If George W. Bush ever worked in a factory manufacturing the popcorn that populates so many of our microwaves, he wouldn’t like the experience. And chances are, if had worked in such a factory, he wouldn’t be able to do the things he does best as president—like jog and clearing brush on his Crawford ranch.
Eric Peoples, 35, spent several years at Jasper Popcorn, where he developed bronchiolitis obliterans, a severe, progressive disease of the lungs. Eight other popcorn workers in Missouri came down with the same respiratory disease.
At that point, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) began inspecting plants and determined the illnesses were caused by the chemical additive diacetyl. But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which is charged with overseeing workplace safety, did very little. It did not increase plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.
Only days before congressional hearings last week on the issue did the Bush administration take its first steps to protect diacetyl-exposed workers, as David Michaels reports on The Pump Handle, a health and safety blog.
Maybe if Bush’s lungs were at stake, he would have moved a little faster. (Check out the AFL-CIO BushWatch site to see the Bush administration’s troubling workplace safety record, including cutting funds for OSHA and reducing enforcement of safety rules.)
Peoples worked at Jasper in the 1990s. But even in 2005, more than 12,000 workers were injured or made ill each day from a range of workplace hazards (2005 is the most recent year for which data is available.) Even worse, 5,734 workers died from workplace injuries in 2005. And these statistics do not include deaths from occupational diseases, which claim the lives of an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 workers each year.
For many of us, workplace safety and health is not high on the radar screen. But as the annual AFL-CIO safety and health report shows, injury and death on the job is a daily event. Released last week, the 2007 version of Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect report again highlights how much still needs to be done to make our workplaces safe.
Testifying before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee on employment and worker safety last week, Peg Seminario, the AFL-CIO’s safety and health director, said although the number of workers and workplaces covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) today is double what it was in 1970 when it was passed, there are fewer resources available to OSHA to meet its responsibilities. Health and safety standards are out of date or non-existent for many workplace hazards. Millions of workers still are not covered by the OSH Act and lack even the most basic safety and health protections.
Seminario spoke in favor of legislation introduced April 26 that would increase penalties for companies that violate workplace safety rules. The Protecting America’s Workers Act would penalize companies a minimum of $50,000 for a willful OSHA violation that leads to a worker’s death. Currently, the minimum fine is $5,000.
The administration’s proposed fiscal year 2008 budget for worker safety and health programs provides $490 million for OSHA, which, adjusting for inflation, represents a $25 million cut since Bush took office. OSHA enforcement staffing levels have been cut from 1,683 positions to 1,543, and staffing for development of safety and health standards has decreased from 100 positions to 83. To inspect each U.S. workplace, it would take OSHA 133 years with its current number of inspectors.
It’s not as if health and safety issues are ameliorating. Just this week, the United Nation’s World Health Organization reported that cancer deaths resulting from occupational workplace hazards could increase significantly in the coming decades because of greater exposure of workers to carcinogens in developing countries. Or we might add, in countries where job safety and health is neglected.
Although the number of U.S. deaths on the job was down marginally from 2004 (5,734 in 2005 compared with 5,764 the previous year), the data shows significant increases in fatalities among Latino and foreign-born workers.
A 2005 AFL-CIO report, Immigrant Workers at Risk: The Urgent Need for Improved Workplace Safety and Health Policies and Programs, found an alarming rates of injury and death on the job among immigrants. Between 1992 and 2002, workplace fatalities among foreign-born workers increased by 46 percent between 1992 and 2002. Fatalities among Latino workers increased by 58 percent over the same period. Further, although the share of foreign-born employment increased by 22 percent between 1996 and 2000,
the share of fatal occupational injuries for this population increased by 43 percent.
Last weekend, workers here and around the world commemorated Workers Memorial Day, an annual time to honor those who died at work and to act to make our workplaces safer. Workers, elected officials and religious and community leaders took part in 12,000 activities in 118 countries to bring attention to the unfulfilled promise of safe and healthy workplaces.
The first Workers Memorial Day was observed in 1989. The date April 28 was chosen because it is the anniversary date of the creation of OSHA in 1971 and the day of a similar remembrance in Canada. Trade unionists around the world mark April 28 as an International Day of Mourning.
But for those injured or killed on the job, one day isn’t enough. Right now, our next step is passage of the Protecting America’s Workers Act (S. 1244 and H.R. 2049). Click here
to tell your senators and representative to co-sponsor the legislation to expand OSHA protections to millions of uncovered workers, enhance whistle-blower protections and substantially increase penalties for serious, willful and criminal safety violations.
Related posts:
Spotlight
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
Advanced search
Success is not no violence.
REGIME CHANGE!!!
Tula!
Oh Shit, He’s Airborne!
If anyone lives in PA, Specter is no friend of the worker, despite the endorsement from the corrupt unions he received last time he was up for re-election. I hope they don’t make the same mistake in 2010.
Given the proclivities of the current administration, it’s a wonder that OSHA exists even vestigially.
Working in the service industry is not something to be ashamed of. That’s where I was making a dime through high school and most of my college years. I want very much to see my brothers and sisters in the service sector get a fair shake. A radical New Deal is in order. Viva Cesar Chavez!
Coddling workers is bad for (big) business. Let the free market take care of them.
We all need to get up right now and go take a look in the mirror. What you should see is the image of a bird…..a canary to be exact.
Whether one is talking about workplace safety or food safety, whatever. It doesn’t matter. We all have become the canary in the mineshaft.
Profit trumps all else.
Seineman @ 8
Amen.
At a nearby hosptial the nurses are in dispute with the hospital, primarily over nurse patient ratio and related safety issues. This has been going on for around a year now. A labor judge has ruled that the hospital cannot with-hold pay increases on anniversary date of hire due to there not being a new contract. Basically, the hospital has frozen wages and was told that’s a no-no.
It was always my understanding that you worked according to the most recently signed contract between managment and labor. If that contract stated you got a 5% pay increase on your hire date, that’s what you got, even though the current contract is ‘technically’ expired.
It’s no to Kevorkian but yes to Corporkian.
Looking for a safe workplace must be why Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar is moving to Dubai and taking his corporate headquarters with him, right? Where in the world Is Matt Lauer? Who cares? (Or if you do, just follow the petrodollars.) Make it stop. Please. The peripatetic morning host and his visit to Dubai: Standing on the Burj Al Arab Hotel helipad and hitting a golf ball into the wild blue yonder and watching it plummet into the sea 1,000 feet below. A memorable visual metaphor for the American presence in this corner of the world — rich, oblivious and so far above it all they can’t see what’s happening on the street.
Speaking about health and safty, if you’re ever in Napa or Sonoma County during crush, take a look at how the grape pickers run between the field and the gondolas carrying very heavy boxes of freshly picked grapes. And the wine industry in Cali makes a fortune. The pickers earn next to nothing by comparision. And many of them live between the grape vines rows in cardboard boxes until the end of harvest. That next glass of California wine you drink might not taste quite so sweet.
To see what Bushco thinks of workplace safety look no further than mineworkers. That is the perfect example of the fox guarding the henhouse and the resulting carnage.
If it’s not criminal, it should be.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 13
And they only earn it till the INS/ICE rolls in. But not till the harvest is over.
Nursing workplaces are some of the most violent and high risk for injury and illness places. Nurses are exposed to emotional, verbal and physical abuse on a routine and daily basis. Patients, families and visitors hit, scream, spit, punch, kick, stab, shoot and pinch nurses. Nurses take abuse from surgeons who throw needles, blades and surgical instruments at them, physicians who scream, humiliate and dehumanize them, a public who stereotypes them for sexual gratification and ridicule, and employers who expose them to toxic agents, radiation hazards, grueling work assignments, and physically nightmarish loads of lifting, moving and supporting morbidly obese patients.
Nurses show every sign of Stockholm Syndrome – they identify themselves as their employers’ nurses (ex. “I’m a St. Elsewhere nurse”), they commit routine and vicious horizontal violence upon each other, and throughout it all, there is no real patient advocacy as nurses rely on their employers for their livelihoods, brutal though they are.
Liberate nurses, and you will see a dramatic change in the approach to patient safety and advocacy.
The status quo is the current rate of preventable health complications and deaths which number in the hundred of thousands in the US alone, rising infant mortality rates, and rising rates of patient suffering and misery.
Every time I find that chocolate mint on my pillow in my hotel room, I feel not good. Workers unite.
What would happen if all the service industry workers went on strike for a week? Chaos. That’s what. In the end, radical action may be the answer.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 18
you mean because Hershey’s closing plants here in the US of A? even PA?
That works for non-life sustaining type of work. But for firefighters and nurses, where it leaves people vulnerable and exposed to real harm, not so much. And that’s the conundrum with organizing nurses within unions.
Nurses desperately need representation, consensus and a vehicle for empowerment. I advocate nursing self-governance organizations, whereby nurses join together to determine the conditions of their practice, and then they negotiate directly with organizations needing professional nursing to determine their salary, patient populations and to determine what institutional resources they require in order to provide the agreed upon services.
In other words, use the same model that physicians use and take back the power over professional practice from employers and non-nurses.
if anyone wants to watch the hearing Comey here;s a link to c-span (but its not listed anywhere on c-span)
link
Does anybody realize that if the billions spent on fighting the futile war in Iraq were instead directed toward health care and education for our children how much better things would be?
Shouldn’t that be
“If George Bush had ever worked period.”
Elliott @ 20
Now you have shifted my thoughts to NAFTA, CAFTA, the DLC and Hillary.
N=1 @
17
It depends on where you are. My mother is a retired pulmonary nurse. She went through pretty much everything you’ve described here, including an assault by a psych patient with COPD (after another nurse left a flashlight at his bedside) that left her partially disabled for months afterward.
Despite everything, she and nearly every nurse she worked with considered themselves to be patient advocates, first and foremost.
They were committed to quality patient care, even if that meant taking on their employer -and risking their paychecks – to make sure it happened.
And that’s the case in most hospitals.
spurious @
8
spurious,
Please forgve me but I wanted to make an adjustment to your statement to reflect current realities.
I’m not a Clinton basher but his record on work place safety, not as bad as Bush’s but not good.
How in the world can anyone think the DLC is a friend of the workers of America?
http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/s02308.htm
Hi Tula,
These are the European Regulations for health and safety at work.
In Germany, every company with more than 5 employees has to have a designated H&S representative. They have the power to stop any activity, machine, practice etc. that is unsafe and require management to fix it. Of course, we also have the right to join a union, sick-pay, a standard working week (37.5 hours) and all the other “goodies” that your government seems to think represents a “left-wing agenda”.
Good luck with your quest to improve worker’s rights.
dakine01 @ 26
good one!
Workers strike! Break the back of the greedy GOP!
dakine01 @ 25
Much improved.
cando @
28
Got that one right!
O/T but did anyone catch McConnell’s quote re: FISA that the Prez can still use wiretapping w/o warrants because Article II is Article II?
So I went to read my Constitution of the United States. I see nothing about the Prez being above the law but being entrusted to uphold the law. When he is sworn in, he is supposed to, uh, uphold, protect, and defend it. Not break it in order to keep it.
Where do these guys get off?
In the I Told You So dept, I knew the WH would not be able to resist Tony Snow’s latest challenge as an opportunity to emotionally manipulate WH press. Emotional blackmail anyone? I do hope he recovers but this is what is called a “boundary issue”
comments?
Oklahoma kiddo @
18
Do you leave a tip for those faceless workers? Most are women struggling to survive. It is a small form of income redistribution but there is no overhead.
Hillary Clinton thinks we are fools. She traingulates by saying she supports health care, all the while the record shows clearly that the Senator from NY is a strong backer of NAFTA, CAFTA and the DLC. Give me a break Senator. Oh and Senator, how does your vote supporting the Bush attack on Iraq help Mr. & Ms. Joe Sixpak and their kids?
When did corporate greed become “acceptable”? I seem to remember that it was under Reagan. When maximizing profits became the mantra, workers everywhere took a big bite. There should be a way to tie management compensation to performance, with respect to workers as well as shareholders.
Steve @ 35
“Small” is the correct word.
PA Lady @ 25: I appreciate your point. However, every time a nurse has too many patients in her caseload (I use “her” as 04% of nurses are female), patient advocacy and safety are compromised. Every time a nurse feels pressure to “turn over a bed faster” patient advocacy is compromised. Every time a nurse combines two medication administration times in order to save trips and to speed up processes, patient safety is compromised. It’s done in a thousand different ways, continually, in all practice settings.
I’ve discharged patients to the street, hustled family members away from the bed of a dead patient, carried medications for two patients in the same room to them simultaneously – and a host of other “little” things – always knowing that a failure rate of zero is the only acceptable one and that people make mistakes.
I’ve also been fired for whistleblowing more than once, and now I have been blacklisted and seem to be permanently unemployable. The last employer – considered a sparkling gem in the healthcare world, didn’t report infant deaths, kept a dozen rotting infant remains in the morgue, and worked unskilled laborers without training or supervision more than 80 hours weekly as routine – all without benefits. Not a single agency gives two hoots. The media never responded – I have all of the primary source documentation.
So what? Who cares? Nobody.
When nurses can reconcile the two, patient advocacy will have been achieved.
94% – NOT 04% Sorry
Oklahoma kiddo @ 39
In the big social picture it is very small but to the individual getting a additional twenty or so dollars “extra” income a day, it may not be so small.
I’d rather have a decent wage and benefits. In writing, rather than have to depend on the variable of ‘tips’.
Which has proved the more correct prediction? “Wealth of Nations” or “Das Kapital”?
Thanks, Tula!
spurious @
38
Corporate greed has been acceptable as long as corporations have existed. It’s essentially part of the legal definition of for-profit corporations. But under Reagan, corporate greed became praiseworthy, even holy.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 44
Neither. “1984″.
About Snow’s bracelets…what would happen if J.Edwards asked his press detail to wear Elizabeth bracelets in solidarity w/her?
N-1
You have my deep thanks, as a former tech. I agree with much of what you say.
N=1 at 40 — I can confirm your story. My Mom is an RN and works in the nursery and post partum area of her local hospital.
Every night she’s on duty she has a least one call where another department is trying to put a patient with an infection in one of her beds, because there is no bed available in their area.
The rules say you can’t put a patient with an infection in an area where there are premies. She shouldn’t even have to deal with this — and yet it happens all the time.
Some of her stories leave me shuddering.
I was working part time at one place, and the minimum wage went up about the same time as the anniversary one year. The guy at the top decided that since the increase in minumum was bigger than the amount due because of the anniversary, that that was the only increase I got. It meant that with two years (at that time) on the job, I was getting the same pay as someone just hired for the same job. (My supervisor wasn’t happy about it either.) Needless to say, the guy at the top wasn’t popular with a lot of people around there, all of whom had gotten the short end in one or another of his (mostly political) maneuvers.
N=1: I see your point, and yes – the staff cuts and the hospital’s desire to fill beds often and faster definitely has an impact.
My mom retired the day after “Bath in a Bag” was introduced in her hospital (think thick baby-wipes) basically to free up nurses and aides so they could take on even more patients.
And yes, they were shipping out patients who’d had chest tubes out for less than 24hrs, counting the floor and shift managers as working RNs, etc
OT: A question came up when the subpoena for the DOJ/Rove email came out about the disposition of the gwb43 emails. Well, Henry’s on top of that.
In what is it written that Adam Smith was God?
JeffinBerlin @ 30
Far from seeing improvement, lots of places are seeing erosion of workers’ rights. As Canada is ‘harmonized’ with the US under NAFTA and under-the-radar agreements between governments, our hard-won rights are disappearing. EG, Ontario’s Labour Standards Act of 2001
AP – Ten Republicans who often evoke Ronald Reagan hope the Gipper’s magic rubs off as they face each other at the late president’s library in the first GOP debate of the 2008 race.
Froomkin says DOJ scandal is getting closer to the White House.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..inionsbox1
Loo Hoo @ 57
Good.
Loo Hoo @ 57
goodie gumdrops!
thanks for the linky
I thought OSHA could shut a company down for not folowing safety rules. That’s what I hear from my cabinetmaking friends- if they have employees. If sole proprietor, then OSHA doesn’t apply.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) just released a statement taking former Sen. John Edwards to task for his new ads on President Bush’s veto of a bill establishing a firm deadline for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 61
Linky, por favor?
As usual, the hardest part of solving any problem is getting accurate info, and the gov’ts PR doens’t begin to tell us what we need to know and MSM — well, we know about that.
Tula, thank you for the very informative links, I will bookmark them.
Eureka Springs @ 62
http://blog.washingtonpost.com…..punch.html
Loo Hoo @
57
From ABC News:
D.C. Law Firm Suspends Woman Who Worked as Escort
John Dowd, one of Akin Gump’s partners, is representing Monica Goodling.
So has OSHA been infiltrated by the administration too?
If Gore does not run, Edwards is my choice.
I’ve been working on a coding project to have an order automatically appear within the admit order group (includes things like bp, weight, precautions, instructions, and around 15 other things) depending upon some data that we’ve already collected on this patient. The Nursing Informatics Team is not thrilled about having this order out there. The NIT group are all RN’s and some with Masters. They are *not* thrilled about this order out there because they feel that this is something the attending physician should evaluate and then give at least a verbal order for the immunization. (There’s a kick to get as many people vaccination for pneumonia as possible as quick as possilbe.) Right now it got shelved because a nursing governing body wants a clearer definition of liabilty (and other legal stuff) for administering the immunization without having a physician signature first.
Working with these nurses has opened my eyes to how some of this stuff works and some of it is just plain BS and some of it is more than just CYA.
well this is off topic sorry, but you guys really have to watch this video
it’s just a snippet and way out of context but watch the president try to say “either we’re gonna win or we won’t”
he can’t hold in the laughter as he tries to say we might win
it is nice to be replacing republicans with Democrats in Congress and elsewhere. But what really needs to be done is to remove the influence of money, corporate influence, in government. Otherwise, the influence of corporate greed will just turn the Democrats into more republicans.
uhoh—Clusterfuck slips up and uses the “O” word as a part of his Iraq war justification:
“‘And casualties are likely to stay high,’ he said of the war. ‘Yet, day by day, block by block, we are steadfast in helping Iraqi leaders counter the terrorists, protect their people, and reclaim the capital. And if I didn’t think it was necessary for the security of the country, I wouldn’t put our kids in harm’s way.’
“Of the enemy he said, ‘You can attack a nation several ways. One, you can get 19 kids to fly airplanes into buildings, or you can gain control of something a country needs and deny that country access to that, in this case, oil, and run the price of oil up, all attempting to inflict serious economic damage”
Dodd attacking Edwards for not supporting his (Dodd’s) plan to get troops out of Iraq SOONER than the 18 months Edwards proposes.
Christine @ 68:
Most people have no idea what the practice of professional nursing entails. People simply expect nurses to be there providing excellent care when they need it. But they don’t know what “it” is, and they don’t know how critical it is to include nurses in health policy planning, fiscal policy, and especially in professional autonomy.
When nurses are loyal to employers, physicians and third party payers instead of to patients, bad things happen.
FYI, new thread
Clusterfuck now apparently blaming the “terrorists” for high gas prices. He’s right of course- but the terrorists are hiding in the board room of Exxon-Mobil.
christine @ 68
Christine — will the “collected information” show the patient’s allergies?
Were you aware that some patients are allergic to the medium the virus in a vaccine is cultured in?
I don’t blame a nurse for not wanting to give an immunization without a doctor’s authorization and signature.
Anaphylactic shock can kill in less than 20 minutes. And if there’s no doctor authorizing the administering of the vaccine, guess who’s going to be blamed if the patient dies?
Some might consider the above practicing medicine without a license — and that carries some pretty harsh penalties. I’m on the nurses side in this one.
Loo Hoo @ 66
that was prolly one of their first targets
rwcole @71 – that sounds more like a reason for war with Iran.
“Peoples worked at Jasper in the 1990s.”
Yes, someone exposed to chemicals in the 1990s has only one President to blame – the future President Bush.
If only there were someone who was President at that time and in charge of OSHA who could have done something.
rwcole @ 75
But but but, there has been no terroist act on US soild since 9/11! So they can’t be terrorists.
Gary at 79, OSHA timeline FYI
You know how Bush/Cheney/Rove like to say, or at least strongly imply, that “If you vote for Democrats, terrorists will kill you”?
We need to reply:
“If you vote for Republicans, *Republicans* will kill you.”
Harsh? Yes. Bolder than usual? You bet. But false? Things to think about before you say it’s wrong: Katrina. Iraq. 9/11. Resistance to the HPV vaccine. Women’s reproductive freedom. Arresting/torturing/killing innocent/random people under the color of law. Resistance to the climate change consensus. Disdain for science and the reality-based community. Pet food. And now people food.
If you vote for Republicans, Republicans will kill you.
Brisingamen @ 76
You bet your sweet patotie that if ‘we’ know about an allergic reation, it’ll have been recorded. And I spefically look for allergies before thinking about adding the order (I’m the one writing out the code in the programs.). If we know for sure how many vaccines they’ve received, it’s documented and if there’s a documentation of 2 or more, no go. Also if the patient is over 65 years of age and has received one at that age, no more. There’s a few other things that will make the order a no go.
The rest of what you wrote are some of the basic reasons why this project was put onto the shelf. The nurses (in Informatics and the governing board) feel that charting and then administering the injection is *not* a good practice to set without the attending physician at least first signing off on the order. They also think the attending should make the call in the first place, not them.
Not to pick nits, but doesn’t Shrub clear brush on a pig farm?
I only wonder in the name of honesty, and the fact that if a Democrat did this it would be out that the D wasn’t a real rancher.
Even a born-n-bred Connecticut Yankee like me (who tirelessly tells people that Nutmeggers aren’t like Shrub or Ann Coulter) knows that ranching only refers to animals one herds, like cattle, goats and sheep.
Can someone who really knows clear this up? Thanx!
christine @ 83
Brisingamen @ 76
Sounds like good reasoning to me. I had an unplanned trip to an ER last year, and one of the things they needed to do was give me a DPT shot.
So I told the nice young doctor, “I’m allergic to most flu vaccines (duck egg albumen) can you check with the Pharmacy and make sure that’s not in there?” He looked a little startled and went off to place the call.
The nurse came in awhile later with the shot and a big grin — turns out DPT vaccine is safe for me (nice to know). She said my question had caused a flurry of activity in the Pharmacy…
If you want to really burn your brain out, go to this PBS Frontline website and either read the documentation or click to watch the program on-line. I have shared this video with individuals who work in industrial safety, and they were amazed, and educated by it..
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…..workplace/
I bet you can’t guess which party this caring company is closely affiliated with?
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA…..cf.00.html
I thought OSHA could shut a company down for not folowing safety rules. That’s what I hear from my cabinetmaking friends- if they have employees. If sole proprietor, then OSHA doesn’t apply.
Mesquite:
Let me clarify you’re confusion of OSHA’S coverage. If a company is not Incorporated, the owner is therefore not an employee, so he/she personally is not covered by OSHA. HOWEVER, if he/she has employees, they (employees not the owner) ARE covered. If a company is Incorporated, the owner is also an employee and he/she is also covered with their employees.
Wadda ya mean? The Repubs said in the debate that they respect all life and when there is a mine disaseter (due to their lack of regulation as seen in their voting)… they pay top dollar to retrieve the destroyed or broken bodies.