A Family Voice on Workplace Safety
A scathing critique of the Nevada state Occupational Safety and Health program prompted a recent Congressional hearing that spotlighted how the agency’s shortcomings have tragically affected workers and their families.
At the October 29 hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Education and Labor Committee, members examined many of the findings from a special study by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) after Nevada experienced 25 workplace fatalities in 17 months, from January 1, 2008 through June 1, 2009.
Nevada is one of 27 states and American territories that take federal funding to enforce workplace health and safety standards, in lieu of enforcement by OSHA itself. OSHA has oversight responsibility for the state agencies and conducted this review as the first in a series of studies to be conducted on the performance of the 27 state agencies.
Among other findings, the special oversight review cited repeated failures by the Nevada agency to:
impose stiff penalties after potentially preventable accidents;
issue citations or notices of violations for previously identified hazards;
ensure that its investigators receive proper training; and
allow families of killed or injured workers to participate in investigations.
Many of these findings were also highlighted last year in a Pulitzer prize-winning series by Alexandra Berzon in the Las Vegas Sun investigating deaths in construction accidents that were also covered in the federal report.
The impact of the state agency’s failures on affected families was demonstrated by Debi Koehler-Fergen, the mother of Travis Wayne Koehler, who was killed at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas on February 2, 2007. Mr. Koehler had been sent by his supervisors to help a colleague correct a problem for which neither man had proper training and that was normally handled under contract by an outside company. When toxic gasses were released, both men died and a third man was severely and permanently injured.
Mrs. Koehler-Fergen told committee members that she was treated disrespectfully by a top Nevada OSHA official, who was seated next to her at the hearing and who had explained the results of the state report on her son’s death in a public area of the agency while other employees watched her cry, instead of taking her to a private office.
She also said that she was bitterly disappointed by the agency leaders’ decision to downgrade the violations cited to serious from “willful neglect” and “repeat serious” that the key investigator’s findings seemed to warrant against the hotel’s owners. Her complaint to the federal OSHA helped prompt its review of the state agency.
Mrs. Koehler-Fergen is a volunteer with United Support & Memorial for Workplace Fatalities, a Public Welfare Foundation grantee that helps bring the perspective of surviving family members into policy discussions about improving workplace safety and health.
Rep. George Miller, who chairs the House committee and led the hearing, expressed concern that families are often cut out of the investigation process after a loved one has been killed or injured on the job. He said that it’s “an ongoing effort” on the part of the committee to change that, at both the federal and the state level.
To see Mrs. Koehler-Fergen testifying click here.
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What Obama Isn't Telling American Workers, By Shamus Cooke, October 11, 2009
What Obama Isn't Telling American Workers, By Shamus Cooke, October 11, 2009
A lot is happening in the tumultuous realm of global economics. The “Great Recession” has caused tectonic shifts internationally, with outcomes that will dramatically change the lives of millions of people in the U.S. and beyond. And while Obama is acknowledging this fact with repeated references to “a new world order,” he isn’t explaining how this adversely affects working-class Americans. The truth would be far too “controversial.”
The first unmentionable fact is the inevitable, long-term decline of the dollar, a phenomenon that can now be considered government policy. The business magazine Forbes comments:
“The Treasury Department would never admit this, but for the time being it's in the country's interest to keep its currency low because it stimulates exports for the economy's manufacturing base and lowers the value of the debt that the Treasury is piling up.” (October 5, 2009)
These policies are essentially economic attacks on foreign corporations and governments, and U.S. workers.
A cheaper dollar means an off-shoring of America’s debt onto countries like China and Japan — and foreign corporations, who are large buyers of U.S. currency and/or debt. These foreign entities have already issued public warnings about this dynamic and will not sit forever as their investments turn to mush. Economic retaliation should be expected.
A cheaper dollar also antagonizes foreign corporations in another way. U.S. corporations benefit from dollar deflation because it lowers the price of their goods/exports on the global marketplace. But foreign competitors can play this game too, and the result would be economic warfare.
Most importantly, a cheaper dollar lowers the living standards of U.S. workers, since the price of foreign goods will become inflated. With a catastrophic U.S. debt, inflation will continue for years to come. Obama’s silence on the issue equals a premeditated plan to pursue the above objectives. Workers will thus be forced into demanding wage increases that match this new inflation.
Another big secret Obama is keeping from workers is also U.S. debt related (keep in mind much of U.S debt is the result of fighting foreign wars and bailing out banks). Under Obama these policies will continue; “sacrifices” are going to be made in other areas. Obama has already talked at length in favor of “reforming entitlement programs,” without mentioning loudly that these include Social Security, Medicare, and other valuable and much needed social programs. The Democrats' priorities are perverse; money for war and banks, but not for those who really need it.
Obama’s secrets were partially revealed at the recent G-20 summit. There, Obama pushed a plan that aimed “to reform the global architecture to meet the needs of the 21st century.” Part of the plan said that “G-20 members with sustained, significant external deficits [the U.S.] pledge to undertake policies to support private savings and undertake fiscal consolidation while maintaining open markets and strengthening export sectors.”
In plain English this means that the U.S. will reduce its debt by slashing domestic consumption and increasing exports. “Slashing domestic consumption” is another often-used codeword for lowering the standard of living of U.S. workers through lower wages and the elimination of “entitlement programs.” Once workers' wages have been reduced low enough, U.S. corporations will be able to export more on the global marketplace, the other key to Obama’s G-20 plan.
These plans are not mere schemes for conspiracy theorists; they’re already being implemented. Massive unemployment has a direct, negative impact on workers' wages. The Democrats know this and are using it as a tool to enforce the pro-corporate G -20 policy. What else explains the deafening quiet from Obama around unemployment — already a social catastrophe ruining the lives of millions of people?
Another way the G-20 plan is already being enforced is by the restriction of credit for workers and small businesses. A recent Forbes article was titled, "The ‘Democratization of Credit' Is Over — Now It's Payback Time." (October 10, 2009) The “democratization of credit” simply means that workers and low-income people had access to credit if they needed it. No more. Credit that was once used to cover end-of-the-month expenses and emergencies will once again be a privilege of the highly paid and wealthy.
Workers must understand that the current effects of the Great Recession are to become the new rules of the “reformed” U.S. economy. The living standards of the past are to stay in the past. Before, U.S. workers took out enormous amounts of debt to maintain their standard of living, since wages and benefits were steadily shrinking. The hope was that the economy would improve, and better times would return. The reality is far different.
The U.S. economy is losing its place of total dominance in world affairs. And instead of the U.S. government reacting to this by adding social programs, they are taking them away. Government money will continue to bail out banks when needed while funding trillion-dollar wars.
Once the reality of the above situation can no longer be denied and is recognized by U.S. workers as simply a corporate and government attack on their collective standard of living simply for the sake of profits, they can begin to act. Workers without unions will fight to organize them. Those organized workers will push their unions to fight back by building united coalitions — representing the majority of working people — to organize massive demonstrations, protests, and strikes to demand a recovery plan to benefit the vast majority and not the wealthy minority. The conditions that led to the large U.S. workers' struggles of the 1930s and 40s are reappearing, and workers will act accordingly.
About the Author: Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action.
Other recent articles about the economy, from a working class point of view
Shared via AddThis
A lot is happening in the tumultuous realm of global economics. The “Great Recession” has caused tectonic shifts internationally, with outcomes that will dramatically change the lives of millions of people in the U.S. and beyond. And while Obama is acknowledging this fact with repeated references to “a new world order,” he isn’t explaining how this adversely affects working-class Americans. The truth would be far too “controversial.”
The first unmentionable fact is the inevitable, long-term decline of the dollar, a phenomenon that can now be considered government policy. The business magazine Forbes comments:
“The Treasury Department would never admit this, but for the time being it's in the country's interest to keep its currency low because it stimulates exports for the economy's manufacturing base and lowers the value of the debt that the Treasury is piling up.” (October 5, 2009)
These policies are essentially economic attacks on foreign corporations and governments, and U.S. workers.
A cheaper dollar means an off-shoring of America’s debt onto countries like China and Japan — and foreign corporations, who are large buyers of U.S. currency and/or debt. These foreign entities have already issued public warnings about this dynamic and will not sit forever as their investments turn to mush. Economic retaliation should be expected.
A cheaper dollar also antagonizes foreign corporations in another way. U.S. corporations benefit from dollar deflation because it lowers the price of their goods/exports on the global marketplace. But foreign competitors can play this game too, and the result would be economic warfare.
Most importantly, a cheaper dollar lowers the living standards of U.S. workers, since the price of foreign goods will become inflated. With a catastrophic U.S. debt, inflation will continue for years to come. Obama’s silence on the issue equals a premeditated plan to pursue the above objectives. Workers will thus be forced into demanding wage increases that match this new inflation.
Another big secret Obama is keeping from workers is also U.S. debt related (keep in mind much of U.S debt is the result of fighting foreign wars and bailing out banks). Under Obama these policies will continue; “sacrifices” are going to be made in other areas. Obama has already talked at length in favor of “reforming entitlement programs,” without mentioning loudly that these include Social Security, Medicare, and other valuable and much needed social programs. The Democrats' priorities are perverse; money for war and banks, but not for those who really need it.
Obama’s secrets were partially revealed at the recent G-20 summit. There, Obama pushed a plan that aimed “to reform the global architecture to meet the needs of the 21st century.” Part of the plan said that “G-20 members with sustained, significant external deficits [the U.S.] pledge to undertake policies to support private savings and undertake fiscal consolidation while maintaining open markets and strengthening export sectors.”
In plain English this means that the U.S. will reduce its debt by slashing domestic consumption and increasing exports. “Slashing domestic consumption” is another often-used codeword for lowering the standard of living of U.S. workers through lower wages and the elimination of “entitlement programs.” Once workers' wages have been reduced low enough, U.S. corporations will be able to export more on the global marketplace, the other key to Obama’s G-20 plan.
These plans are not mere schemes for conspiracy theorists; they’re already being implemented. Massive unemployment has a direct, negative impact on workers' wages. The Democrats know this and are using it as a tool to enforce the pro-corporate G -20 policy. What else explains the deafening quiet from Obama around unemployment — already a social catastrophe ruining the lives of millions of people?
Another way the G-20 plan is already being enforced is by the restriction of credit for workers and small businesses. A recent Forbes article was titled, "The ‘Democratization of Credit' Is Over — Now It's Payback Time." (October 10, 2009) The “democratization of credit” simply means that workers and low-income people had access to credit if they needed it. No more. Credit that was once used to cover end-of-the-month expenses and emergencies will once again be a privilege of the highly paid and wealthy.
Workers must understand that the current effects of the Great Recession are to become the new rules of the “reformed” U.S. economy. The living standards of the past are to stay in the past. Before, U.S. workers took out enormous amounts of debt to maintain their standard of living, since wages and benefits were steadily shrinking. The hope was that the economy would improve, and better times would return. The reality is far different.
The U.S. economy is losing its place of total dominance in world affairs. And instead of the U.S. government reacting to this by adding social programs, they are taking them away. Government money will continue to bail out banks when needed while funding trillion-dollar wars.
Once the reality of the above situation can no longer be denied and is recognized by U.S. workers as simply a corporate and government attack on their collective standard of living simply for the sake of profits, they can begin to act. Workers without unions will fight to organize them. Those organized workers will push their unions to fight back by building united coalitions — representing the majority of working people — to organize massive demonstrations, protests, and strikes to demand a recovery plan to benefit the vast majority and not the wealthy minority. The conditions that led to the large U.S. workers' struggles of the 1930s and 40s are reappearing, and workers will act accordingly.
About the Author: Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action.
Other recent articles about the economy, from a working class point of view
Shared via AddThis
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
: Information Clearing House - ICH
Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude
By Mike Konczal
October 13, 2009 "The Atlantic" -- The Wall Street Journal ran a post over the weekend about a new credit crunch among low income borrowers, noting it is now 'payback time.' What they didn't go into is that their primary interviewee is drowning not on expensive cars loans but student loans. This former student's debt is far from extraordinary. It is, in fact, tragically ordinary, as student loans have become the 21st century version of indentured servitude.
From The Wall Street Journal, The 'Democratization of Credit' Is Over -- Now It's Payback Time. Check out the lead:
NEW YORK -- Karen King owes nearly $36,000, more than she's ever earned in a year.
All day long, bill collectors call. She hunts for a second job, sometimes skips meals, and stays with other family members at a grandfather's crowded apartment, trying to get out of debt and turn her life around.
She largely holds herself at fault. "Years ago, I lived for now. It was so stupid," the 28-year-old says. "It's depressing, but I can't live that life anymore." Now, she says, "I basically want to live for the future."
Now go about halfway through.
Her biggest chunk of debt, $26,000, stems from student loans to pay for her two-year associate's degree from a community college -- loans now in the hands of collectors. The remaining $10,000 or so includes old credit-card balances, debt to a store that rents furniture, utility bills and back taxes. Another obligation is $400 a month she contributes to the rent on her grandfather's two-bedroom apartment, where her mother, uncle and sister also live.
Rolfe Winkler caught this too. In addition to pointing out how the current recession is focused in large part on men, it's also worthwhile to note that the current recession is devastating the young. Here's BusinessWeek on "The Lost Generation."
But let's go back to the person in question here: How should we judge this young person profiled in the Wall Street Journal? Is going into a large debt load to pay for college the post-Risk-Shift American Dream? Or is it a form of Living For Now, and being irresponsible and short-sited? According to FinAid.org, the average cumulative debt among graduating seniors is about $22,500. She's ahead of that ($26K/2 years), but what is an acceptable amount of debt to carry to educate yourself? As as Krugman notes, education is a key to our country's successes. Why should we think of her as irresponsible, instead of someone rationally going into debt peonage, like a 17th century indentured servant, in order to take a small shot at bettering oneself - the new middle class dream?
The New Indentured Servitude
Jeffrey Williams, in Dissent Magazine, wrote Student Debt and The Spirit of Indenture, provocatively referred to student loans as the new form of indentured servitude.
Why is this the new form of indentured servitude? Williams gives some reasons: The prevalence of this debt, especially among the young and the poor/working classes, the transformation from a rounding error amount to a significant burden amount over the past 30 years, the length of term, the idea of mobility and "transport" to a job, debt secured not by property but by personhood, and limited legal recourse. All these characteristics are similar. The limited legal recourse is noteworthy here, since unlike most debt, it isn't dischargeable under bankruptcy, thus it doesn't have a natural protection for the consumer receiving credit (a protection, the original synthetic put option, that our Founders were aware of enough to make sure it was provisioned for in the Constitution).
This is not to soft-peddle indentured servitude. Indentured servitude was a violent contract, with physical torture used to coerce labor. As economist DW Galenson noted, "The Company clearly felt that [beaten workers running away] threatened the continued survival of their enterprise, for they reacted forcefully to this crime. In 1612, the colony's governor dealt firmly with some recaptured laborers: 'Some he apointed to be hanged. Some burned. Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shott to death.'" But let's put on our Galenson Economic Historian googles and think of it as an economic efficiency problem. Indentured servitude, like student loans, are a form of consumption smoothing. And one thing that is needed for consumptions smoothing is good information about the future.
Learning Your Earning
Here's a graph from University of Minnesota macroeconomist Fatih Guvenen's Learning Your Earnings:
Think of these two lines as a dial between perfect knowledge and no knowledge. In this model, a consumer who knows what he'll make over his or her life will consumption smooth (perfect, or 'full', knowledge, flat consumption line); one who is uncertain about what will happen next will rationally not. So if you know exactly how much you'll be making in the future, large loans aren't really a problem.
Now we are currently asking children, 17, 18 or 19 years old, to try and assess how much of a student loan debt burden they can handle vis-a-vis their future income over their entire lives. But, especially compared to their grandparents, uncertainty is so much greater now. The consumption smoothing line invokes a world where everyone with a college degree will get a stable, solid job with certainty (and your employer will, of course, pick up the health care tab).
The person in the Wall Street Journal article almost certainly had no realistic idea for what would be awaiting her on the other side of the associate's degree, and she misjudged this terribly. And, from an efficiency point of view, it's what makes this more perverse than the indentured servitude contract - people under indentured servitude had the job waiting for them. The clock was ticking for the firms who had set up the contract, and they needed to get their value. With student loans, they can sit there for decades, never dischargeable, always getting paid regardless of recession or job market.
Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude
By Mike Konczal
October 13, 2009 "The Atlantic" -- The Wall Street Journal ran a post over the weekend about a new credit crunch among low income borrowers, noting it is now 'payback time.' What they didn't go into is that their primary interviewee is drowning not on expensive cars loans but student loans. This former student's debt is far from extraordinary. It is, in fact, tragically ordinary, as student loans have become the 21st century version of indentured servitude.
From The Wall Street Journal, The 'Democratization of Credit' Is Over -- Now It's Payback Time. Check out the lead:
NEW YORK -- Karen King owes nearly $36,000, more than she's ever earned in a year.
All day long, bill collectors call. She hunts for a second job, sometimes skips meals, and stays with other family members at a grandfather's crowded apartment, trying to get out of debt and turn her life around.
She largely holds herself at fault. "Years ago, I lived for now. It was so stupid," the 28-year-old says. "It's depressing, but I can't live that life anymore." Now, she says, "I basically want to live for the future."
Now go about halfway through.
Her biggest chunk of debt, $26,000, stems from student loans to pay for her two-year associate's degree from a community college -- loans now in the hands of collectors. The remaining $10,000 or so includes old credit-card balances, debt to a store that rents furniture, utility bills and back taxes. Another obligation is $400 a month she contributes to the rent on her grandfather's two-bedroom apartment, where her mother, uncle and sister also live.
Rolfe Winkler caught this too. In addition to pointing out how the current recession is focused in large part on men, it's also worthwhile to note that the current recession is devastating the young. Here's BusinessWeek on "The Lost Generation."
But let's go back to the person in question here: How should we judge this young person profiled in the Wall Street Journal? Is going into a large debt load to pay for college the post-Risk-Shift American Dream? Or is it a form of Living For Now, and being irresponsible and short-sited? According to FinAid.org, the average cumulative debt among graduating seniors is about $22,500. She's ahead of that ($26K/2 years), but what is an acceptable amount of debt to carry to educate yourself? As as Krugman notes, education is a key to our country's successes. Why should we think of her as irresponsible, instead of someone rationally going into debt peonage, like a 17th century indentured servant, in order to take a small shot at bettering oneself - the new middle class dream?
The New Indentured Servitude
Jeffrey Williams, in Dissent Magazine, wrote Student Debt and The Spirit of Indenture, provocatively referred to student loans as the new form of indentured servitude.
Why is this the new form of indentured servitude? Williams gives some reasons: The prevalence of this debt, especially among the young and the poor/working classes, the transformation from a rounding error amount to a significant burden amount over the past 30 years, the length of term, the idea of mobility and "transport" to a job, debt secured not by property but by personhood, and limited legal recourse. All these characteristics are similar. The limited legal recourse is noteworthy here, since unlike most debt, it isn't dischargeable under bankruptcy, thus it doesn't have a natural protection for the consumer receiving credit (a protection, the original synthetic put option, that our Founders were aware of enough to make sure it was provisioned for in the Constitution).
This is not to soft-peddle indentured servitude. Indentured servitude was a violent contract, with physical torture used to coerce labor. As economist DW Galenson noted, "The Company clearly felt that [beaten workers running away] threatened the continued survival of their enterprise, for they reacted forcefully to this crime. In 1612, the colony's governor dealt firmly with some recaptured laborers: 'Some he apointed to be hanged. Some burned. Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shott to death.'" But let's put on our Galenson Economic Historian googles and think of it as an economic efficiency problem. Indentured servitude, like student loans, are a form of consumption smoothing. And one thing that is needed for consumptions smoothing is good information about the future.
Learning Your Earning
Here's a graph from University of Minnesota macroeconomist Fatih Guvenen's Learning Your Earnings:
Think of these two lines as a dial between perfect knowledge and no knowledge. In this model, a consumer who knows what he'll make over his or her life will consumption smooth (perfect, or 'full', knowledge, flat consumption line); one who is uncertain about what will happen next will rationally not. So if you know exactly how much you'll be making in the future, large loans aren't really a problem.
Now we are currently asking children, 17, 18 or 19 years old, to try and assess how much of a student loan debt burden they can handle vis-a-vis their future income over their entire lives. But, especially compared to their grandparents, uncertainty is so much greater now. The consumption smoothing line invokes a world where everyone with a college degree will get a stable, solid job with certainty (and your employer will, of course, pick up the health care tab).
The person in the Wall Street Journal article almost certainly had no realistic idea for what would be awaiting her on the other side of the associate's degree, and she misjudged this terribly. And, from an efficiency point of view, it's what makes this more perverse than the indentured servitude contract - people under indentured servitude had the job waiting for them. The clock was ticking for the firms who had set up the contract, and they needed to get their value. With student loans, they can sit there for decades, never dischargeable, always getting paid regardless of recession or job market.
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