America’s bad bosses can’t help but get the message from the Trump administration: your workers’ safety is not a priority. In the months after President Donald Trump took office, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration lost 40 inspectors through attrition and made no new hires to fill the vacancies as of Oct. 2, according to data …
Workers’ lives take a back seat under Donald Trump Read More »
Washington Post reporters Lisa Rein and Andrew Ba Trim published an excellent front page article today chronicling Donald Trump’s largely successful effort to shrink the federal government: “By the end of September, all Cabinet departments except Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior had fewer permanent staff than when Trump took office in January — with …
OSHA Is Bleeding: Shrinking Government and Killing Workers Read More »
In a surprising and disappointing apparent rollback of OSHA’s enforcement policy related to poultry inspections, Acting Assistant Secretary Loren Sweatt has rejected recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) designed to address findings that poultry workers are intimidated about reporting health and safety problems to OSHA, particularly about their inability to get bathroom breaks. The GAO …
OSHA Rejects GAO Poultry Recommendations: Sees No Problem With Workers’ Restroom Access Read More »
On November 13, Marcus Vaughn filed a class-action lawsuit against his former employer. Vaughn, who’d worked in the Fremont, California factory for electric automaker Tesla, alleged that the manufacturing plant had become a “hotbed for racist behavior.” Employees and supervisors, he asserted, had routinely lobbed racial epithets at him and his fellow Black colleagues. Vaughn …
The Blue-Collar Hellscape of the Startup Industry Read More »
Day laborers, many of them undocumented, are reportedly being exploited as they rebuild after Hurricane Harvey, and their health and economic well-being are are stake. According to a report from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and University of Illinois Chicago that surveyed 360 workers, 26 percent of workers have experienced wage theft in their post-Harvey …
Workers’ rights are being abused as they rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Harvey Read More »
After multiple delays, OSHA has finally announced that employers who are required to keep OSHA injury and illness records must send summary information in to the agency by December 15, fifteen days after the deadline announced last June, when the agency proposed to delay the reporting deadline from July 1 to December 1. The rollout has been plagued …
One Last Time: OSHA Extends Recordkeeping Reporting Deadline Read More »
The New York Times has an article about failure of most hotel guests to give low-paid, hard-working housekeepers a much appreciated tip. Aside from the hard work they do, the Times also notes the hazards of the job. Angela Lemus, a housekeeper at the Wyndham Boston Beacon Hill who makes $19.91 per hour, said through a translator that in …
Over the past month, two workers have been killed at companies participating in OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Programs: Nucor Steel in Decatur, Alabama where Melvin Gant Jr. fell into a vat of the waste products of finished rolled steel, and a contractor at Valero Oil Refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, Ezequiel Guzman Orozco, who died after allegedly falling …
The poultry industry really, really wants to process the chickens you eat at rates of more than 140 per minute. Under former President Obama, the USDA considered and then backed off of an increase to 175 chickens per minute going down the line being eviscerated and inspected. Under Donald Trump, the National Chicken Council hopes that the …
The New York City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve a safety bill that establishes safety protocols as a way to prevent construction worker deaths, following eight months of intensive review by lawmakers, day laborers, unions, real estate developers, and contractors. The vote came nearly one week after two construction workers fell to their …
Construction job sites: the silent killer of immigrant 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.
