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Set your wristwatch alarms or your VCR for this Sunday (June 7) at 7:00 pm (EST) to watch CBS’s 60 Minutes and a hard-hitting story on OSHA and its failure to protect workers and communities from combustible dust explosions. CBS’s correspondent Scott Pelley interviews Carolyn Merritt (former Member of the US Chemical Safety Board), Tammy Miser (whose brother Shawn was killed in an aluminum dust explosion), Edwin Foulke (OSHA Asst. Secretary), and at least one EXPERIENCED but UNDISCLOSED speaker.
Many thanks to the CBS crew who pursued and persisted with this story: David Gelber, producer; Joel Bach, associate producer; and Rachel Kun, researcher.
The scene was an icy morning in western Maryland, along the Garrett County and Allegany County lines. Mr. Dwight Samuel Colmer, 41, a truck driver with Western Maryland Lumber Company was hauling a load of coal just before 11:00 AM when his truck began to slide. The State of Maryland’s “Motor Vehicle Accident Report” says:
“…hit guard rail, and overturned to the passenger side. Driver was ejected and crushed under the dump truck and died from the injuries.”
The report indicates the incident occurred on a public road called Bartlett Street. Is this a work-related fatality?
Well, it depends on which agency you ask.
OSHA’s Assistant Secretary Edwin Foulke is expected to travel to Port Wentworth, Georgia today, more than 3 weeks after a horrific combustible dust explosion at Imperial Sugar took 12 workers’ lives. Another 11 workers remain in critical condition at a burn treatment center in Augusta. Apparently, pressure from Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) and Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) convinced Mr. Foulke that a trip to the Dixie Crystals’ community is appropriate. It is, afterall, a workplace disaster on par with the January 2006 Sago disaster which also claimed the lives of 12 men, and arguably more devastating because scores of other workers remain critically injured. I wonder why we expect to see MSHA’s top officials at the scene of mine disasters (e.g., Crandall Canyon, Sago, Quecreek) but we don’t wonder where is OSHA’s Foulke?
Tyler Kahle, 19, (photo) and Craig Bagley, 27 (photo) were killed four months ago at the NovaGold Resources’ Rock Creek mine near Nome, Alaska. MSHA is completing its investigation; so far, all the Kahle family has been told is that the lift basket was 90 feet off the ground and ”it tipped over.” Sadly, what the Kahle family has learned, is that mothers, fathers and other family-member victims of workplace fatalities have few if any rights, the exclusive liability provision of state workers’ compensation laws is a cruel joke, and families are excluded from the fatality investigation process.
This harsh reality compelled a group of families to develop a “Family Bill of Rights” to provide fundamental rights to loved ones left behind by workplace fatalities.
By David Michaels
It is time for Congress to enlist the nation’s science and policy experts to help develop a federal workers’ compensation program for 9/11 rescue, recovery, and cleanup workers. The inadequacy of state worker programs led Congress to legislate special compensation programs for uranium miners, and civilian workers in nuclear weapons facilities. We did not require the families of those killed in the terrorist attacks to rely on state workers’ compensation programs. The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (pdf) provided more than $7 billion to families of the victims. Read the rest of this entry »
If you have a job, do you know who your employer is? The answer isn’t always straightforward, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández points out in a recent Boston College Third World Law Journal article, and the implications can be profound.
In “Feeble, Circular, and Unpredictable: OSHA’s Failure to Protect Temporary Workers,” García details the disadvantages temporary workers face. Temporary work is unstable, and few of the workers – who tend to be women, blacks, and Latinos – receive health insurance, paid vacation days, sick leave, or pension plans. The fact that many temporary workers are recruited and paid by temporary help firms, and then assigned to user firms, complicates the question of who’s actually employing them and is responsible for providing a hazard-free workplace. García explains:
by Les Boden
I’m going to answer this question. But before I do, I’m going to have to explain a few things about (ugh!) insurance.
The sub-headline in Andrew Wolfson’s story tells it all about the perils of workers’ compensation for injured and ill workers:
“It’s either meager benefits or nearly impossible suit.”
The Louisville-Courier Journal reporter’s May 19 article describes both the physical and economic challenges faced by William D. “Billy” Parker, who lost both arms four months ago in a drywall shedding machine while working at Six Sigma Inc. in Jeffersontown, KY. Mr. Parker, 39, is a single father, raising his 15-year old son (who now cooks the meals at home and, every morning, applies deodorant under his dad’s arms.)
by Les Boden
For the past several years, Nevada employers and insurers could avoid paying workers’ compensation benefits to workers who had positive drug tests. According to an article in Occupational Hazards, this led to the denial of 10%-12% of claims filed in Nevada. But there’s a loophole that the Nevada legislature is considering closing. Workers have the right to refuse drug testing. The Insurance Journal reports that proposed legislation would require all injured workers to submit to drug tests if they apply for workers’ compensation.
What a good idea!
