The financial and social impacts of workplace injuries are huge, with workers and their families and taxpayer-supported programs paying most of the costs. Read the full OSHA Report: Adding Inequality to Injury: The Costs of Failing to Protect Workers on the Job How has the cost of a workplace injury affected you? Share your story about workplace injuries. ...
According to a recently published study, as many as 90 percent of the employers participating in the annual U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) do not comply with OSHA recordkeeping regulations, resulting in underreporting of work-related injuries and illnesses by 38 percent of the surveyed employers Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of...
PONTIAC, Mich. – Asphalt Specialists Inc. has been found in violation of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act by the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration for wrongfully terminating a foreman and two truck drivers. They had raised safety concerns after being directed to violate U.S. Department of Transportation mandated hours of service for commercial truck drivers. Headquartered in Pontiac, the asphalt paving company was ordered to reinstate the three employees to their former positions with all pay,...
JESSE NEWMAN for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL April 9, 2014 After an explosion at an Imperial Sugar Co. factory in Georgia killed 14 workers and injured dozens in 2008, U.S. officials promised rules for handling the well-known workplace hazard that caused it: combustible dust. Six years later, there has been little change. Now, as investigators continue to explore the possibility that dust could have caused the collapse of a feed mill in Omaha, Neb., this past January, the...
WASHINGTON – Preliminary results from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries released on August 22 show a reduction in the number of fatal work injuries in 2012 compared with 2011. Last year, 4,383 workers died from work-related injuries, down from a final count of 4,693 fatal work injuries in 2011. Based on preliminary counts, the rate of fatal workplace injuries in 2012 was 3.2 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, down from...
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) Federal regulators have proposed $193,300 in fines for a Billings, Mont. sugar plant after inspectors discovered 17 health and safety violations. The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced Monday that The Western Sugar Cooperative has 15 days to contest the agency's findings. Among the alleged violations, 12 were considered serious enough to raise the probability of workers being killed or seriously injured. Those included inadequate fire exits, failure to provide railings...
NPR Nearly 180 people — including 18 teenagers — have been killed in grain-related entrapments at federally regulated facilities across 34 states since 1984, records show. Their employers were issued a total of $9.2 million in fines, though regulators later reduced the penalties overall by 59 percent. Click here to read about these incidents by state on NPR.com ...
Forty-two years have passed since the Occupational Safety Health (OSH) Act was signed into law. Now, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) has reintroduced the Protecting America’s Workers Act (PAWA) (S. 665) in an effort to strengthen the nation’s occupational safety protections. She calls the legislation "a long-overdue update to the OSH Act, and a good step towards making workplaces safer and healthier across America." PAWA works to address workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths. Specifically, PAWA would expand OSH...
In 2011, 4,693 workers were killed on the job, according to a new AFL-CIO report, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.” That is an average of thirteen workers every day. In addition, another estimated 50,000 die every year from occupational diseases – an average of 137 a day, bringing the total worker fatalities to 150 a day. North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska and Arkansas had the highest workplace fatality rates, while New Hampshire, Rhode...
The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a new report “Better OSHA Guidance Needed on Safety Incentive Programs” that analyzes employer’s use of safety incentive programs in an effort to bring reportable injuries down. OSHA relies on employer injury and illness records to target its enforcement efforts. However, questions have been raised as to whether some safety incentive programs and other workplace safety policies discourage workers from reporting injuries and illnesses suffered in the...
AFL-CIO Each day in 2010, 13 workers on average were killed on the job—some 4,690 workers—and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, according to the AFL-CIO's annual report, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.” Released today, the report shows the number of those who died in 2010 (the most recent year for which data are available) is up from the 4,551 people who perished in 2009. This trend that has continued since 2004, the first year in a...
The numbers are staggering. In 2010, an average of 150 workers died from job injuries and illnesses every day. And nearly 4 million workers were hurt or made ill. America must do better. That’s why working families across the country will come together to mourn the dead and injured and continue the struggle for good jobs that are safe and healthy for all workers. This Saturday, April 28, is Workers’ Memorial Day. On this day, we remember...
STEELEVILLE, Ill. – The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. for six safety violations – including three willful – after two maintenance employees conducting welding operations sustained serious burns to their upper bodies as the result of an explosion within a dust collector at the company's Steeleville pasta manufacturing plant on Oct. 6, 2011. "Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. has a responsibility to protect workers conducting welding operations from known...
By Lorraine McCarthy PHILADELPHIA—Federal regulators have proposed penalties totaling $283,000 against the operator of a Hershey Co. facility in Pennsylvania that employed foreign students to repackage candy, after an inspection prompted by student complaints revealed alleged workplace safety and health violations, the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Feb. 21. OSHA cited Exel Inc., an Ohio-based logistics contractor, for nine workplace safety and health violations at the Eastern Distribution Center III in Palmyra, Pa., a...
OSHA has cited Zaloudek Grain Co. with four serious safety violations following an incident involving two 17-year-olds in August 2011. Both suffered leg amputations when they became caught in an inadequately guarded screw auger while cleaning out a grain flat storage structure at the company's facility in Kremlin. OSHA investigators found serious violations including failures to affix or secure the machine guard over the moving screw auger, provide training for workers assigned to enter grain...