Workers Memorial Day Are you safe on the job and in the home?
Workers Memorial Day
April 28, 2007
April 28, 2007
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Working conditions have improved over the years due to the efforts of workers and their unions. But the fight to protect all workers must continue as
the toll of workplace injuries, occupational diseases, and deaths remains enormous.
Consider these facts:
- An estimated 152 workers are killed and 11,507 are injured on the job each day.
- In 2005, the most recent year of available data, 4.2 million workers were injured and 5,734 workers were killed because of on-the-job hazards.
- Another 50,000-60,000 workers died due to occupational diseases.
- Also in 2005, the number of fatalities among immigrant workers increased by an alarming 63 percent since 1992, amounting to 1,035 deaths.
Why are still so many workers and their families suffering unnecessarily?
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This administration impairs protections, favoring “voluntary compliance” over enforcement among the seven million worksites that OSHA overlooks, which is estimated at less than one percent. OSHA has issued only one significant health standard since Bush’s presidency, and that was because of a federal court order.
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A perfect example of OSHA’s failure to protect workers is the agency’s eight-year delay in requiring employers to pay for
personal protective equipment (PPE). First introduced in 1997, the PPE rule would make employers pay the costs of protective clothing, lifelines, face shields, gloves and other equipment used to protect workers from job hazards.
In 1999, OSHA promised to issue the final PPE rule, but missed that deadline and every self-imposed deadline since. The agency failed to act in response to an AFL-CIO and UFCW petition in 2003. This year, the AFL-CIO and UFCW sued OSHA, asserting that the Bush Administration’s failure to act on issuing the final PPE standard is putting workers in danger. By OSHA’s own estimates, 400,000 workers have been injured and 50 have died due to the absence of this rule. Workers in some of America’s most dangerous industries, such as meatpacking, poultry and construction, and low-wage and immigrant workers who suffer high injury rates, are vulnerable to being forced by their employers to pay for their own safety gear because of
OSHA’s failure to finish the PPE rule.
Another pressing issue OSHA is failing to move on is regulating the exposure to diacetyl, a deadly chemical used in flavorings. In July 2006, the UFCW and Teamsters petitioned the Department of Labor (DOL) for an Emergency Temporary Standard for diacetyl under Occupational Safety and Health Act.
Diacetyl is a hazardous chemical that has been connected to a potentially fatal lung disease that has been experienced by food industry workers across the nation. There have been dozens of cases of what has become known as "popcorn workers lung," or bronchiolitis obliterans—a severe, disabling, and often-fatal lung disease experienced by factory workers who produce or handle diacetyl.
In 2002 and 2003, OSHA’s own scientists studying diacetyl unsuccessfully urged their leaders to take broader action to protect workers. There are currently no
OSHA standards requiring exposures to be controlled.
The petition in July was accompanied by a letter from 42 of the nation’s leading occupational safety scientists, including a former OSHA director, five former top officials from OSHA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services, who all agree that there is more than enough evidence for OSHA to regulate.
In an April 25 New York Times article, Stephen Labaton writes about OSHA’s lack of concern in enforcing workplace safety and exposing dangerous on-the-job conditions during the Bush administration. In talking about OSHA’s lack of urgent response to the danger of diacetyl, Labaton says,
“…That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees—often former officials of the industries they now oversee—have eased regulations or we4akened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, loggin in forests and coporate mergers.”
Meanwhile, good jobs—jobs that pay living wages and provide affordable health care and pensions—are disappearing. While corporations’ profits continue to grow, they are cutting employees' pay and outsourcing needed jobs. Worker safety and health protections—rarely a priority for most employers—will be further threatened in a low-wage economy.
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On April 28, let us mourn the workers who have lost their lives on the job and rededicate our fight against such injustices and every worker’s right to a safe job. We must recognize that millions of workers in the U.S. continue to work in pain and lose their livelihoods because of work-related injuries and occupational diseases. We must force the Bush administration and Congress to urgently take action to protect all workers.
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