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Climate change poses a serious threat to occupational health and safety. Workers — especially low-income workers and those who work outdoors — are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures and increasingly frequent extreme weather and other climate-related disasters.

Corporations’ widespread use -- and abuse -- of forced arbitration in employment contracts allow them to steal billions of dollars from workers every year with impunity. Employers have unilaterally imposed mandatory arbitration agreements onto 60 million American workers, and the practice is only becoming more widespread. By 2024, 80 percent of nonunion workers will be subject to forced arbitration.

Wage theft is a massive crisis for workers, but federal, state, and local agencies have failed to address the problem. Wage theft occurs in many forms: Paying wages lower than the minimum wage, not paying overtime wages, coercing employees to work "off the clock" before or after shifts, prohibiting workers from taking legally mandated breaks, confiscating tips, and more.

Nationally, nonprofit organizations employ about 10 percent of the entire private workforce. That’s 12 million paid workers -- nearly as many as the entire manufacturing field. Many of those employees, with the exception of higher-paid college and hospital workers, earn $4 to $5 per hour less in terms of total compensation than similar workers in private industry. Many factors contribute to the nonprofit wage gap. For some organizations, a reliance on donations or government contracts puts a ceiling on employee compensation. For others, mission-first means serving the cause even if it means sacrificing the financial well-being of the employees tasked with doing the actual work. This is unacceptable -- especially during a time when the nonprofit world is increasingly focused on the importance of aligning mission and human-resource policies. But figuring out how to make that alignment happen is the tricky part.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously struck down a Washington state law that was aimed at helping federal contract employees get workers' compensation for diseases arising from cleaning up nuclear waste. The case, United States v. Washington, concerned the federally controlled Hanford nuclear reservation, a decommissioned facility that spans 586 square miles near the Columbia River. The reservation, formerly used by the federal government in the production of nuclear weapons, presents unique hazards to cleanup workers.

Conventional wisdom holds that seeing "natural" and “organic" on product labels somehow means the companies selling those goods are using better, safer ingredients. However, these words often offer a false promise to consumers and the planet.

While the Center for Progressive Reform staff advocate for stronger protections from toxic chemical spills, none of our experts assumed that one of our own would gain firsthand experience on the matter.

In 2001, an explosion at the Motiva Enterprises Delaware City Refinery caused a 1 million gallon sulfuric acid spill, killing one worker and severely injuring eight others. In 2008, an aboveground storage tank containing 2 million gallons of liquid fertilizer collapsed at the Allied Terminals facility in Chesapeake, Virginia, critically injuring two workers exposed to hazardous vapors. In 2021, the release of over 100,000 gallons of chemicals at a Texas plant killed two contractors and hospitalized 30 others. In addition to injury and death, workplace chemical spills and exposures contribute to an estimated 50,000 work-related diseases such as asthma and chronic lung disease each year, as well as nearly 200,000 hospitalizations. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created to reduce risks and hazards to workers, and to prevent incidents like these. However, following through on this promise has been another matter.

Earlier this month, HBO Max aired an important series about toxic ingredients in cosmetic products. The series also examined the professional beauty industry and the health effects to workers exposed to toxic ingredients. Toxic ingredients are found in cosmetics and other personal care products. The toxic chemicals used in them have been linked to a wide range of health problems, including ovarian cancer, breast cancer, early-onset puberty, fibroids and endometriosis, miscarriage, poor maternal and infant health outcomes, diabetes and obesity, and more. As I noted in Not So Pretty, "There is a loophole in federal regulation that allows industry to use almost any ingredient and label it as 'fragrance.'"