Good News and other news
Jordan Barab
VICTORY AT SMITHFIELD: Union scores big win in North Carolina
In what unions are hailing as a crucial victory in the South, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union prevailed in their 16-year campaign to organize the world's largest pork slaughterhouse.By a vote of 2,041 to 1,879, workers at Smithfield Foods' massive hog plant in Tar Heel, N.C. voted to unionize the plant in what had become one of the most closely-watched labor battles in the country.
OSHA behind on regulation, accountability
Patrice Woeppel, Haydenville, Mass.
Fri, Dec 12, 2008 (2:04 a.m.)
Thomas M. Stohler, acting assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, claims in his Sunday letter to the editor that OSHA has been effective in making improvements in worker safety and health. As proof, he cites the decline in the workplace fatality rate.
Indeed, it would appear from Bureau of Labor Statistics fatality figures that fatalities have declined. However, it is conservatively estimated that 10 times that number go unrecorded by the bureau. Those are the fatalities caused by occupational illnesses, particularly toxic chemical exposures.
What has OSHA really accomplished in the past eight years? Reliance on voluntary compliance, and the withdrawal of every regulation attempted since 2001.
At the same time, about 650,000 chemicals are in use in industry today. We have regulated fewer than 500 of them, and most of those regulations are woefully out of date. By comparison, the European Union regulates 30,000 chemicals, and many that we allow here have long been banned by the EU.
This is a disaster of monumental proportions: It is conservatively estimated that 60,000 lives are lost in our country each year to illnesses resulting from workplace toxic chemical exposures. Worker safety is a major public health crisis, costly in lives and billions of dollars each year.
The time is long overdue to make the employer responsible and accountable to create and maintain a safe and healthy workplace.
Companies Refuse to Pay OSHA Fines
Investigative ReporterPublished: December 9, 2008There is always some risk of an accident at work. That's why the state's Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets strict rules to prevent disasters from happening.
In 2007, a disaster took David Mill's father in Taylors, "My father was a great man. He overcame a lot of obstacles in his life," said Mills talking about his father, David Ingram.
Ingram died May 2007 while working for Clinton Safety Associates near a Taylor's facility. He suffocated inside a tanker while trying to clean out glue.
OSHA cited the North Carolina company for failing to supply Ingram with proper oxygen, and not having a plan in place to get him out quick. "Maybe my father would still be here if procedures [were] followed as they should have been followed," said Mills.OSHA fined the company $58,000 dollars, but reduced it to less than half. It's currently the largest unpaid fine with OSHA.
Even after OSHA gave it a break, the company's owner disappeared. He's not the only one.