More Die on Job in New York State Because of Bush’s Safety and Health Cuts
Eight years of Bush administration cutbacks in funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), particularly for an adequate inspection force, puts New York state workers at greater risk of dying on the job, a new report reveals.
“Dying for Work in New York,” released yesterday, also says immigrant, minority and nonunion workers are at greater risk on the job. The report was sponsored by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), the New York State AFL-CIO and the New York City Central Labor Council.
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 Many OSHA and [Mine Safety and Health Administration] MSHA rules were withdrawn or blocked.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.
Check Out Workers Memorial Day Via Facebook
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Workers Memorial Day is April 28 and as part of the preparation for the events and ceremonies to honor workers who have been killed or injured on the job—and to demand improved workplace safety—the AFL-CIO has set up a special Workers Memorial Day Facebook page.
On the just-created page, you can connect with other workplace safety activists, learn about Workers Memorial Day events in your area, or reach out to others to help organize actions where you live. The page also has a gallery of Workers Memorial Day posters from previous years.
If you are not are not already a Facebook member, it’s a simple, free process to register. If you are a Facebook member or have your own page, don’t forget to post the Workers Memorial Day information in your profile or on your page. That will help generate a community of people concerned about workplace safety.
Workers Memorial Day 2009 Materials Ready Now
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For many of America’s workers, going to work can literally be deadly. The most recent edition of the AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect shows that an average of 15 workers a day were killed on the job and each day, another 11,000 workers were injured or made ill in 2007. Overall in 2007 (the latest figures available), 5,488 workers died from workplace injuries and 4.0 million were hurt or made sick by their jobs.
Recent studies have shown that the workplace injury reports may miss as many as two out of three workplace injuries, meaning that the real toll of workplace injuries is much higher than reported.
On April 28, to honor those killed and injured on the job and to call for improved workplace safety, workers in the United States and around the world will mark Workers Memorial Day. The theme of this is “Good Jobs. Safe Jobs. Give Workers a Voice for a Change.”
Steelworkers Reach Tentative Contract with Shell
The United Steelworkers (USW) reached a tentative agreement yesterday with Royal Dutch Shell PLC—the lead company for the oil industry—on wages, benefits and working conditions that will become the minimum standards when local union negotiations get under way.
While agreement on the economic terms was reached, USW President Leo W. Gerard said safety issues remain.
These were tough negotiations, given the economic conditions of an economy still in a total free fall. The oil companies were not willing to work with us fully to improve process safety.
Massachusetts Unions Train Working Teens in Workplace Safety and Health
The Massachusetts AFL-CIO, along with several local unions, is part of a new alliance in the Bay State that will provide workplace safety training for the state’s alternative high school students.
Working with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and several state education and labor agencies, the alliance partners will conduct OSHA’s 10-hour construction and general industry course. In addition, alliance members will develop and conduct a broad workplace health and safety program for the teenagers—many of whom work while attending school—and also address other teen workplace safety issues.
Says Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes:
The most important thing about a job is the ability to make it home safely each night and return healthy the next day. We are involved with this program because it will not only provide valuable safety training so these students will be protected on the job, but it will also give them a leg up on employment opportunities in this tough economy.
Black Lung Disease on the Rise
In September 2007, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) confirmed what doctors and occupational health specialists had been seeing when examining X-rays of coal miners’ lungs during the past several years. After years of decline, the rate of deadly disease had doubled and was appearing in younger and younger miners. (Click here to read our coverage of the NIOSH report.)
Black lung disease, also called pneumoconiosis, is caused by breathing in coal dust. It slowly robs victims of their ability to breath. At the time, health care experts were puzzled by the spike in black lung cases.
The basic facts suggest, as Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts said that September, either the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) was not enforcing the safety rule that set a limit on how much coal dust could be in a mine’s atmosphere (two milligrams per cubic centimeter) or the permissible level was too high, or a combination of the two.
2008 in Review: Workers Sign Up with AFL-CIO Unions
Here’s the third part in our series taking a look back at 2008. Check out Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
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May-June
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Union members knocked on the first of what would be 10 million of union voters’ doors around the country to talk with them about the key working family issues in the 2008 elections. In the late spring and early summer, we focused on John McCain’s record on health care and the economy.
Along with door-to-door walks, union members mobilized through phone banks, labor council meetings, political training, worksite leafleting and public events.
As union volunteers talked with union members about McCain plans to tax their health care benefits, other union activists were shadowing McCain’s every stop, demanding real health care solutions answers and not just Band-Aid solutions.
