Workers Memorial Day In Los Angeles

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



Today is Workers Memorial Day, the day we remember those who have died on the job. They come from all walks of life, merely trying to get ahead and create a better world for themselves and their families. And yet, each year, thousands of people die from unsafe working conditions or hazardous duty; 16 deaths per day, in fact.



Over the weekend I attended a Workers Memorial Day event in Los Angeles, at the UCLA Labor Center near MacArthur Park. I saw the makeshift memorial to some of the 404 workers who died at their place of employment in California in 2008, adorned with pictures, flowers, and also the tools of work - cleaning supplies, a computer mouse, fruits and vegetables, a surgical mask, and paint rollers. I read about Damien Whipple, 24, who fell off a train into the tracks while working to switch out rail cars. I read about Abdon Felix, 42, who collapsed in 108 degree heat while loading grapes at Sunview Farms in Delano. I read about Carlos Rivera, a 73 year-old dockworker at the Port of Long Beach who was struck by a forklift carrying rolls of sheet metal.

Every year, worker rights and safety advocates, unionists, clergy, and the families of the victims gather in Los Angeles, to honor these workers and bring awareness of the real problem of worker fatalities. They hold a mock funeral procession around the area, to make everyone in the community aware of the issue, and to demonstrate solidarity with the cause. Leaders read names of 40 of the 404 who died, and after every name, the crowd assembled replied "Presente!" in a show of unity.

Representative Laura Richardson (D-CA) of nearby Long Beach spoke at the event. She's a former member of the Machinist's Union, and she talked about her employment history. "I worked at 'The Bomb Shelter,' a restaurant area, when I went to UCLA. I cleaned the toilets and the tables, and I never recall anyone offering me any gloves," Richardson said. "I worked at UPS, and no one offered me steel-toed shoes." She painted a picture of workers often taken advantage of on the job, of a lack of protective gear and supplies, a lack of training, a lack of empathy by forcing workers to show up even when sick or injured, upon threat of termination.

"That's why I support HR 2067, the Protecting America's Workers Act," Richardson announced to the crowd. "Even though our laws in California are better than most, they're not good enough, and the federal laws haven't been improved in 40 years."

In fact, Workers Memorial Day Coincides with the anniversary of the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and Richardson is correct - many of those statutes have not been updated for a changing workplace since their passage. "It's not good enough to put a poster on the wall," Richardson said, "we need supervisors following the law, and if they aren't they should be penalized."

We're seeing with the recent high-profile cases of worker deaths, like with the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion, that employers have grown savvy at beating the system and circumventing regulations. That's why they need to be strengthened and given the teeth needed to truly provide for a safe workplace.



And if anything, the recession has deepened that need. We've seen corporate productivity rise as their workforce gets reduced. Basically, most companies are producing more with less. The staffs have increased stress and that can lead to more accidents. Some advocates for hotel workers told me that hotel staff has been slashed across the board even as amenities increase and the workload rises. This can easily lead to preventable accidents.

In a proclamation today on the 40th anniversary of OSHA, President Obama recognized the need for constant vigilance in protecting America's workers:

Although these large-scale tragedies are appalling, most workplace deaths result from tragedies that claim one life at a time through preventable incidents or disabling disease. Every day, 14 workers are killed in on-the-job incidents, while thousands die each year of work-related disease, and millions are injured or contract an illness. Most die far from the spotlight, unrecognized and unnoticed by all but their families, friends, and co-workers -- but they are not forgotten.

The legal right to a safe workplace was won only after countless lives had been lost over decades in workplaces across America, and after a long and bitter fight waged by workers, unions, and public health advocates. Much remains to be done, and my Administration is dedicated to renewing our Nation's commitment to achieve safe working conditions for all American workers.

Providing safer work environments will take the concerted action of government, businesses, employer associations, unions, community organizations, the scientific and public health communities, and individuals. Today, as we mourn those lost mere weeks ago in the Upper Big Branch Mine and other recent disasters, so do we honor all the men and women who have died on the job. In their memory, we rededicate ourselves to preventing such tragedies, and to securing a safer workplace for every American.

Now OSHA merely needs the proper tools to succeed in their mission. And the Protecting America's Workers Act can provide it.

The Most Unsafe Workplace Watched By 75,000 Screaming Fans

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



Tonight in New York City, football executives will change the lives of hundreds of young men at the NFL Draft. Young men from around the country will see their fortunes arrive with the call of their name from the podium. They will be feted with signing bonuses and performance bonuses and endorsement contracts and millions of dollars in salary. And then in the fall, we'll all trudge out to our local stadia to cheer on these same players to victory.

But what will we be watching? Actually, we'll be invited into the workplace of two football teams, a workplace as cruel and debilitating as any in the nation. Over the past several months, members of Congress have investigated the prevalence of concussions and neurological injuries arising from the game of football, and the results have been unsettling.

Are professional football players at greater risk of dementia and other neurological problems?

The question took center stage in Congress on Wednesday during hours of testimony from doctors, retired athletes and National Football League executives. A congressional committee waded through conflicting perspectives on past and current studies, and urged the use of greater precautions to help protect participants in one of America's most popular pastimes [...]

"Surely, an $8 billion a year industry can find it within its budget to make sure players are adequately protected and that any victims of long-term brain disease are fairly compensated," said Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

These are "life and death issues. They go to the heart of our nation's most popular sport, and equally importantly, they affect millions of players of all ages and their families."

The New York Times has done a particularly good job of covering this issue. Through their coverage, you can see the NFL first deny, then admit the long-term effects of concussions on their employees; allow the co-chairs of their concussion committee to quit, and select new ones; set new rules on players returning from concussions (they now have to wait longer); and yet continue to deny the magnitude of the problem, rejecting the evidence that concussions and repeated contact can lead to long-term brain damage.

But that evidence is very clear. Take the case of former NFL lineman Ralph Wenzel, now living in an assisted living facility:

The five paper-clipped sheets that were slipped into a wire basket at the Van Nuys State Office Building looked no different from the other workers’ compensation claims filed by welders and cashiers. But this packet was different: it will almost certainly become a test case in considering National Football League teams’ liability for the dementia experienced by retired players.

The claim was filed by Dr. Eleanor Perfetto on behalf of her husband, Ralph Wenzel, contending that his dementia at 67 is related to his career as an N.F.L. lineman from 1966 to 1973... They estimated the case’s potential value at more than $1 million if it reaches its conclusion, probably in two or three years [...]

After watching her otherwise healthy husband begin to lose his mental faculties in his mid-50s and be placed in an assisted-living facility at 64, Dr. Perfetto has become one of the most outspoken voices in football’s dementia debate. She testified at a United States House Judiciary Committee hearing on brain injuries in October and served as a resource for other spouses of former players with dementia; in December 2008 she tried to attend a meeting between N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell and retired players but was turned away.

“Having a judge deem this is work-related would move this forward and keep it very visible,” said Dr. Perfetto, a senior director at Pfizer who holds a Ph.D. in public health from the University of North Carolina. “I think when they look at all the information it will just be undeniable.”

This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to anybody. The repetitive stress of banging heads with other large men equipped with helmets and pads is bound to take a toll on the body and the brain. Football players are well-compensated for the risks they take, but the cumulative effect of constant hitting is undeniable. And football owners and medical personnel, along with the culture inside locker rooms, keep players in danger and on the field even when they're injured. This PBS story on Hall of Famer John Mackey is simply devastating.

However, I notice a difference between how the concussion story has played in media and on Capitol Hill versus, well, every other workplace in America. When football heroes are faced with a hazardous workplace, there are multiple hearings, and massive media coverage, and serious pressure on management to fix the problem and make the workplace safer. When your manufacturing plant, or hotel, or restaurant, or other place of business, has an unsafe workplace, there are no cameras, there are no hearings, frequently there are no inspectors. This is the problem that the Protecting America's Workers Act intends to fix.

We don't have spectators at our jobs. We don't make millions of dollars. We cannot expect the kind of pressure on our bosses to fix our problems. Government must ensure safe workplaces for everyone, from the football star to the mine worker. And so we need PAWA to update the rules for worker safety and create the kinds of penalties to make employers change their behavior.

I worry about the stars who will be drafted tonight, and the hazardous work environment they will face. I also worry about the rest of the workers in America. Someone needs to look out for them, too.

The Energy Plant Explosion You DIDN'T Hear About

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



The disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine in Coalmont, West Virginia has justifiably brought a lot of attention to the issue of worker safety and the need for strong regulation to protect America's workers. But as Chris Bowers points out, this is the kind of story you can write every day in America. Worker safety didn't become a problem because of one mine explosion in West Virginia. Indeed, 16 American workers die every single day, on average, at the workplace, and the federal agencies tasked with making sure that doesn't happen need more resources and more tools to combat such tragedies.

Why, just days before the Massey Energy mine accident, another energy plant saw a deadly workplace disaster:

The death toll from Friday’s fire at Tesoro’s Anacortes refinery in Washington state grew to five, according to news reports.

Three refinery workers were earlier reported to have died following the fire, and a fourth and fifth died of their injuries after being taken to a hospital in Seattle, according to news media reports.

Two other injured workers remained in critical condition at the Seattle hospital.

Sources indicated to Reuters that the fire was caused by a failed heat exchanger, which alternately heats and cools hydrocarbons at the plant. Workers were replacing a separate heat exchanger when this one failed, causing an explosion.

The Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency which oversees refineries like this, was already investigating a flash fire at a separate Tesoro refinery in Utah from last October, as well as multiple other fires across the country. A similar blast killed 15 workers at a BP refinery in Texas in 2005. This is becoming an epidemic.

CSB (Chemical Safety Board) Chairman and CEO John Bresland said, “The CSB has 18 ongoing investigations. Of those, seven of these accidents occurred at refineries across the country. This is a significant and disturbing trend that the refining industry needs to address immediately.”

And yet, the Chemical Safety Board cannot issue citations or fines, only safety recommendations. They can request that a refinery shut down because of safety concerns, but they cannot mandate it.

This is just an example of where government lacks the tools and resources necessary to keep American workers safe at their jobs. There are worker's memorials all over the country which are a living reminder that we have not succeeded in creating safe and secure workplaces. Every April, Worker's Memorial Day serves to deliver that reminder.

That's where the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA) comes in. The Obama Administration under the leadership of Hilda Solis is actually doing a great job of restoring the gutted agencies under the Labor Department's purview, which have been ravaged by 30 years of deregulation and industry capture. But the regulations themselves need to be beefed up, in addition to having better regulators and better tactics. David Michaels and Jordan Barab are leading the Occupational Health and Safety Administration into a new era. They actually slapped the largest fine in history on BP for their failure to fix safety violations even AFTER their 2005 refinery explosion. OSHA is reconfiguring their inspections to target severe violators.

All of this is good. But now they need to be given the ability to succeed. PAWA would do that, by extending OSHA coverage to 8 million more workers, by updating civil and criminal penalties for violations, and by providing an effective deterrent to employers to maintain unsafe workplaces.

We need to eliminate the kinds of headlines we see in West Virginia or Washington or Texas. We need employers to live up to their responsibilities. We need to protect America's workers.

Deaths In The Fields: Why State Agencies Need Help Protecting America's Workers

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



It's hard to find a tougher job in America than harvesting in the fields. Throughout California, known as the nation's salad bowl, farmworkers, frequently migrants with little knowledge of their rights as workers or even the English language, toil in triple-digit heat, often without shade or water breaks. Needless to say, this dangerous work has resulted in serious injury and even deaths.

Jose Rosario Valencia started feeling nauseated just after 9 a.m. on July 17. His heart rate sped up and his knees buckled.

Valencia was scared. He'd heard of other farmworkers dying of heat stroke in the fields.

"I thought about my family and how they would suffer," said Valencia, 46, who moves irrigation pipes in the onion fields.

Even though California passed a groundbreaking law in 2005 to protect farmworkers from heat illness and death, there have been as many as 10 heat-related fatalities in the years since. Among the victims in 2008 were a pregnant teenager who died when her body temperature climbed to 108 degrees after working in a Lodi vineyard and a 37-year-old man who suffered heat stroke after loading table grapes near Bakersfield. The state has confirmed heat as the cause of six of the deaths and said it may have been a factor in the others.

Farmworkers get paid by the piece, based on how much they load, and their employers set quotas that they are expected to cover. They have every incentive to avoid breaks and work as hard as possible; in some cases, the water is simply out there for display. As a result, farmworkers skip bathroom breaks. They skip water breaks. They stay out in the fields under 100-degree heat with the fear that they would be fired if they did not. And as a result, workers die.

The most celebrated case in recent years was that of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17 year-old farmworker who died of heat strike in the fields in the summer of 2008. She was pregnant at the time.

Maria collapsed while working for Merced Farm Labor in a vineyard owned by West Coast Grape Farming outside of Stockton, CA. Maria worked for nine hours in temperatures that reached 101 degrees. There was no water nearby. There was no shade.

After about 2 hours of delays, Maria was finally taken to a clinic. Her temperature upon arrival was 108.4 degrees. Maria's heart stopped six times in the next two days before she passed away. Doctors said if emergency medical help had been summoned or she had been taken to the hospital sooner, she might have survived.

In 2009, Cal-OSHA, the state occupational safety board, delivered regulations to combat heat-stress related injuries and deaths. The employers first tried to amend the regulations, trying to classify the vines in the vineyard as "shade." But they failed, as Cal-OSHA refused to rewrite the laws.

However, lobbying for changes in the law is only one way that employers evade oversight. Under the Schwarzenegger Administration and during the historic budget crisis in the state, funding for Cal-OSHA has shrunk. Only two HUNDRED inspectors monitor all the worksites in the nation's most populous state, including the 35,000 farms. There are more fish and game wardens in California than worksite inspectors.

And if an employer is cited, they can use a favorable appeals process to reduce the fines or dismiss the violations, something which has been done repeatedly in recent years. All violations can be appealed to a judge, appointed by the appeals board. Then the appeals board can vacate the judge's ruling. This offers many opportunities to game the system.

The head of the state Senate's Labor Committee accused a workplace safety board Wednesday of being biased toward employers and ignoring a law that requires fines for failing to report on-the-job injuries.

After a hearing, Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said he might introduce legislation that could lead to criminal charges against board members if they continue to disregard the law that calls for a $5,000 fine for employers' failing to report accidents in a timely manner.

The hearing came after a Times investigation last fall that found that the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health appeals board repeatedly dismissed and reduced the penalties levied by division inspectors, even in situations in which workers had died or were seriously injured.

One recent case was dismissed based on a spelling typo in one document. And this is more about ideology than budget problems: for example, Cal-OSHA received stimulus money to hire more inspectors, but has so far declined to do so.

Despite all of these obstacles, the new emphasis on worker safety by Cal-OSHA in the last growing season did pay some dividends. Last year, more vigorous training and enforcement efforts did serve to reduce heat-related illnesses and deaths. But already Cal-OSHA is talking about backing off, content that the media storm over the plight of the farmworkers has largely ended.

Rising compliance and awareness, Welsh said, may allow his agency to relax its inspection efforts in 2010.

"The 3,400 inspections we did last year was a little more than we can sustain," he said.

This is why we need HR 2067, the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA). A fully resourced OSHA could fill in the gaps where the state-level agencies often fail. They could deliver larger penalties without the byzantine appeals process at agencies like Cal-OSHA. They could provide the ability for families to seek justice from employers through the courts. Simply put they could restore the promise of a safe and health workplace for everybody in America.

Even in the fields.

The Story Of American Workplaces

(This post is part of Brave New Films' 16 Deaths Per Day campaign, for which I am a blogger fellow.)

Steven Greenhouse reports in the New York Times that employers are routinely underreporting illnesses and injuries to their workers.

The report, by the G.A.O., the auditing arm of Congress, said many employers did not report workplace injuries and illnesses for fear of increasing their workers’ compensation costs or hurting their chances of winning contracts.

The report also said workers did not report job-related injuries because they feared being fired or disciplined and worried that their co-workers might lose rewards, like bonuses or steak dinners, as part of safety-based incentive programs.

“The widespread underreporting so clearly documented in this report is undermining the health and safety of American workers,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “If we don’t know the full extent of the workplace hazards workers face, we cannot fully address these risks.”

Mr. Harkin was one of the Congressional leaders who requested the report.

It's hard to even determine the problems with workplace safety when employers are systematically undermining the data. And it's impossible for industry to take credit for declines in workplace injuries and even fatalities if the official data cannot be trusted (that decline can also be attributed to the overall decline in the workforce due to the recession, too, as well as the decline in staffing at the agencies that keep the records). In fact, the GAO report concluded that OSHA may have failed to account for "up to two-thirds of all workplace injuries and illnesses."

See, OSHA relies on data from employers for a bulk of its surveying about workplace safety. That's right, the foxes write up the reports about the henhouse. When you start talking to people other than the site managers, some interesting statistics crop up:

The accountability office also found that more than a third of the occupational health practitioners it surveyed said that employers or workers had pressured them to provide insufficient medical treatment to hide or play down work-related injuries or illnesses.

The safety and health administration requires employers with more than 10 workers to record every work-related injury or illness that results in lost work time or medical treatment other than first aid. Some occupational health practitioners say that to avoid recording an injury, some employers will try to limit treatment for a serious injury to just first aid.

In other cases, the practitioners said, employers might seek alternative diagnoses if the initial diagnosis would result in a recordable injury or illness.

They want to avoid OSHA site inspections, which they know the agency is only equipped to perform on the most egregious violators. If you stay out of sight, you'll be out of OSHA's mind, in all likelihood.

When you read the independent reports, outside of OSHA, you begin to get the true picture of what American workplaces look like. In the low-wage market, there are all kinds of systematic violations, forcing employees to work longer hours for less pay - and these violations extend to health and safety. This stress and strain may account for the shocking rise in workplace suicides over the last year.

“This report confirms that when it comes to the documenting of workplace injuries, we can’t just take employers at their word,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. “The system, to this point, has been all too easy to game.”

Which is why we need real changes to the system like the Protect America's Workers Act.

GA-Sen: Ads and Scandals

Jim Martin is using some tracker video in his latest ad, exposing Saxby Chambliss as a know-nothing on the economy.

ATLANTA – Jim Martin’s campaign released a new ad focused on the economy and Martin’s plans to work with President-elect Barack Obama to create jobs and cut taxes for middle class Georgians. With record job losses, falling home values, and retail sales dropping, it's clear that Georgia's economy is in trouble, but Saxby Chambliss says, “We may not be in a recession. I don't know what that term means.”

It's an ad very reminiscent of the Obama campaign, which used McCain's verbal gaffes to great effect. I think they're using the same voiceover talent as the Obama ads as well.

Martin might also want to pick up on the Imperial Sugar scandal. In February an accident at the Georgia factory killed 14, and Chambliss apparently used a Senate committee hearing to shift blame away from the company, despite their liability in creating a hazardous work environment.

Chambliss “Verbally Mugged” the Imperial Whistleblower at a Senate Hearing. On July 30, 2008, the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, of which Chambliss is not a member, held hearings on the Imperial Sugar explosion. During the testimony of Graham H. Graham, Saxby Chambliss entered the hearing and was allowed to question Graham. The Savannah Morning News said that from the outset it was clear that Chambliss had no intention of using the committee hearing as a fact-finding process. Tom Barton of the Morning News wrote that Chambliss “verbally mugged” Graham. He added that Chambliss’s clear intent was to discredit Graham and to place the blame for the explosion squarely on Graham’s shoulders. [ Savannah Morning News, 7/30/08; 8/1/08; 8/3/08]

Questions Were Seen as Attempts to Discredit Graham, and They Toed the Imperial Company Line. The Savannah Morning News reported that “An Imperial Sugar Co. executive's lawyer says the company put U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss up to harassing his client at a subcommittee hearing. Near the end of the Tuesday session in Washington, the Georgia Republican lit into Graham H. Graham, Imperial's vice president of operations. ‘I believe Chambliss was espousing the company line in an effort to discredit and blunt Mr. Graham's testimony,’ the attorney, Philip Hilder, said.” [ Savannah Morning News, 8/1/08]

Even Sen. Johnny Isakson Found Graham’s Testimony “Credible.” Chambliss’s treatment of Graham separated him from his Senate colleague Isakson. Isakson said, “I will say that I find Mr. Graham a credible witness.” [Savannah Morning News, 7/31/08; 8/1/08; 8/3/08; Associated Press 8/1/08; Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, 8/7/08]

The Aftermath: Chambliss Refuses to Apologize; Still on Company’s Side

After the Fire, Amidst Calls for Increased Regulation, Chambliss Called for a Quick Investigation So That “Imperial Sugar Can Move Ahead with Reconstruction of Its Facility.” Chambliss, a frequent critic of increased government oversight, made the comment just a week after the explosion in response to State Rep. Bob Bryant, D-Garden City, who called for tougher rules on dust after having met with the Port Wentworth plant's workers and their families.[ Savannah Morning News, 2/16/08] [...]

Chambliss Subpoenaed in Imperial Sugar Case; “Effort to Shift Responsibility” from Company Alleged by Victims’ Attorney. On Oct. 24, the Savannah Morning News reported that “U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss has been ordered to provide evidence in lawsuits stemming from the Feb. 7 Imperial Sugar Co. explosion and fire. The Republican lawmaker was subpeonaed Wednesday on behalf of four victims - two dead and two injured - of the Port Wentworth inferno that killed 14 and hurt scores of others… Savannah attorney Mark Tate says Chambliss might be part of an Imperial ‘effort to shift responsibility’ away from the company. The lawsuits, which Tate filed on behalf of the four victims and others, claim Imperial ‘wrongfully’ failed to remove hazards that caused the disaster.” [ Savannah Morning News, 10/24/08]

Let's see if Martin makes this a rallying cry in the race. Because it's all about turnout, scandals like this aren't frequently deployed in runoff elections. But I think this can be an exception. Chambliss carrying water for a corporate behemoth that saw their workers killed through their own negligence is a powerful symbol.