Cross-posted from The Pump Handle.
Luis Castaneda Gomez, 34 and Jesus Martinez Benitez, 32 were asphyxiated in June 2011 when they were doing repairs inside a manhole. Their employer, Triangle Grading and Paving, was hired by the City of Durham, NC to make water line repairs. The firm had a history of violating worker safety regulations. Worse yet, it was not the first time an employee of Triangle Grading was killed on-the-job.
Durham, like most municipalities, did not have effective policies in place to guard against giving business to safety scofflaws. But that changed in Durham when it adopted a policy in 2012 requiring all bidders to provide information on their safety performance.
This example and many others are described in Winning Safer Workplaces: A Manual for State and Local Policy Reform. Liz Borkowski and I wrote the guide, along with the Center for Progressive Reform’s James Goodwin, Michael Patoka, Matt Shudtz and law professor Rena Steinzor. The document includes more than a dozen ideas for reforms that would empower workers, make sure crime doesn’t pay, and strengthen institutions. Ideas contained in the guide came from worker safety advocates and experts, including those with the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) and its network of COSH groups. Mary Vogel, the group’s executive director, welcomed the manual. “It’s exactly what’s needed to help strategize, advocate and win improved health and safety so we can prevent illness, injury, and fatalities on the job.”
Vogel can point to successful state and local campaigns to improve worker protections. A grass roots campaign led by MassCOSH, for example, won a bill of rights for temp workers. A coalition of faith leaders, labor organizations, safety advocacy groups and others in Massachusetts worked with state agencies to write legislation to better protect temp workers from employer abuse. The result was a 2013 law that requires staffing agencies to provide temp workers basic information, including the type of job they’ll be doing, requirements for special protective clothing and safety training, and the firm’s workers’ compensation insurer.
The topics presented in Winning Safer Workplaces are meant to enhance the conversation among workers and their allies about ways to strengthen protections and hold irresponsible employers accountable for failing to eliminate or control safety and health hazards. The key U.S. law addressing worker health and safety dates back to 1970. Working conditions have improved in those 44 years, but much still needs to be done to eliminate workplace hazards and retaliation against workers who speak up about safety concerns.
There’s little point in expecting change to come anytime soon from Washington, DC. Most of those “leaders” could care less about improving conditions for working people—and some are even hostile to such an idea. Just as we’re seeing with efforts to raise the minimum wage and provide paid sick leave, action to improve worker health and safety is not happening on Capitol Hill. States and localities are where it’s at.
Showing 2,819 results
Celeste Monforton | June 26, 2014
Cross-posted from The Pump Handle. Luis Castaneda Gomez, 34 and Jesus Martinez Benitez, 32 were asphyxiated in June 2011 when they were doing repairs inside a manhole. Their employer, Triangle Grading and Paving, was hired by the City of Durham, NC to make water line repairs. The firm had a history of violating worker safety […]
Alice Kaswan | June 25, 2014
In Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, seven members of the Supreme Court upheld the most important feature of the EPA’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program: the ability to require the vast majority of new and modified sources to install the “Best Available Control Technology” for reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs). As a consequence, eighty-three […]
Robert L. Glicksman | June 23, 2014
Co-authored with David L. Markell. Enforcement is widely acknowledged to be an indispensable feature of effective governance in the world of environmental protection and elsewhere. Unfortunately, criticisms of the U.S. government’s efforts to enforce the environmental laws began almost with the inception of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more than forty years ago – and they […]
Daniel Farber | June 23, 2014
Direct implications are limited, but we’ll be reading the tea leaves for future implications. Scholars, lawyers, and judges will be spending a lot of time dissecting today’s ruling. Overall, it’s a bit like yesterday’s World Cup game — EPA didn’t win outright but it didn’t lose either. Here are three key questions with some […]
Alice Kaswan | June 19, 2014
Power plants are not only one of the nation’s largest sources of greenhouse gases, they are also a significant source of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates, and mercury, all of which have direct public health and welfare consequences. EPA’s recently proposed Clean Power Plan, which applies Clean Air Act § 111(d) to reduce greenhouse gases […]
| June 12, 2014
With little notice in the West, India has just launched the most far-reaching corporate social responsibility (CSR) program in the world. The CSR law, which took effect April 1, requires large and mid-sized firms to contribute at least 2% of their pre-tax profits (averaged over the previous three years) to social, health, educational, or environmental […]
Robin Kundis Craig | June 11, 2014
On Monday, June 9, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court decided CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, — U.S. —, — S. Ct. —, 2014 WL 2560466 (June 9, 2014), a case that posed the seemingly simple legal question of whether the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (“CERCLA,” also known as Superfund), 42 U.S.C. §§ […]
Daniel Farber | June 11, 2014
OIRA should conduct a cost-benefit analysis of its own activities and explore alternatives to its current oversight methods. A White House office called OIRA polices regulations by other agencies in the executive branch. OIRA basically performs the role of a traditional regulator – it issues regulations that bind other agencies, and agencies need OIRA approval before […]
Joseph Tomain | June 9, 2014
The EPA’s June 2, 2014 announcement of a Clean Power Plan is momentous. On the surface, its scope, complexity, potential for myriad legal challenges and, not to mention, the difficulty of gathering reliable cost and benefit data, make it so. Mothers should advise their children to grow up to be energy lawyers, not cowboys. However, what […]