Last week wasn’t a good one for New York City’s construction industry, which has come under increasing criticism for taking safety shortcuts under pressure from high-end developers eager to capitalize on the city’s building boom.

I’m not sure that was their intention, but what could make hiring undocumented workers more attractive than passing a law that “prohibits undocumented workers from receiving payments if injured on the job?”

If a President or Congress want to dismantle worker protections or other government programs, they don’t have to repeal or change legislation; they can work their damage through the budget process. Slash the budget of a program you don’t like, and those protections no longer exist. Check out the President’s proposed budget in that context.

With more plastic-based products on the market than ever before, concern about the work-related risks of the chemicals used to make them is increasing. One of these chemicals is styrene, a compound used extensively in plastic and rubber for cars, food packaging, boats, and many other products.

Winemakers could soon receive a tax break that would spur production of higher-alcohol wines, a move that would pad their bottom lines but that has health advocates seeing red.

Fifteen workplaces. Eighty-seven hazards corrected so that companies were not fined $609,000 in enforcement penalties. Approximately 3,197 employees made safer.

Cal/OSHA has cited two companies $352,570 for multiple workplace safety and health violations, including ten serious and three willful category violations, following an incident in which a worker lowered into a 50-foot drainage shaft fell to his death. Neither D&D Construction Specialties, Inc. nor Tyler Development, Inc. followed permit required confined space procedures to work in confined spaces.

The International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) has released an updated version of its Personal Fall Protection Equipment Use and Selection Guide.

Representatives of the construction industry, as well as general industry have petitioned Labor Secretary Alex Acosta to reopen the silica standard, workplace safeguards that would save over 600 lives and prevent more than 900 new cases of silicosis each year.

Helmets and high visibility clothing were no help to a group of bicyclists when a Michigan man who was under the influence of several drugs got behind the wheel of his pickup truck on June 7, 2016.