In a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee today, Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta today refused to commit not to rescind OSHA’s electronic recordkeeping rule. The rule, issued in 2016, requires employers to send injury and illness information into OSHA and prohibits employers from retaliating against workers for reporting injuries.
Electric car maker Tesla is being accused of underreporting and mischaracterizing worker injuries at its Fremont factory in order to make its safety record appear to be better than it, claims a new report. Reveal, a news site from the Center for Investigative Reporting, says Tesla has been lowering its official injury count by classifying musculoskeletal injuries, toxic fume exposure and other work-related injuries as personal medical issues or minor accidents.
OSHA has cited Summit Milk Products LLC, based in Waterloo, for ongoing failure to protect employees against burns at its facility. The cheese and dairy products manufacturer faces a total of $143,954 in proposed penalties for uncorrected and new hazards.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s NIOSH, between January, 2015 to February, 2017 oil and gas extraction workers were involved in 602 incidents, some resulting in multiple injuries. There were 481 hospitalizations and 166 amputations.
One momentary decision in a hazardous workplace forever changed the lives of a worker who suffered grievous injuries and the co-worker whose actions inadvertently led to that injury.
It also led to more than a quarter million dollars in fines against the company that employed them.
An OSHA investigation into a worker’s partial thumb amputation has resulted in safety citations and thousands of dollars in proposed fines against his employer. The injury occurred when the employee was clearing a jam on a bag sealing machine.
Workers’ compensation costs may not reflect the true cost of work-related illness and injury, according to two new studies that crunched the numbers on how work-related injuries affect companies’ health care costs – even when workers comp is available.
Law enforcement officers (LEOS) are three times more likely to sustain a nonfatal injury than all other U.S. workers, according to a first-of-its-kind study that examines nonfatal injuries among the group on a national scale. Assaults and violent acts are the top cause of such injuries (36%), followed by bodily reactions & exertion from running or other repetitive motions (15%), and transportation incidents (14%).
A Minnesota energy company says it will contest the $21,000 in fines leveled against it by the state’s OSHA for an incident at the company’s Becker power plant that left three workers with severe burns over large portions of their bodies.
A New York City construction worker who was permanently disabled on the job has settled a lawsuit for $1.5 million against a construction company and three real estate companies that owned the site.
News sources report that 44-year-old James Morrow was partially blinded in one eye at a Manhattan construction site on Aug. 29, 2014.
