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Workers Memorial Day 2009 |
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The very real threat of being killed or seriously hurt on the job hangs over every worker and workplace in the nation. In 2007—the year with the latest available figures—5,657 workers lost their lives on the job and more than 4 million other workers were hurt or made ill, according to the AFL-CIO’s 18th annual “Death on the Job” report.
“Death on the Job” reports that another 50,000 to 60,000 workers died due to occupational diseases. On an average day, 15 workers lose their lives as a result of workplace injuries and disease, and another 10,959 are injured. Yet little has been done in recent years, says the report, to improve job safety and protect workers.
For eight years, the Bush administration failed to take action to address major safety and health problems. Many OSHA and [Mine Safety and Health Administration] MSHA rules were withdrawn or blocked. The rules that were issued were largely in response to court challenges, congressional mandates or tragedies. New and emerging hazards were not actively addressed. Voluntary efforts were favored over strong enforcement.
The report is released each year in conjunction with Workers Memorial Day. Unlike the past eight years, the U.S. Department of Labor will join the AFL-CIO, working families and their unions this year to mark the day set aside to honor those killed and hurt in the workplace and to fight for strong workplace safety laws to protect the living.
Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, along with family members of workers killed or injured, will take part in a Workers Memorial Day ceremony at the Department of Labor at 8 a.m. April 28. Later in the day, she will join AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and other union leaders and help break ground for a new national workers memorial at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md.
Also set for Workers Memorial Day is the first of two hearings this week by the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee examining the need for stronger penalties for workplace safety violations and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) record on enforcing the nation’s workplace safety laws. The Senate Employment and Worker Safety subcommittee also will hold a job safety hearing April 28.
“Death on the Job” calls current civil penalties for employer violations of workplace safety laws
woefully inadequate, even in cases of workplace fatalities. The OSHAct’s criminal penalty provisions are also very weak and rarely utilized.
The report also notes that years of budget cuts and inadequate funding have crippled the safety agency’s ability to adequately enforce workplace safety standards.
OSHA funding and staffing has not kept pace with the growth in the nation’s workforce. As a result, OSHA’s ability to provide oversight has diminished with the average frequency of federal OSHA inspections now more than once every 137 years for covered workplaces.
The new Obama administration and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate hold the promise for new and stronger workplace safety standards, says Sweeney.
Working people are looking to the new President to strengthen the OSHAct with tougher civil and criminal penalties, increase funding for OSHA to provide greater oversight, and fully implement the provisions of the MINER Act.
Just last week, legislation (H.R. 2067) was introduced to strengthen health and safety penalties, bring more workers under the protection of OSHA, protect workers who blow the whistle on employers who break the law and strengthen worker safety rights.
The report also shows that Latino workers continue to face much higher risks of death on the job. In 2007, 937 Latino workers were killed on the job. The fatality rate among these workers was 4.6 per 100,000 workers, 21 percent higher than the fatal injury rate for all U.S. workers. Since 1992, the number of fatalities among Latino workers has increased by 76 percent from 533 fatal injuries in 1992.
The report provides an in-depth state-by-state analysis on workplace safety, the most dangerous occupations, a breakdown of fatalities by race, the dollar toll of workplace deaths and injuries, a look at OSHA inspection and enforcement actions and more.
Click here to download a copy of “Death on the Job.”
Hundreds of Workers Memorial Day events around the nation, including at Wildwood School in Los Angeles, where 12th graders will join with members of CLEAN (the Community Labor Environmental Action Network) and the Carwash Workers Organizing Committee (CWOC) of the United Steelworkers (USW), to spotlight the unsafe working conditions in the Southern California car wash industry.
In Boston, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH) and the Greater Boston Labor Council will hold a ceremony on the state House honoring Bay State workers killed on the job. MassCOSH will release its annual report “Dying for Work in Massachusetts: The Loss of Life and Limb in Massachusetts.” You can download a copy of the report at www.masscosh.org and www.massaflcio.org.
In Minnesota, unions will honor workers killed on the job at events in Apple Valley, Duluth, Mankato, Minneapolis, Oakdale, Rochester and St. Paul.
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Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Las Vegas Reporter - Construction Deaths in Nevada
Again I want to Congratulate Las Vegas Sun Reporter, Alexandra Berzon, upon receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for her stead fast and lengthy investigative reporting on the Construction Deaths in Nevada.
Click here: Sun wins the Pulitzer Prize - Las Vegas Sun
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/apr/21/sun-wins-pulitzer-prize/
Another important story in this series was her reporting on the death of two and the serious injury of a third in what was found to be serious and repeat safety violations. This story clearly represents the improper power that commerce has over the health and safety concerns of our workers. Here the back room meeting with Nevada enforcement officials and the violators corporate legal team resulted in the “Get out of Jail” card. It cost the lives of two workers and almost a third.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/mar/13/sun-wins-public-service-award-construction-deaths-/
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/topics/construction-deaths/
These “Death in the Workplace” stories are very important, yet there still remains an even more tragic and troubling reporting that needs to surface in order to protect the working public. We need more reporting to publicly expose the conduct faced by those workers that don’t die, yet are also injured on the job. Injured on the job only then to be “Killed” by the Administrative Claims Process which was designed to deliver timely treatment, compensation and benefits to the injured. Today this process is now used as a tool of “Cost Containment” with a message delivered which says, “Your workplace injury is NOT welcome Here!” This is the tool used to provide only the basic elements all injured workers need to properly heal, recover and protect their families after an injury on the job. But the message is clear, you will PAY for becoming a Liability!
The conduct of employers and insurers, starving out injured workers, denying medical treatment without a lawful basis, conspiring with medical providers to build phony cases in order to cut off the lawful delivery of benefits and compensation to injured workers, and holding out injured workers and their families until they are forced to give up on the facts and the truth, these are just a few of the realities faced by injured workers today as these greedy employers and insurers place Profits above People.
These techniques and patterns of conduct are well known by these insurance profiteers, as this is their signature, and a standard operating practice, when for increased margins and profitability, an employer and insurer will conspire and work together to create a “Hostile Workplace Environment” against the responsible and lawful reporting of legitimate workplace injury claims.
In cases where injury on the job results in an injured worker who needs treatment and benefits, an employers safety experience and insurance profit margin can drive an ugly pattern of conduct intended to coerce and encourage lawful and would be claimants from coming forward with lawfully required reporting. These are the signals of a safety culture tainted by mixed signals and polluted by a greedy profit motive intent on making margins off the backs of injured workers. These are the same Corporations that would demand that “Ethics” and “Codes of Conduct” guide their activities, but their history of “Contested Claims” tells another story.
Injured Workers are at RISK every day, so we continue to ask that our new Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, Please take the necessary steps required to expose and investigate this well know FAILURE within the Delivery of Health Care Treatment and Benefits to our Injured Workers. If you need a guide to show you the crimes driven by Commerce, you need only contact me, I will show you the path of the Injured Worker.
This is a Crime against our Injured Workers and this conduct must stop NOW!
Congratulations Alexandra Berzon and the Las Vegas SUN!! Please Protect Our Injured Workers TOO!!
Most important now is that our new Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, take specific action to provide a pathway for injured workers to be protected from abuse and discrimination in the workplace. Place attention on the responsibility of employers to rehire their injured workers and keep them actively employed. And make sure that a real “Culture of Safety” is present in the workplace.
Your Comments and Feedback are most Welcome!
Craig Michie - Injured Worker
NvVIAW@aol.com
Nevada Voters Injured At Work
It is long overdue that feds enforce OSHA laws and standards. It is long overdue that local law enforcement treats some worker deaths as what they really are, homicide. Bosses whom order workers to perform unsafe acts that result in death and injury should be under full penalty of law. Right now, slap on the wrist no matter how horrible the injury/death to workers.
Workman comp: If injury was result of failure of boss to enforce and obey osha/state law; then penalty and fine of several hundred percent of settlement should be made. Time to correct those employers whom disreguard the law and reward those folks whom obey the law.
Employers whom obey the law and care about the safety of workers should not be punished by paying for those employers who care not’s criminal misconduct.