{"id":12529,"date":"2025-10-03T07:55:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T11:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=12529"},"modified":"2025-10-10T15:27:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T19:27:41","slug":"dispatches-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2025\/10\/03\/dispatches-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Dispatches From the Front Lines of Workplace Safety and Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>here is a lot happening in the world of workplace safety and health.<\/p>\n

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Miners Rally to Force Silica Protections<\/h2>\n

On Tuesday, Oct. 14, coal miners, members of the Black Lung Association and their supporters will rally<\/a> in front of the Department of Labor\u2019s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in opposition to the MSHA\u2019s 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<\/a>, blaming mass layoffs at NIOSH conducted by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n

When<\/strong>: Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025, at 11 a.m.<\/p>\n

Where<\/strong>: Department of Labor, Frances Perkins Building, 200 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Be there!<\/p>\n

Mitchell McDaniel Safety Scholarship \"\"<\/h2>\n

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.\u00a0 So no investigation, no citation, no lessons learned.<\/p>\n

Mitchell’s mother, Stacy Sebald, was devastated. “He never got to live an adult life.”\u00a0 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<\/a> for farm safety and is fighting to eliminate OSHA’s small farm exemption<\/a>.\u00a0 She has also served on the Board of United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalitie<\/a>s (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.<\/p>\n

Now Stacy is pay it forward by creating the “Mitchell McDaniel Memorial Safety Scholarship<\/a>” 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.\u00a0 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)<\/p>\n

Tow Truck Deaths<\/h2>\n

There are few nightmares more upsetting than breaking down on the highway at night.\u00a0 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<\/a> 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\u00a0struck and killed while working on the side of I-64<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to Bubba Johnson, who owns and operates Bubba\u2019s Towing & Recovery,\u00a0 \u201cWith the \u2018move over, slow down\u2019 [law], it just isn\u2019t enough. This would give us one more layer of protection.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThe reality is simple. Every day, tow operators stand within inches of traffic moving 70 plus miles an hour,\u201d Johnson said at a legislative hearing.\u00a0Similar bills have become law in other states, including Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Plea Deal in Criminal Trench Death Case<\/h2>\n

Last December, retired University of Maryland law professor Rena Steinzor described in Confined Space<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

In August, D Guerra Construction LLC agreed to plead guilty<\/a> 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.\u00a0 “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.”<\/p>\n

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\u2013for me\u2013and now they’re guilty before the law.”<\/p>\n

Photography: Earl Dotter Workplace Disease Video<\/h2>\n

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<\/a> 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n