I wrote earlier this month about a court decision in the Mar-Jac case restricting OSHA’s ability to expand inspections at poultry plants — even when the company’s log shows high rates of injuries and illnesses — despite the industry’s record of unsafe conditions. When conducting an inspection about a specific incident, you may recall, OSHA …
Mar-Jack: OSHA Inspectors “Are Not There For Us” Read More »
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a memo Thursday weakening workers’ protection against employer retaliation for reporting injuries and illnesses. Section 1904.35(b)(1)(iv) of the Obama administrations 2016 “Electronic Recordkeeping Rule” told employers that “You must not discharge or in any manner discriminate against any employee for reporting a work-related injury or illness.” According to Deborah Berkowitz, …
OSHA Weakens Workers’ Protections Against Retaliation for Reporting Injuries Read More »
For the first time practically in recorded memory, the Labor-HHS-Education budget, which includes OSHA, MSHA and NIOSH, was passed and signed into law before the beginning of the new Fiscal Year — October 1st. The final OSHA budget actually contains a $5 million increase over FY 2018 and $8.8 million over the President’s FY 2019 …
FY 2019 OSHA Budget Is Here: Good News, But More Work to be Done Read More »
While Rod Rosenstein and Brett Kavanaugh may be on their way out, OSHA nominee Scott Mugno and other Department of Labor nominees may be on their way in according to intrepid Bloomberg reporter Chris Opfer. You may recall that business interests, who hate, hate, hate the idea of Democrat Mark Pearce getting another term on …
Good news! Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh does not think it is unreasonable for workers to expect to come home safely at the end of the day, even if they work in the entertainment industry. So he claims in his response to a written question from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, “expecting” isn’t doing. And …
In a stinging rebuke to the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal court has called EPA’s delay in implementing the Obama administration’s chemical disaster rule “arbitrary and capricious” and told the agency to implement the rule. EPA had argued that delaying the rule would reduce industry confusion while it figured out whether it wanted to modify …
Court Orders EPA To Implement Chemical Plant Safety Rule Read More »
Some workers’ lives are worth more than others, according to Congress. If you’re killed in a factory or construction site due to blatantly unsafe conditions allowed by your employer, OSHA will investigate and likely issue citations and fine the employer if violations of OSHA standards are identified. But if you’re an employee in a small …
US to Workers Killed on Small Farms: We Don’t Care Read More »
Peggy Frank, a 63-year-old California postal worker — and also a mother and grandmother — died last week while working her usual route in unusually hot weather. Frank’s heat-related death was not a freak occurrence, nor was it unusual. “An average of more than 2.2 million workers in the agriculture or construction industries worked in extreme heat each …
While most of the discussion of President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court focuses on the possibility that he will be the deciding vote to repeal Rowe v. Wade or that the will bend over backwards to help Trump out of the Russia investigation, there is clear evidence that Kavanaugh is overly …
When Spring is in the air, this man’s fancy turns to (where else?) the 2018 Spring Regulatory Agenda to discover what movement OSHA will be planning to move forward (or backward) to protect American workers from injury, illness and death in the workplace. And the news is not totally bad this time around. The good …
Full of Surprises: OSHA Spring Regulatory Agenda Released Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
