New infographics from E-Training and Compliance and Safety show that as the U.S. budget for workplace safety continues to rise, the number of deaths dramatically falls. In 2010, the United States spent a then-high of $558 million dollars a year on workplace safety, and a record low of 4,600 workers died on the job. (Infographic …
This week, photos of NASA engineers joyously celebrating their successful Mars rover mission went viral on the Internet. However, for another set of NASA workers–the firefighters at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida–there has been little joy in the face of imminent slashes to their retirement benefits by NASA contractor G4S. Last year, G4S, the …
As high temperature records are broken across the United States, health and public safety advocates are calling on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to finally issue a rule protecting workers from extreme heat. In 1972, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommended a heat standard, but OSHA has still failed …
OSHA Declines to Issue Rule Protecting Workers From Heat Read More »
Last year, In These Times detailed how the Obama’s Administration Department of Energy was helping one of its contractors, Honeywell, force concessions on unionized nuclear weapons workers in Kansas City. Now it appears that the Department of Energy for the first time is removing successor contract language that protects unionized workers as a contract shifts …
Department of Energy Drops Language to Protect Collective Bargaining Agreements Read More »
A recent Supreme Court ruling in Knox v. SEIU Local 1000 has some labor advocates howling that the Court is beginning to come after workers. The 7-2 ruling last week states that public sector employees must opt in to have their money spent on political action, instead of opting out as had been previously mandated …
A California-based company called VWR is busting its union, moving work to a non-union workforce a few hours away and receiving both federal and state tax incentives to do it. The scandal is yet another example of how companies can game the tax systems while hurting workers, and the government does little to stop them. …
Tax Credits for New Jobs, but Really for Union Busting? Read More »
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Last week, in a small victory for guest workers activists, the State Department announced that it had debarred guest workers recruiter Council for Educational Travel USA (CETUSA) from the J-1 cultural exchange guest worker visa program. CETUSA had provided student guestworkers to work in Hershey warehouses in Palmyra, Penn. As I reported last summer, these …
Exploited Hershey Students Win Small Victory Against Guest Worker Exploitation Read More »
WASHINGTON, D.C.—When the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) cites a company for workplace safety violations, it usually tells it to fix the problems at the specific location where the violation was discovered. But in an unusual—and for safety advocates, promising—move, the Department of Labor (DOL) agency is pushing for “enterprise-wide” changes as part of …
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, President Obama made three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—Democrats Sharon Block and Richard Griffin, as well as Republican Terry Flynn. Without the apppointments, the federal agency, which mediate labor disputes and oversees union elections, wouldn’t have had a quorum to issue valid rulings. (He also made a much more …
Obama Makes Recess Appointments to NLRB? Is it Enough for AFL-CIO Endorsement? Read More »
Taxi Workers Alliance joins AFL-CIO, as number of contract workers continues to grow WASHINGTON, D.C.—Last week, the National Taxi Workers Alliance became the first nontraditional labor group to join the AFL-CIO as an affiliate since the 1960s, when the United Farm Workers were admitted to the labor union federation. The alliance isn’t a union; since cab …
Can Nontraditional Labor Orgs Represent Workers? 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.
