and Carlos Gerrero, the supervisor at the site, with criminally negligent homicide in the 2021 death of Juan Galvan Batalla, 24. Batalla had been sent to hia death in a 13 foot deep trench after it had already partially collapsed earlier in the day.
In August, D Guerra Construction LLC agreed to plead guilty in connection with the death of Batalla as part of a plea deal. Garza said it was the first time since the early ’90s that a corporation had pleaded guilty over a worker’s death in Travis County. “The plea deal includes a pre-sentencing agreement that, if completed, will allow them to avoid a significant financial penalty. It requires the company to implement a series of new safety trainings for construction workers and supervisors and implement new safety processes, including an anonymous reporting method for workers’ safety concerns. They must also hire two new full-time safety employees, and an independent safety monitor approved by the prosecutor’s office to review its new processes over the next year.”
Batalla’s mother, Rosa Isela Batalla Morales, was pleased with the deal: “I think I’ve had justice,” she said. “It did comfort me a little that the company said ‘yes, I’m guilty,’ because they were guilty–for me–and now they’re guilty before the law.”
Photography: Earl Dotter Workplace Disease Video
Earl Dotter is this country’s best and most well-known labor photographer. You can often see his photos heading Confined Space posts. Much of Earl’s portfolio focuses on dangerous jobs and the health and safety hazards faced by miners, public employees, textile workers, farm workers, commercial fishermen and 9/11 recovery workers. Now you can watch a video produced by the University of Illinois, Chicago, where Earl narrates his photographs that illustrate the human impact of black lung and the other hazards that workers face.
CalOSHA Isn’t Doing the Job
CalOSHA is plagued by staffing shortages and poor management and is not adequately doing its job protection the states workers according to State Auditor Grant Parks.
Among the audits findings: Cal-OSHA performs more than 80% of its inspections by letter rather than in person; 32% of positions are unfilled despite adequate budget; and the agency keeps records in antiquated paper files filled with sometimes indecipherable handwritten inspection notes. Sometimes those inspection files are lost. “There is no electronic case management system to help it manage its workload,” Parks said. … “Illegible case notes created ambiguity for why certain cases were not inspected, or why initial fine amounts calculated by Cal-OSHA were lower than expected,” he added. The report found that out of roughly 10,632 valid complaints the agency received in 2023-24, just 17% resulted in in-person inspections by the agency inspected. When it came to workplace accidents, the agency performed in-person inspections on just 42% of those mishaps.
Another problem is the lack of criminal referrals and substantial fines in accidents involving worker deaths. “There are on average around 400 workplace fatalities annually in California. A Sacramento Bee investigation last year found that the Bureau of Investigation, a division of Cal-OSHA tasked with making criminal referrals to district attorneys, had only one investigator for the entire state.”
EPI Workplace Safety Report
The Economic Policy Institute has issued a report: Holding the Line: Workplace health and safety standards — State solutions to the U.S. worker rights crisis. The report outlines the Trump administration’s threat to agencies that protect workers — cutting their staff, weakening standards, refusing to work on needed protections and stopping agencies from enforcing standard like MSHA’s silica standard.
The EPI report notes that federal OSHA has no standards protecting workers from such critical hazards as extreme heat exposure, wildfire smoke, ergonomic injuries (e.g., repetitive lifting or twisting), workplace violence, and airborne infectious diseases
So what is to be done? EPI also has recommendations for states and workers. States can adopt unregulated protections like heat, smoke, ergonomics, violence, and airborne pathogens. States can also enact right-to-refuse laws, mandate Injury and Illness Prevention Programs like those required in California and Washington, increase penalty amounts, and implement “instance-by-instance” citations to hit repeat offenders where it hurts.
Articles of Interest
Workers allege unsafe conditions at BWI Marshall Airport, Jeff Hager, WMAR
Federal worker-safety commission has zero members as backlog grows,
Only federal agency that investigates chemical disasters faces shutdown under Trump, PBS News
Workers keep dying from heat. Data from inside their bodies shows why, Nicolás Rivero and Niko Kommenda, Washington Post
Baltimore sanitation worker’s death reveals missteps and negligence – and not only by DPW, Mark Reutter, Baltimore Brew
NC settles Barnes farmworker death case with reduced fine following autopsy, Brian Gordon, Raleigh News and Observer
Embattled Texas Oilfield Waste Company Fined After Worker’s Death, Martha Pskowski, Texas Observer
How an immigration raid reshaped meatpacking — and America, , and
Trump to Coal Miners: Drop Dead, Kim Kelly, In These Times
Deadly dust: Missed inspections, enforcement failures imperil the lives of coal miners, Michael D. Sallah, Jimmy Cloutier and Mike Wereschagin, Pittsburgh Post Gazette
How Trump Broke Corporate America’s Most Valuable Consultant, Josh Eidelson, Bloomberg
These Worker Build America’s Nuclear Arsenal; Trump Hit Pause on their Medical Claims, Valerie Volcovici, Reuters
High Heat, Higher Responsibility (2025): The Sunshine State Must Enact Policies to Protect Working Floridians, Alexis Tsoukalas, PhD, Florida Policy Institute
When a Paycheck Turns Deadly: Wisconsin’s Most Dangerous Jobs You’ve Never Thought About, Jim DeLillo, Newsbreak
Podcast
Coal Survivor: On New Year’s ever, 1969, United Mineworkers leader Jock Yablonski and his wife and daughter are gunned down shortly after Yablonski lost a crooked election against the UMW’s corrupt President Tony Boyle. Much of the opposition to Boyle came from his refusal to address black lung and other safety and health threats faced by coal miners. Coal Survivor is a podcast that tells the riveting story of those tragic events, and Jock’s son Chip’s battle to reform the UMW and prove Boyle was behind his family’s murder.
THANK YOU SO MUCH JORDAN!!
This makes my heart super happy when I see others spreading the word & sharing