workplace safety

OSHA is doing virtually nothing to protect workers in the pandemic

Leave a Comment / Health & Safety, OSHA, Pandemic, workplace safety / By max cyril

Two reports out this week show how badly the Trump administration is failing workers during the coronavirus pandemic. The AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job report looks at 9,051 complaints workers have sent the Occupational Safety and Health Administration expressing concern about safety on the job during the pandemic. OSHA has investigated just 198 of them, and 85 of …

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Report: OSHA Investigated, Resolved Only 2% of COVID Retaliation Complaints

Leave a Comment / Health & Safety, OSHA, Pandemic, workplace safety / By max cyril

Washington, DC—Brand-new analysis by Deborah Berkowitz and Shayla Thompson of the National Employment Law Project (NELP) shows that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has failed to protect COVID safety whistleblowers who filed retaliation complaints. NELP analyzed OSHA’s public data showing 1,744 COVID-19-related retaliation complaints filed by workers from April through August 9, and found: …

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This Amazon Grocery Runner Has Risked Her Job to Fight for Better Safety Measures

Leave a Comment / OSHA, productivity, Public Campaign, Uncategorized, Workplace Conditions, workplace ethics, workplace safety / By max cyril

This article is part of a series on Amazon workers produced in partnership with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Courtenay Brown spends her day making grocery runs for others in a football-field-sized maze of narrow aisles and refrigerated enclaves. At the Amazon Fresh unit in a Newark, New Jersey fulfillment center, she works on the outbound ship dock, helping …

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Detroit Bus Drivers Strike over Violent Attacks

Leave a Comment / Strike, union mobilizing, unions, workplace safety, workplace violence / By max cyril

Detroit bus drivers, the first essential workers in the country to strike for safety during the pandemic, pulled a wildcat work stoppage again Friday, angry over escalating violence against drivers. Often the attacks are triggered, they said, by a driver’s request that a passenger wear a mask. Drivers returned to work this morning with a promise …

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Restaurant Workers Are Building Solidarity Amid the Pandemic

Leave a Comment / restaurant workers, worker's rights, Workers, workplace safety / By max cyril

BOISE, IDAHO—It was raining lightly June 29 when Geo Engberson, owner of the Pie Hole pizzeria, convened an emergency staff meeting. He had intended a quick conference in the parking lot behind the restaurant, known for its steady stream of weekend bar-goers. Given the weather, Engberson ferried the handful of workers into his trailer. Earlier that month, workers at …

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Meatpacking industry got its way on COVID-19 policies, and workers died

Leave a Comment / Health & Safety, Pandemic, workplace safety / By max cyril

When the meatpacking industry was hit with major coronavirus outbreaks back in the spring, there was no question about making workers’ lives a priority—it was always out of the question. This is an industry with high injury rates and low wages for its vulnerable population of workers, with its many people of color and immigrants. Industry executives have built …

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How Worker Safety Starts With Facilities Construction And Intelligent Design

Leave a Comment / Health & Safety, workplace safety / By max cyril

Worker safety is a top concern for facilities everywhere. While safety training and precautions can go a long way towards ensuring workers’ safety, safety really begins with a facility’s initial design and construction. If a facility is haphazardly designed, no amount of safety training can combat that. But what sort of design decisions make a …

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7 Best Practices to Accelerate Employee Safety in the Workplace

Leave a Comment / workplace safety / By max cyril

Research has shown there’s a direct link between worker productivity and workplace health and safety. These findings should be enough to motivate employers to accelerate the safety of all staff members in the workplace, and for many businesses, they have been. “Safety culture” is a phrase often repeated, and it refers to the concept of …

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Immigrant women workers on the front lines of meatpacking COVID-19 outbreaks speak out

Leave a Comment / Working Women, workplace safety / By max cyril

Coverage of COVID-19 outbreaks in North Carolina poultry processing plants began with an online tip, but soon multiple workers came forward—risking their livelihoods—to talk about the unsafe working conditions they faced inside the plants. All of them were women. One of those women is Luz. The 38-year-old immigrant from Mexico has spent the last four years working …

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The Miners Who Fought for Workplace Safety Have a Thing or Two to Teach OSHA Right Now

Leave a Comment / Coal Mining, workplace safety / By max cyril

In October 1993, Charles Patrick Hayes, or Pat, was working at a grain bin in Defuniak Springs, a small town in southern Alabama near Fairhope, where Pat was raised. Pat was knocking down corn from the walls of the silo when the crop caved off the sides and crushed him. Pat, just 19, suffocated to …

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