More good OSHA Articles

[Jordan Barab]

The Las Vegas Sun continues its hard-hitting series of editorials on the future of OSHA, and the Charlotte Observer asks why so many construction workers and getting hurt and killed. (By the way, you'd have access to these articles faster if you were my Facebook "friend.")

 

 

A life-and-death issue for the nation's workers

Congress should focus on human cost, not the false arguments in worker safety debate

Thu, Dec 4, 2008 (2:05 a.m.) http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/dec/04/life-and-death-issue-nations-workers/

By the Labor Department's count, on average, 15 people are killed each day on the job and about 11,000 suffer occupational illnesses or injuries. Labor Department officials and business interests crow about the numbers because, they say, the numbers are declining. Many economists and safety experts question that claim, noting that the government fails to count millions of injuries every year.

Regardless, just taking the official numbers, can it really be a success that more than 5,400 people are killed every year on the job and more than 4 million are injured?

 

Adding insult to injury

Poor worker safety costs injured workers, taxpayers and the economy billions each year

Wed, Dec 3, 2008 (2:06 a.m.) http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/dec/03/adding-insult-injury/

One of the standard objections to workplace safety regulations is money. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, calls the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's rules "a significant burden" for small businesses and it intimates that any more regulation would end with thousands of companies shutting their doors.

This argument has had great success in Washington for decades, as business groups have been able to fend off regulation in the name of the economy. Over the past eight years, aided by the Bush administration, business has either killed or delayed regulation on ergonomics, personal protection equipment for employees and the industrial chemical hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen best known to America from the Erin Brockovich case.

But the argument is little more than a scare tactic to avoid the cost of preventive safety and health programs. The result is that workers suffer avoidable injuries and illnesses, taking a significant toll on the economy because the bulk of the costs are paid by the public.

 

Uptown worker's death raises new safety questions

Experts say accidents are all but inevitable given the dozens of work sites in Charlotte.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/597/story/390085.html

By Kirsten Valle and Ames AlexanderThe fatal accident involving a worker Tuesday at the Wachovia tower under construction uptown highlights the persistent dangers of the construction industry, long one of the nation's most hazardous.

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Jordan Barab