On Workers Memorial Day, Help Keep America's Workers Safe
The Bush administration has put worker safety “in the hands of industry,” and the concern for protecting workers has “gone out the window.”
It’s long past time for workplace protections to be updated and strengthened for the 21st century.
Tell your senators and representative toco-sponsor the Protecting America’s Workers Act,S. 1244 and H.R. 2049.
Click here.
Tomorrow, workers and safety advocates from around the world will observe Workers Memorial Day—a day to honor the thousands of workers who are killed or hurt on the job each year.
The day of recognition comes only days after a New York Times article revealed how the Bush administration has placed worker safety “in the hands of industry.” Under President Bush, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) “has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others,” the Times said.
You can do something about it. Tell your senators and representative to co-sponsor the Protecting America’s Workers Act, S. 1244 and H.R. 2049. The bill would expand OSHA protections to millions of uncovered workers, enhance whistleblower protections and substantially increase penalties for serious, willful and criminal safety violations.
Click here.
More than three decades ago, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, promising every worker the right to a safe job.
But for the past six years, the Bush administration has ignored the need for updated safety and health protections. Administration officials have allowed their corporate allies to police themselves.
David Michaels, an occupational health expert at George Washington University, explains:
The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency.... If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they’ve forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window.
Workplace safety has greatly improved since OSHA regulation began more than three decades ago, but there is still more to be done. According to the AFL-CIO's annual report, "Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect," an average of 16 workers were fatally injured and more than 12,000 were injured or made ill each day of 2005, the year covered by the report. These statistics do not include deaths from occupational diseases, which claim the lives of an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 workers each year.
Increased enforcement and improved standards are needed. AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario testified before Congress yesterday, urging legislators to update the law:
Health and safety standards are out of date or nonexistent 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.... In 2007, the promise of a safe job for every American worker is far from being fulfilled.
Help fulfill the promise of a safe workplace for millions of workers. Tell your senators and representative to co-sponsor the Protecting America's Workers Act.
In solidarity,
Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO
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Thursday, April 26, 2007
< OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry>
The perversion of OSHA’s purpose, from being a regulatory agency designed to protect workers to a tool to serve greedy corporate interests is another example of the shameful Bush legacy. OSHA head Foulke, like Labor Secretary Chao, a former Bank of America executive and member of the conservative think-tank, Heritage Foundation, has a blatantly anti-worker agenda, is a totally inappropriate choice to head this agency and makes a bitter mockery of its function. This agency is a disgrace and an insult to the more than 50, 000 workers injured yearly on the job and to the families of the more than 5000 workers killed yearly due to unsafe work conditions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 25, 2007
OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry
By STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON, April 24 — Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.
Puzzled Missouri health authorities turned to two federal agencies in Washington. Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, moved quickly to examine patients, inspect factories and run tests. Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.
But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.
On Tuesday, the top official at the agency told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing that it would prepare a safety bulletin and plan to inspect a few dozen of the thousands of food plants that use the additive.
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 weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.
Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.
The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.
“The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency,” said Dr. David Michaels, an occupational health expert at George Washington University who has written extensively about workplace safety. “If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they’ve forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window.”
Agency officials defend their performance, saying that workplace deaths and injuries have declined during their tenure. They have been considering new standards and revising outdated ones that were unduly burdensome on businesses, they said, adding that they have moved cautiously on new rules because those require extensive scientific and economic analysis.
“By the time the Bush administration is done — we have a good record already — we will have a better record,” said Edwin G. Foulke Jr., the agency’s head, in a recent interview.
On diacetyl, Mr. Foulke said “the science is murky” on whether the additive causes bronchiolitis obliterans, the disease that has been called “popcorn worker’s lung.” That claim is echoed by some industry officials, but a number of leading scientists and doctors agree with scientists at the national occupational safety institute that there is strong evidence linking the additive to the illness.
Without an OSHA standard, which would establish the permissible level of exposure for workers, companies can set any limit of exposure they want.
Instead of regulations, Mr. Foulke and top officials at other agencies favor a “voluntary compliance strategy,” reaching agreements with industry associations and companies to police themselves.
Administration officials say such programs are less costly, allowing companies to hire more workers and keep consumer prices down. The number of voluntary agreements has grown in recent years, but they cover a fraction of the seven million work sites that OSHA oversees, or less than 1 percent of the work force. Sixty-one food plants out of the tens of thousands across the country participate; industry representatives say other businesses are taking steps to protect workers on their own.
Critics say the voluntary programs tend to have little focus on specific hazards and no enforcement power. Because only companies with strong safety records are eligible, they argue, the programs do not force less-conscientious businesses to improve their workplaces. A 2004 study by the Government Accountability Office found some promising results from such programs, but recommended against expanding them until their effectiveness could be assessed.
“OSHA has been focusing on the best companies in their voluntary protection program while doing nothing in the area of standard setting,” said Peg Seminario, the director of occupational safety and health at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “They’ve simply gotten out of the standard-setting business in favor of industry partnerships that have no teeth.”
While labor organizations and public health experts argue that the agency has been lax in recent years, some industries have applauded its efforts. Construction companies, for example, are pleased that OSHA recently decided to relax the standards for handling explosives.
The agency had long been the target of businesses that criticized its rules as arbitrary, costly and confusing. Three of the biggest industries regulated by OSHA — transportation, agribusiness and construction — have given more than $630 million in political campaign contributions since 2000, with nearly three-quarters of that money going to Republicans. The Bush administration has promised to address their concerns.
Change at OSHA
“We’re also going to bring a transparency to the regulatory jungle that is unprecedented in the federal government,” Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao told business owners in a speech on June 2002. “There are more words in the Federal Register describing OSHA regulations than there are words in the Bible. They’re a lot less inspired to read and a lot harder to understand. This is not fair.”
Until recently, Congress has provided no significant oversight of OSHA. With Democrats now back in control, House and Senate committees are holding hearings this week.
Among those who testified Tuesday was Eric Peoples, a former worker at the popcorn plant in Jasper, a small town 125 miles south of Kansas City. Once healthy, the 35-year-old Mr. Peoples has been told by doctors that he will need a double-lung transplant. Far from Washington, he finds the debate over the calculus of regulation — the costs to companies and consumers of upgrading workplaces versus the possible health benefits to workers — baffling.
“I can’t understand what it would take to get them to pass rules to make it safer to handle this stuff,” Mr. Peoples said, referring to diacetyl. “Something needs to be done.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created under President Richard M. Nixon in 1970 after Congressional hearings exposed dangerous workplace conditions. The agency was to set and enforce safety standards as well as detect health hazards before they could take a toll on workers. Since the agency’s creation, deaths and injuries on the job have steadily declined. Regulators have taken credit for much of that trend, though experts also cite pressure from insurers and lawsuits. Government records show that in 2005, more than 6,800 workplace-related deaths occurred, along with 4.2 million injuries and illnesses. OSHA officials say that since 2001, the fatality rate has declined by 7 percent and the injury rate by 19 percent.
Labor leaders and health experts say those numbers significantly undercount the problem, in part because the Bush administration has reduced the categories of recognized injuries and because many dangerous jobs are now performed by undocumented workers who do not report problems.
In one of his first acts in office, President Bush signed legislation repealing one of OSHA’s most-debated accomplishments during the Clinton administration, an ergonomics standard intended to reduce injuries to factory, construction and office workers from repetitive motions and lifting. Business groups and manufacturers had lobbied against the measure, saying it would cost $100 billion to carry out.
By the end of 2001, OSHA had withdrawn more than a dozen proposed regulations. The agency, though, soon identified several safety priorities: rules on the hazards posed by dust from silica, used as a blasting agent, and noise from construction sites, which was causing a growing number of workers to suffer hearing loss. The agency has yet to produce either standard, though OSHA officials say they are working on them.
Mr. Foulke, the OSHA chief, has a history of opposing regulations produced by the agency he now leads. He has described himself as a “true Ronald Reagan Republican” who “firmly believes in limited government.” Before coming to Washington last year, Mr. Foulke, a former Republican Party state chairman in South Carolina and top political fund-raiser, worked in Greenville, S.C., for a law firm that advises companies on how to avoid union organizing. Representing the United States Chamber of Commerce, he had testified before Congress several times to promote voluntary OSHA compliance programs. He also opposed the ergonomics standards.
And as a member in the 1990s of an independent agency that reviews OSHA citations, he led a successful effort to weaken the agency’s enforcement authority.
Early in his tenure at OSHA, Mr. Foulke delivered a speech called “Adults Do the Darndest Things,” which attributed many injuries to worker carelessness. Large posters of workers’ making dangerous errors, like erecting a tall ladder close to an overhead wire, were displayed around him.
“Kids don’t always know what their parents do all day at work, but they instinctively understand the importance of them working safely,” he told the audience, which included children who had won a safety-poster contest. “In contrast, adults could stand to learn a thing or two. Looking at the posters, I was reminded of a couple examples of safety and health bloopers that are both humorous and horrible.”
A Pattern of Illness
Soon after Eric Peoples began working at the Jasper popcorn plant in 1997, he was thrilled to get a promotion: from the assembly line, which paid $6 to $7 an hour, to the mixing room, where he got more than $11 an hour to prepare ingredients.
Ten months later, Mr. Peoples recalled in a recent interview, he came down with a fever and chills. Doctors first said that Mr. Peoples, then 27, had pneumonia. When he did not improve, he saw a specialist who treated him for asthma. Still suffering from breathing problems, Mr. Peoples was hospitalized in St. Louis. After days of testing, doctors diagnosed bronchiolitis obliterans.
“My lung capacity had dropped to 18 percent,” Mr. Peoples said. He was told that there was no cure for the often-fatal disease and that he would likely need a double lung transplant to survive.
Some of his co-workers had similar health problems. A local lawyer whose mother had fallen ill showed the medical records of several workers to Dr. Allen Parmet, a former T.W.A. medical director who specializes in occupational hazards.
“It took me about 15 or 20 minutes to see there was a pattern,” said Dr. Parmet, who in his previous two decades in medicine had seen only three other cases of bronchiolitis obliterans. He contacted the Missouri Department of Health, which then notified the agencies in Washington.
The Missouri officials noted that in addition to nine sick workers identified by Dr. Parmet, 20 to 30 current and retired workers had similar symptoms. All had been exposed to vapors from diacetyl, a compound found naturally in cheese, butter, milk and other foods. It is added for the buttery taste in microwave popcorn and widely used as a flavoring agent in other foods, like snacks and pastries.
Although Dr. Parmet’s letter was the first that Washington learned of a possible problem with diacetyl, some companies had been aware of the health hazards. In late 1996, the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association heard from a company that a flavoring plant employee had developed bronchiolitis obliterans. Three years earlier, BASF, the German chemical maker, had found in animal studies that diacetyl caused severe respiratory problems.
After scientists from the national occupational safety institute visited the Jasper factory and examined the injured workers, the agency issued a bulletin in September 2001 saying “a work-related cause of lung disease” had occurred there. In December 2003, the agency issued an alert to more than 4,000 businesses, with tens of thousands of workers, that suggested safeguards.
OSHA’s response was more limited. The agency sent an inspector to the Jasper plant, but he did not test the air, saying the company’s insurers had done an environmental sampling four years earlier. He concluded that the plant was in compliance with existing rules and closed the case.
Sixteen months later, a lawyer for ill workers filed a complaint with the agency. OSHA conducted a 40-minute inspection, but said it could do nothing more because there was no safety standard that established what level of diacetyl was acceptable. Since the first outbreak, OSHA has inspected three food and flavoring plants for links to popcorn worker’s lung, and issued one citation, according to records provided to public health experts at George Washington University and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
Other workers have developed symptoms of the lung disease. Keith Campbell had worked at a Conagra microwave popcorn factory in Marion, Ohio, for two years when he got sick. He was then 44, but his doctors told him he had the lung capacity of an 80-year-old, Mr. Campbell said in an interview. He has extreme difficulty breathing, particularly in cold weather. “It’s affected my entire life,” he said.
Kenneth B. McClain, a lawyer at the Missouri firm that has represented Mr. Peoples and Mr. Campbell, said he had tried or settled more than 100 cases involving diacetyl and other flavorings and that more than 500 were still awaiting resolution in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri and Ohio.
At a two-week trial in March 2004, lawyers for the makers of diacetyl products — International Flavors and Fragrances and its subsidiary, Bush Boake Allen — maintained that the additive did not cause Mr. Peoples’s illness and that, in any event, the popcorn company had mishandled the substance. Jurors awarded Mr. Peoples $20 million. His case, like Mr. Campbell’s, was later settled for an undisclosed amount.
Melissa I. Sachs, a spokeswoman at International Flavors and Fragrances, based in New York, declined to comment on the cases. According to its latest annual report, the company has been sued by more than 150 workers in four states.
Health experts have not raised alarms about diacetyl vapors that are released when consumers make microwave popcorn. But they note that there is little science on the issue, and the Environmental Protection Agency has declined to make public the results of its studies.
There are no estimates of the costs of upgrading all plants that use the food additive to protect workers better. Some microwave popcorn companies, including the Gilster-Mary Lee Corporation plant in Jasper, have spent millions of dollars on better ventilation, respirators and other equipment.
The Official Response
Two industry groups — the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association and the Popcorn Board — have also become involved in resolving workplace problems, particularly as the lawsuits have mounted. The association has not expressed opposition to an OSHA standard; its officials say it is working with California regulators to develop one there.
But John Hallagan, the association’s general counsel, says the group is working with OSHA to reach a voluntary compliance agreement.
“OSHA is doing the right things in addressing flavor-related health and safety issues,” Mr. Hallagan said in a recent e-mail message.
He said the agency had met with industry and health officials and had posted on a Web site possible health hazards associated with some flavorings.
In September 2002, OSHA’s Kansas City office entered into an alliance with the Popcorn Board, which represents popcorn processors, to try to address safety problems. But that arrangement soon ended.
Last July, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters petitioned OSHA for an emergency temporary standard for diacetyl. Urging action, 42 doctors and scientists from institutions including Harvard, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins, wrote to Ms. Chao, who oversees OSHA.
The agency responded by saying it was preparing a safety bulletin and would be monitoring diacetyl hazards at a few dozen popcorn plants, but not at the thousands of other food factories that use the additive. That has frustrated public health experts like Dr. Michaels, the George Washington University epidemiologist.
“Here you have one federal agency, Niosh, doing a great job exploring the science behind a problem and a second agency, OSHA, which is supposed to be moving forward with enforcement and standard setting, and they are not,” he said.
Ron Nixon contributed reporting
The perversion of OSHA’s purpose, from being a regulatory agency designed to protect workers to a tool to serve greedy corporate interests is another example of the shameful Bush legacy. OSHA head Foulke, like Labor Secretary Chao, a former Bank of America executive and member of the conservative think-tank, Heritage Foundation, has a blatantly anti-worker agenda, is a totally inappropriate choice to head this agency and makes a bitter mockery of its function. This agency is a disgrace and an insult to the more than 50, 000 workers injured yearly on the job and to the families of the more than 5000 workers killed yearly due to unsafe work conditions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 25, 2007
OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry
By STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON, April 24 — Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.
Puzzled Missouri health authorities turned to two federal agencies in Washington. Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, moved quickly to examine patients, inspect factories and run tests. Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.
But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.
On Tuesday, the top official at the agency told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing that it would prepare a safety bulletin and plan to inspect a few dozen of the thousands of food plants that use the additive.
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 weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.
Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.
The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.
“The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency,” said Dr. David Michaels, an occupational health expert at George Washington University who has written extensively about workplace safety. “If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they’ve forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window.”
Agency officials defend their performance, saying that workplace deaths and injuries have declined during their tenure. They have been considering new standards and revising outdated ones that were unduly burdensome on businesses, they said, adding that they have moved cautiously on new rules because those require extensive scientific and economic analysis.
“By the time the Bush administration is done — we have a good record already — we will have a better record,” said Edwin G. Foulke Jr., the agency’s head, in a recent interview.
On diacetyl, Mr. Foulke said “the science is murky” on whether the additive causes bronchiolitis obliterans, the disease that has been called “popcorn worker’s lung.” That claim is echoed by some industry officials, but a number of leading scientists and doctors agree with scientists at the national occupational safety institute that there is strong evidence linking the additive to the illness.
Without an OSHA standard, which would establish the permissible level of exposure for workers, companies can set any limit of exposure they want.
Instead of regulations, Mr. Foulke and top officials at other agencies favor a “voluntary compliance strategy,” reaching agreements with industry associations and companies to police themselves.
Administration officials say such programs are less costly, allowing companies to hire more workers and keep consumer prices down. The number of voluntary agreements has grown in recent years, but they cover a fraction of the seven million work sites that OSHA oversees, or less than 1 percent of the work force. Sixty-one food plants out of the tens of thousands across the country participate; industry representatives say other businesses are taking steps to protect workers on their own.
Critics say the voluntary programs tend to have little focus on specific hazards and no enforcement power. Because only companies with strong safety records are eligible, they argue, the programs do not force less-conscientious businesses to improve their workplaces. A 2004 study by the Government Accountability Office found some promising results from such programs, but recommended against expanding them until their effectiveness could be assessed.
“OSHA has been focusing on the best companies in their voluntary protection program while doing nothing in the area of standard setting,” said Peg Seminario, the director of occupational safety and health at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “They’ve simply gotten out of the standard-setting business in favor of industry partnerships that have no teeth.”
While labor organizations and public health experts argue that the agency has been lax in recent years, some industries have applauded its efforts. Construction companies, for example, are pleased that OSHA recently decided to relax the standards for handling explosives.
The agency had long been the target of businesses that criticized its rules as arbitrary, costly and confusing. Three of the biggest industries regulated by OSHA — transportation, agribusiness and construction — have given more than $630 million in political campaign contributions since 2000, with nearly three-quarters of that money going to Republicans. The Bush administration has promised to address their concerns.
Change at OSHA
“We’re also going to bring a transparency to the regulatory jungle that is unprecedented in the federal government,” Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao told business owners in a speech on June 2002. “There are more words in the Federal Register describing OSHA regulations than there are words in the Bible. They’re a lot less inspired to read and a lot harder to understand. This is not fair.”
Until recently, Congress has provided no significant oversight of OSHA. With Democrats now back in control, House and Senate committees are holding hearings this week.
Among those who testified Tuesday was Eric Peoples, a former worker at the popcorn plant in Jasper, a small town 125 miles south of Kansas City. Once healthy, the 35-year-old Mr. Peoples has been told by doctors that he will need a double-lung transplant. Far from Washington, he finds the debate over the calculus of regulation — the costs to companies and consumers of upgrading workplaces versus the possible health benefits to workers — baffling.
“I can’t understand what it would take to get them to pass rules to make it safer to handle this stuff,” Mr. Peoples said, referring to diacetyl. “Something needs to be done.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created under President Richard M. Nixon in 1970 after Congressional hearings exposed dangerous workplace conditions. The agency was to set and enforce safety standards as well as detect health hazards before they could take a toll on workers. Since the agency’s creation, deaths and injuries on the job have steadily declined. Regulators have taken credit for much of that trend, though experts also cite pressure from insurers and lawsuits. Government records show that in 2005, more than 6,800 workplace-related deaths occurred, along with 4.2 million injuries and illnesses. OSHA officials say that since 2001, the fatality rate has declined by 7 percent and the injury rate by 19 percent.
Labor leaders and health experts say those numbers significantly undercount the problem, in part because the Bush administration has reduced the categories of recognized injuries and because many dangerous jobs are now performed by undocumented workers who do not report problems.
In one of his first acts in office, President Bush signed legislation repealing one of OSHA’s most-debated accomplishments during the Clinton administration, an ergonomics standard intended to reduce injuries to factory, construction and office workers from repetitive motions and lifting. Business groups and manufacturers had lobbied against the measure, saying it would cost $100 billion to carry out.
By the end of 2001, OSHA had withdrawn more than a dozen proposed regulations. The agency, though, soon identified several safety priorities: rules on the hazards posed by dust from silica, used as a blasting agent, and noise from construction sites, which was causing a growing number of workers to suffer hearing loss. The agency has yet to produce either standard, though OSHA officials say they are working on them.
Mr. Foulke, the OSHA chief, has a history of opposing regulations produced by the agency he now leads. He has described himself as a “true Ronald Reagan Republican” who “firmly believes in limited government.” Before coming to Washington last year, Mr. Foulke, a former Republican Party state chairman in South Carolina and top political fund-raiser, worked in Greenville, S.C., for a law firm that advises companies on how to avoid union organizing. Representing the United States Chamber of Commerce, he had testified before Congress several times to promote voluntary OSHA compliance programs. He also opposed the ergonomics standards.
And as a member in the 1990s of an independent agency that reviews OSHA citations, he led a successful effort to weaken the agency’s enforcement authority.
Early in his tenure at OSHA, Mr. Foulke delivered a speech called “Adults Do the Darndest Things,” which attributed many injuries to worker carelessness. Large posters of workers’ making dangerous errors, like erecting a tall ladder close to an overhead wire, were displayed around him.
“Kids don’t always know what their parents do all day at work, but they instinctively understand the importance of them working safely,” he told the audience, which included children who had won a safety-poster contest. “In contrast, adults could stand to learn a thing or two. Looking at the posters, I was reminded of a couple examples of safety and health bloopers that are both humorous and horrible.”
A Pattern of Illness
Soon after Eric Peoples began working at the Jasper popcorn plant in 1997, he was thrilled to get a promotion: from the assembly line, which paid $6 to $7 an hour, to the mixing room, where he got more than $11 an hour to prepare ingredients.
Ten months later, Mr. Peoples recalled in a recent interview, he came down with a fever and chills. Doctors first said that Mr. Peoples, then 27, had pneumonia. When he did not improve, he saw a specialist who treated him for asthma. Still suffering from breathing problems, Mr. Peoples was hospitalized in St. Louis. After days of testing, doctors diagnosed bronchiolitis obliterans.
“My lung capacity had dropped to 18 percent,” Mr. Peoples said. He was told that there was no cure for the often-fatal disease and that he would likely need a double lung transplant to survive.
Some of his co-workers had similar health problems. A local lawyer whose mother had fallen ill showed the medical records of several workers to Dr. Allen Parmet, a former T.W.A. medical director who specializes in occupational hazards.
“It took me about 15 or 20 minutes to see there was a pattern,” said Dr. Parmet, who in his previous two decades in medicine had seen only three other cases of bronchiolitis obliterans. He contacted the Missouri Department of Health, which then notified the agencies in Washington.
The Missouri officials noted that in addition to nine sick workers identified by Dr. Parmet, 20 to 30 current and retired workers had similar symptoms. All had been exposed to vapors from diacetyl, a compound found naturally in cheese, butter, milk and other foods. It is added for the buttery taste in microwave popcorn and widely used as a flavoring agent in other foods, like snacks and pastries.
Although Dr. Parmet’s letter was the first that Washington learned of a possible problem with diacetyl, some companies had been aware of the health hazards. In late 1996, the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association heard from a company that a flavoring plant employee had developed bronchiolitis obliterans. Three years earlier, BASF, the German chemical maker, had found in animal studies that diacetyl caused severe respiratory problems.
After scientists from the national occupational safety institute visited the Jasper factory and examined the injured workers, the agency issued a bulletin in September 2001 saying “a work-related cause of lung disease” had occurred there. In December 2003, the agency issued an alert to more than 4,000 businesses, with tens of thousands of workers, that suggested safeguards.
OSHA’s response was more limited. The agency sent an inspector to the Jasper plant, but he did not test the air, saying the company’s insurers had done an environmental sampling four years earlier. He concluded that the plant was in compliance with existing rules and closed the case.
Sixteen months later, a lawyer for ill workers filed a complaint with the agency. OSHA conducted a 40-minute inspection, but said it could do nothing more because there was no safety standard that established what level of diacetyl was acceptable. Since the first outbreak, OSHA has inspected three food and flavoring plants for links to popcorn worker’s lung, and issued one citation, according to records provided to public health experts at George Washington University and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
Other workers have developed symptoms of the lung disease. Keith Campbell had worked at a Conagra microwave popcorn factory in Marion, Ohio, for two years when he got sick. He was then 44, but his doctors told him he had the lung capacity of an 80-year-old, Mr. Campbell said in an interview. He has extreme difficulty breathing, particularly in cold weather. “It’s affected my entire life,” he said.
Kenneth B. McClain, a lawyer at the Missouri firm that has represented Mr. Peoples and Mr. Campbell, said he had tried or settled more than 100 cases involving diacetyl and other flavorings and that more than 500 were still awaiting resolution in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri and Ohio.
At a two-week trial in March 2004, lawyers for the makers of diacetyl products — International Flavors and Fragrances and its subsidiary, Bush Boake Allen — maintained that the additive did not cause Mr. Peoples’s illness and that, in any event, the popcorn company had mishandled the substance. Jurors awarded Mr. Peoples $20 million. His case, like Mr. Campbell’s, was later settled for an undisclosed amount.
Melissa I. Sachs, a spokeswoman at International Flavors and Fragrances, based in New York, declined to comment on the cases. According to its latest annual report, the company has been sued by more than 150 workers in four states.
Health experts have not raised alarms about diacetyl vapors that are released when consumers make microwave popcorn. But they note that there is little science on the issue, and the Environmental Protection Agency has declined to make public the results of its studies.
There are no estimates of the costs of upgrading all plants that use the food additive to protect workers better. Some microwave popcorn companies, including the Gilster-Mary Lee Corporation plant in Jasper, have spent millions of dollars on better ventilation, respirators and other equipment.
The Official Response
Two industry groups — the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association and the Popcorn Board — have also become involved in resolving workplace problems, particularly as the lawsuits have mounted. The association has not expressed opposition to an OSHA standard; its officials say it is working with California regulators to develop one there.
But John Hallagan, the association’s general counsel, says the group is working with OSHA to reach a voluntary compliance agreement.
“OSHA is doing the right things in addressing flavor-related health and safety issues,” Mr. Hallagan said in a recent e-mail message.
He said the agency had met with industry and health officials and had posted on a Web site possible health hazards associated with some flavorings.
In September 2002, OSHA’s Kansas City office entered into an alliance with the Popcorn Board, which represents popcorn processors, to try to address safety problems. But that arrangement soon ended.
Last July, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters petitioned OSHA for an emergency temporary standard for diacetyl. Urging action, 42 doctors and scientists from institutions including Harvard, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins, wrote to Ms. Chao, who oversees OSHA.
The agency responded by saying it was preparing a safety bulletin and would be monitoring diacetyl hazards at a few dozen popcorn plants, but not at the thousands of other food factories that use the additive. That has frustrated public health experts like Dr. Michaels, the George Washington University epidemiologist.
“Here you have one federal agency, Niosh, doing a great job exploring the science behind a problem and a second agency, OSHA, which is supposed to be moving forward with enforcement and standard setting, and they are not,” he said.
Ron Nixon contributed reporting
Protect America's Workers
Protect America's workers Protect America's Workers
The 100th anniversary of a seminal report on worker safety calls for a renewed commitment
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Mid-Week Perspectives
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Donna Puleio Spadaro
Workers Memorial Day 2007, a day to remember those who have suffered and died on the job and to renew the fight for safe workplaces, will be observed by the Allegheny County Labor Council at noon on Monday in Market Square.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This ceremony also will commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Pittsburgh Survey (1907-1908), the pioneering work of Crystal Eastman and others which investigated the horrendous living conditions of Pittsburgh's working class as the 19th century began.
Ms. Eastman, founder of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, came to Pittsburgh 100 years ago to explore labor conditions. Her report, Work Accidents and the Law, cataloged 526 workplace deaths in a single year in Allegheny County and highlighted the inadequacy of worker protection and compensation. The report was one of a six-volume series that is known collectively as The Pittsburgh Survey, which examined life and labor in what was then America's fifth largest city, home to a massive exploited immigrant labor force.
The progressive reforms this series called for were hindered by the oppressive power of Pittsburgh's industrialists and its political machine. Unfortunately, while workers may not be dying in such dramatic numbers 100 years later, they still face many dangers at work and obstacles to achieving a safe workplace.
The Bush administration, acting on behalf of corporate interests, has moved to roll back and weaken worker protections. It has the worst record on safety rules in the history of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, issuing no new significant rules during its first term.
In 2006, in part because of the Sago Mine disaster, the number of coal-mine deaths doubled from the previous year, with 47 coal miners killed on the job. After withdrawing dozens of needed mine-safety rules that were under development in 2001, the Bush administration now is being compelled to issue stronger protections. Since President Bush took office, there have been repeated attempts to slash funding for OSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Since 2001, OSHA's budget has been cut by $25.4 million.
OSHA lacks the resources to protect the 100 million workers under its jurisdiction. With only 900 inspectors, it would take 110 years for OSHA to visit every work site it is supposed to oversee. The number of hours spent per OSHA inspection continues to decrease and the number of cases downgraded to less-serious violations is rising. Penalties for serious violations remain low and are routinely reduced through a process called abatement.
Even the killing of a worker through the "willful" violation of a safety law is a misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in jail. In the 20 years between 1982 and 2002, only 1,700 out of 170,000 workplace fatalities were deemed "willful." OSHA declined to seek prosecution in 93 percent of these cases, and fewer than 20 "willful" violators were imprisoned.
Each year in this country, more than 5,000 workers are killed and 4.2 million injured on the job. Another 50,000 die due to something to which they are exposed at work. American workers need OSHA and MSHA to protect their health and safety instead of protecting corporate interests.
Crystal Eastman's pioneering work in Allegheny County 100 years ago was an important landmark in the ongoing struggle for a decent workplace. Workers' Memorial Day 2007 will celebrate her important contribution to workplace safety, honor those who have lost their lives while on the job in Western Pennsylvania and promote the health and safety of all workers.
Donna Puleio Spadaro is an oncologist Her brother, Gary Puleio, was killed after falling 25 feet from a concrete tower at Meadville Redi-Mix in 2001. The company paid a $6,000 fine
Back
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Protect America's workers Protect America's Workers
The 100th anniversary of a seminal report on worker safety calls for a renewed commitment
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Mid-Week Perspectives
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Donna Puleio Spadaro
Workers Memorial Day 2007, a day to remember those who have suffered and died on the job and to renew the fight for safe workplaces, will be observed by the Allegheny County Labor Council at noon on Monday in Market Square.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This ceremony also will commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Pittsburgh Survey (1907-1908), the pioneering work of Crystal Eastman and others which investigated the horrendous living conditions of Pittsburgh's working class as the 19th century began.
Ms. Eastman, founder of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, came to Pittsburgh 100 years ago to explore labor conditions. Her report, Work Accidents and the Law, cataloged 526 workplace deaths in a single year in Allegheny County and highlighted the inadequacy of worker protection and compensation. The report was one of a six-volume series that is known collectively as The Pittsburgh Survey, which examined life and labor in what was then America's fifth largest city, home to a massive exploited immigrant labor force.
The progressive reforms this series called for were hindered by the oppressive power of Pittsburgh's industrialists and its political machine. Unfortunately, while workers may not be dying in such dramatic numbers 100 years later, they still face many dangers at work and obstacles to achieving a safe workplace.
The Bush administration, acting on behalf of corporate interests, has moved to roll back and weaken worker protections. It has the worst record on safety rules in the history of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, issuing no new significant rules during its first term.
In 2006, in part because of the Sago Mine disaster, the number of coal-mine deaths doubled from the previous year, with 47 coal miners killed on the job. After withdrawing dozens of needed mine-safety rules that were under development in 2001, the Bush administration now is being compelled to issue stronger protections. Since President Bush took office, there have been repeated attempts to slash funding for OSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Since 2001, OSHA's budget has been cut by $25.4 million.
OSHA lacks the resources to protect the 100 million workers under its jurisdiction. With only 900 inspectors, it would take 110 years for OSHA to visit every work site it is supposed to oversee. The number of hours spent per OSHA inspection continues to decrease and the number of cases downgraded to less-serious violations is rising. Penalties for serious violations remain low and are routinely reduced through a process called abatement.
Even the killing of a worker through the "willful" violation of a safety law is a misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in jail. In the 20 years between 1982 and 2002, only 1,700 out of 170,000 workplace fatalities were deemed "willful." OSHA declined to seek prosecution in 93 percent of these cases, and fewer than 20 "willful" violators were imprisoned.
Each year in this country, more than 5,000 workers are killed and 4.2 million injured on the job. Another 50,000 die due to something to which they are exposed at work. American workers need OSHA and MSHA to protect their health and safety instead of protecting corporate interests.
Crystal Eastman's pioneering work in Allegheny County 100 years ago was an important landmark in the ongoing struggle for a decent workplace. Workers' Memorial Day 2007 will celebrate her important contribution to workplace safety, honor those who have lost their lives while on the job in Western Pennsylvania and promote the health and safety of all workers.
Donna Puleio Spadaro is an oncologist Her brother, Gary Puleio, was killed after falling 25 feet from a concrete tower at Meadville Redi-Mix in 2001. The company paid a $6,000 fine
Back
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Article from NYT 4/21/07
The true face of Global Capitalism.....National Association of Manufactuurers oppose provisions guaranteeing bans on child and slave labor and fear Hugo Chavez might try to "overturn right to work laws" in USA !!!
Labor Rights Issues Are Stalling Trade Pacts
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/business/21trade.html
April 21, 2007
Labor Rights Issues Are Stalling Trade Pacts
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
WASHINGTON, April 20 — Hopes for a bipartisan agreement between the Bush administration and Congress leading to approval of several pending trade pacts have dissolved in a burst of charges and countercharges over the issue of labor rights.
Administration officials and leading Democrats said there was still a chance for a compromise that could clear the way for passage of the trade deals and even for extension of President Bush’s authority to negotiate a global trade accord and receive an expedited vote in Congress.
But the optimism heard last month has vanished and been replaced by acrimony reflected in a sharp exchange this week between business groups, who were supporting the administration, and Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
“I really thought that everyone was on board with this,” Mr. Rangel said, referring to his statements last month that the administration and Republicans in Congress were open to labor guarantees.
“But there are some people,” Mr. Rangel said, “who hate unions so much, they can’t see their way clear to supporting this provision.”
A failure to approve the four trade deals — with Colombia, Panama, Peru and South Korea — could end the possibility of trade negotiations for the rest of Mr. Bush’s term and deal a blow to any chances of a global trade accord.
Without an agreement in the Democratic-led Congress on the president’s so-called fast-track negotiating authority, which expires June 30, the administration would not be able to bring any global trade deal before lawmakers and get an up-or-down vote.
Trade negotiations among 180 countries have been foundering since last summer, but the United States has joined with Europe, India and Brazil to try to revive them. More talks are expected next week in Washington, but trade officials said that the impasse between the Democrats and the administration on labor rights has clouded their chances.
At issue is the Democratic demand that pending trade deals with Colombia, Panama, Peru and South Korea include a provision guaranteeing certain rights for labor in the trading partner countries, including a ban on child and slave labor and the right to organize.
In addition, the Democrats want the accords to endorse general labor protections adopted by the International Labor Organization, like the right to organize.
The Bush administration, backed by business groups, contends that this Democratic demand could lead to trading partners suing to overturn basic American labor practices, like teenage summer jobs or work on farms, or the practice in some American states of prisoners making consumer goods.
Another fear is that governments in Latin America, perhaps inspired by anti-American figures like President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, might use trade deals to try to overturn “right to work” laws in states, which bar employers from requiring workers to join unions.
“Subjecting our labor system to foreign challenge is simply not something to which we can agree,” said John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan who is president of the National Association of Manufacturers.
“For state constitutions or laws to be subject to a foreign nation’s challenge would be unacceptable,” Mr. Engler said.
The United States Chamber of Commerce sided with Mr. Engler but suggested that there was still a possibility of compromise.
Mr. Rangel and other Democrats said that the concern of Mr. Engler and other business leaders was bogus, noting that under the Democratic proposal only those laws that have an impact on trade might be challenged.
He added that he was “astounded” that Mr. Engler would “go to such lengths to jeopardize the hard work of so many in Congress and the administration who are negotiating these issues.”
Republicans in Congress have tried to stay out of the fight between Mr. Rangel and the business groups. Both Representative Jim McCrery, a Louisiana Republican who is the ranking Republican member of House Ways and Means, and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican of the Senate Finance Committee, have said they were convinced that a compromise could be reached if the attacks stop.
Administration officials have not spoken about Mr. Rangel’s dispute with the National Association of Manufacturers, other than to say that they agree with the business groups.
Organized labor sides with the Democrats, but officials at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. say that while the Republican fear of an effort to change American labor laws is far-fetched, there would be an advantage to the International Labor Organization putting pressure on the United States to change some laws.
“At the end of the day, no American change in U.S. labor laws is going to come through a bilateral trade agreement with Peru,” said Thea Lee, chief international economist of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “But putting these provisions into a bilateral agreement does put additional pressure on the United States government.”
Ms. Lee and others noted that past trade agreements, like one with Jordan signed at the end of the Clinton administration and approved during President Bush’s first year in office, had labor provisions that are similar to the ones the Democrats are seeking.
Representative Sander Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means trade subcommittee, said the administration’s concern was “a false issue” because only governments could bring challenges to American labor laws.
Meanwhile, Mr. Levin said the Democrats were still pressing for environmental protections and other issue to be put in the trade deals before Congress.
“I think some in the administration doubt that Democrats are united on this,” he said. “We believe that putting worker rights in to trade agreements is a critical piece of shaping globalization in the world today.”
The true face of Global Capitalism.....National Association of Manufactuurers oppose provisions guaranteeing bans on child and slave labor and fear Hugo Chavez might try to "overturn right to work laws" in USA !!!
Labor Rights Issues Are Stalling Trade Pacts
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/business/21trade.html
April 21, 2007
Labor Rights Issues Are Stalling Trade Pacts
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
WASHINGTON, April 20 — Hopes for a bipartisan agreement between the Bush administration and Congress leading to approval of several pending trade pacts have dissolved in a burst of charges and countercharges over the issue of labor rights.
Administration officials and leading Democrats said there was still a chance for a compromise that could clear the way for passage of the trade deals and even for extension of President Bush’s authority to negotiate a global trade accord and receive an expedited vote in Congress.
But the optimism heard last month has vanished and been replaced by acrimony reflected in a sharp exchange this week between business groups, who were supporting the administration, and Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
“I really thought that everyone was on board with this,” Mr. Rangel said, referring to his statements last month that the administration and Republicans in Congress were open to labor guarantees.
“But there are some people,” Mr. Rangel said, “who hate unions so much, they can’t see their way clear to supporting this provision.”
A failure to approve the four trade deals — with Colombia, Panama, Peru and South Korea — could end the possibility of trade negotiations for the rest of Mr. Bush’s term and deal a blow to any chances of a global trade accord.
Without an agreement in the Democratic-led Congress on the president’s so-called fast-track negotiating authority, which expires June 30, the administration would not be able to bring any global trade deal before lawmakers and get an up-or-down vote.
Trade negotiations among 180 countries have been foundering since last summer, but the United States has joined with Europe, India and Brazil to try to revive them. More talks are expected next week in Washington, but trade officials said that the impasse between the Democrats and the administration on labor rights has clouded their chances.
At issue is the Democratic demand that pending trade deals with Colombia, Panama, Peru and South Korea include a provision guaranteeing certain rights for labor in the trading partner countries, including a ban on child and slave labor and the right to organize.
In addition, the Democrats want the accords to endorse general labor protections adopted by the International Labor Organization, like the right to organize.
The Bush administration, backed by business groups, contends that this Democratic demand could lead to trading partners suing to overturn basic American labor practices, like teenage summer jobs or work on farms, or the practice in some American states of prisoners making consumer goods.
Another fear is that governments in Latin America, perhaps inspired by anti-American figures like President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, might use trade deals to try to overturn “right to work” laws in states, which bar employers from requiring workers to join unions.
“Subjecting our labor system to foreign challenge is simply not something to which we can agree,” said John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan who is president of the National Association of Manufacturers.
“For state constitutions or laws to be subject to a foreign nation’s challenge would be unacceptable,” Mr. Engler said.
The United States Chamber of Commerce sided with Mr. Engler but suggested that there was still a possibility of compromise.
Mr. Rangel and other Democrats said that the concern of Mr. Engler and other business leaders was bogus, noting that under the Democratic proposal only those laws that have an impact on trade might be challenged.
He added that he was “astounded” that Mr. Engler would “go to such lengths to jeopardize the hard work of so many in Congress and the administration who are negotiating these issues.”
Republicans in Congress have tried to stay out of the fight between Mr. Rangel and the business groups. Both Representative Jim McCrery, a Louisiana Republican who is the ranking Republican member of House Ways and Means, and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican of the Senate Finance Committee, have said they were convinced that a compromise could be reached if the attacks stop.
Administration officials have not spoken about Mr. Rangel’s dispute with the National Association of Manufacturers, other than to say that they agree with the business groups.
Organized labor sides with the Democrats, but officials at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. say that while the Republican fear of an effort to change American labor laws is far-fetched, there would be an advantage to the International Labor Organization putting pressure on the United States to change some laws.
“At the end of the day, no American change in U.S. labor laws is going to come through a bilateral trade agreement with Peru,” said Thea Lee, chief international economist of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “But putting these provisions into a bilateral agreement does put additional pressure on the United States government.”
Ms. Lee and others noted that past trade agreements, like one with Jordan signed at the end of the Clinton administration and approved during President Bush’s first year in office, had labor provisions that are similar to the ones the Democrats are seeking.
Representative Sander Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means trade subcommittee, said the administration’s concern was “a false issue” because only governments could bring challenges to American labor laws.
Meanwhile, Mr. Levin said the Democrats were still pressing for environmental protections and other issue to be put in the trade deals before Congress.
“I think some in the administration doubt that Democrats are united on this,” he said. “We believe that putting worker rights in to trade agreements is a critical piece of shaping globalization in the world today.”
INFANT DEATHS CLIMB IN SOUTH
"One of the greatest causualities of the war in Vietnam was the Great Society...shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam" Martin Luther King, Jr.
Without any pretense of a "Great Society" anymore...health care is being shot down.....
April 22, 2007
In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South
By ERIK ECKHOLM
HOLLANDALE, Miss. — For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.
The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.
“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.
To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.
Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average.
Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)
The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for a total of 481.
The toll is visible in Hollandale, a tired town in the impoverished Delta region of northwest Mississippi.
Jamekia Brown, 22 and two months pregnant with her third child, lives next to the black people’s cemetery in the part of town called No Name, where multiple generations crowd into cheap clapboard houses and trailers.
So it took only a minute to walk to the graves of Ms. Brown’s first two children, marked with temporary metal signs because she cannot afford tombstones.
Her son, who was born with deformities in 2002, died in her arms a few months later, after surgery. Her daughter was stillborn the next year. Nearby is another green marker, for a son of Ms. Brown’s cousin who died at four months, apparently of pneumonia.
The main causes of infant death in poor Southern regions included premature and low-weight births; Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is linked to parental smoking and unsafe sleeping positions as well as unknown causes; congenital defects; and, among poor black teenage mothers in particular, deaths from accidents and disease.
Dr. William Langston, an obstetrician at the Mississippi Department of Health, said in a telephone interview that officials could not yet explain the sudden increase and were investigating. Dr. Langston said the state was working to extend prenatal care and was experimenting with new outreach programs. But, he added, “programs take money, and Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation.”
Doctors who treat poor women say they are not surprised by the reversal.
“I think the rise is real, and it’s going to get worse,” said Dr. Bouldin Marley, an obstetrician at a private clinic in Clarksdale since 1979. “The mothers in general, black or white, are not as healthy,” Dr. Marley said, calling obesity and its complications a main culprit.
Obesity makes it more difficult to do diagnostic tests like ultrasounds and can lead to hypertension and diabetes, which can cause the fetus to be undernourished, he said.
Another major problem, Dr. Marley said, is that some women arrive in labor having had little or no prenatal care. “I don’t think there’s a lack of providers or facilities,” he said. “Some women just don’t have the get up and go.”
But social workers say that the motivation of poor women is not so simply described, and it can be affected by cuts in social programs and a dearth of transportation as well as low self esteem.
“If you didn’t have a car and had to go 60 miles to see a doctor, would you go very often?” said Ramona Beardain, director of Delta Health Partners. The group runs a federally financed program, Healthy Start, that sends social workers and nurses to counsel pregnant teenagers and new mothers in seven counties of the Delta. “If they’re in school they miss the day; if they’re working they don’t get paid,” Ms. Beardain said.
Poverty has climbed in Mississippi in recent years, and things are tougher in other ways for poor women, with cuts in cash welfare and changes in the medical safety net.
In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance program; locations and hours for enrollment changed, and documentation requirements became more stringent.
As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred by the new procedures from enrolling.
One former Medicaid official, Maria Morris, who resigned last year as head of an office that informed the public about eligibility, said that under the Barbour administration, her program was severely curtailed.
“The philosophy was to reduce the rolls and our activities were contrary to that policy,” she said.
Mississippi’s Medicaid director, Dr. Robert L. Robinson, said in a written response that suggesting any correlation between the decline in Medicaid enrollment and infant mortality was “pure conjecture.”
Dr. Robinson said that the new procedures eliminated unqualified recipients. With 95 enrollment sites available, he said, no one should have had difficulty signing up.
As to Ms. Morris’s charge that information efforts had been curbed, Dr. Robinson said that because of the frequent turnover of Medicaid directors — he is the sixth since 2000 — “our unified outreach program was interrupted.” He said it has now resumed.
The state Health Department has cut back its system of clinics, in part because of budget shortfalls and a shortage of nurses. Some clinics that used to be open several days a week are now open once a week and some offer no prenatal care.
The department has also suffered management turmoil and reductions in field staff, problems so severe that the state Legislature recently voted to replace the director.
Oleta Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the Children’s Defense Fund, said: “When you see drops in the welfare rolls, when you see drops in Medicaid and children’s insurance, you see a recipe for disaster. Somebody’s not eating, somebody’s not going to the doctor and unborn children suffer.”
Visits with pregnant women and mothers in several Delta towns suggest that many poverty-related factors — including public policies, personal behaviors and health conditions — may contribute to infant deaths.
Krystal Allen, a cousin of Jamekia Brown’s, was 17 when she had her first baby. When he was 4 months old, she said, he developed breathing problems. Ms. Allen took the child to an emergency room, where he was put on a vaporizer and given an antibiotic and a prescription and they were sent home, where they slept for a few hours.
“When I woke up I thought he was sleeping, and I was getting ready for church,” Ms. Allen said. “But he was dead.”
Now 21, a mother of two with a third on the way, Ms. Allen lives in a sparsely furnished house in Hollandale with her unemployed boyfriend and his mother. Her children live with her parents.
Ms. Allen greeted visitors with breakfast in hand: a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of chips.
Janice Johnson, a social worker with Delta Health Partners, urged her to eat more healthily. “I’m going to change my diet one day,” Ms. Allen replied.
She had been to a doctor for one visit but had to sign up for Medicaid to get continued care. That required a 36-mile trip to an office in Greenville.
“Can’t you go this Friday?” Ms. Johnson asked.
“Well, if my mom is going to Greenville,” Ms. Allen replied, “and if she has gas in the car.”
As for Ms. Brown, having lost two babies and suffering from thyroid disease and hypertension, her latest pregnancy is considered high risk. Ms. Johnson has helped arrange for intensive medical monitoring.
Eunice Brown, 21, another of Ms. Johnson’s clients, was fortunate nothing went wrong with her first pregnancy. She was afraid to tell her mother. In the eighth month of her pregnancy, she went to the hospital with a stomach ache and delivered a healthy baby.
“I was 15 and I didn’t think prenatal care mattered that much,” she said in the one-bedroom home she shares with her mother, her three children and two nieces her mother is tending. Ms. Brown, who was three months’ pregnant with her fourth child, said she would apply for Medicaid “when I get the transportation.” The family has lived mainly off her welfare checks and her intermittent work, in elderly day care, which led her welfare check to be reduced from $194 a month to $26 a month. A father “sometimes helps with money,” she said.
In the past 10 years, the infant mortality rate for blacks in most of the Delta has averaged about 14 per thousand in some counties and more than 20 per thousand in others. But just to the south of Hollandale, Sharkey County, one of the poorest, has had a startlingly different record. From 1991 through 2005, the rate for blacks hovered at around 5 per thousand.
State officials say the county’s population is too small — it registers only 100 births a year — to be statistically significant. But many experts feel it is no coincidence that a steep drop in infant deaths followed the start of an intensive home-visiting system run by the Cary Christian Center, using local mothers as counselors.
“If this is a fluke it’s a 15-year fluke,” said Dr. Glick, the neonatologist.
The program, which is paid for with private money, buses nearly all pregnant blacks in Sharkey and a small neighboring county to pre- and postnatal classes.
Irma Johnson, who has worked for the Cary Center for 14 years, was a soothing presence as she visited Erica Moore, a 24-year-old with young twins. With Vaseline, warm water, a toothbrush and soft murmurs, she showed her how to combat cradle cap, a scaly buildup on the scalp.
But personal attention cannot always change ingrained attitudes.
Barbara Williams, another veteran counselor of the Cary center, made an unannounced visit to a cluster of trailers in Anguilla occupied by the extended Jackson family.
“I’ve been following this family for 18 years, and they’re in a bad cycle,” Ms. Williams said, noting that three generations of women had dropped out of high school.
As Ms. Williams entered one crowded trailer a young woman tried to hide, then stood defiantly. The woman, Victoria Jackson, 22, already has three small children and was five months pregnant.
No, she said, she has not signed up for Medicaid and she has not seen a doctor, and she brushed aside offers of help.
Ms. Williams, visibly upset, said later, “Victoria never gives a reason why she doesn’t see a doctor. I guess she thinks she’s gotten away with it three times already.”
"One of the greatest causualities of the war in Vietnam was the Great Society...shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam" Martin Luther King, Jr.
Without any pretense of a "Great Society" anymore...health care is being shot down.....
April 22, 2007
In Turnabout, Infant Deaths Climb in South
By ERIK ECKHOLM
HOLLANDALE, Miss. — For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.
The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.
“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.
To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.
Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average.
Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)
The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for a total of 481.
The toll is visible in Hollandale, a tired town in the impoverished Delta region of northwest Mississippi.
Jamekia Brown, 22 and two months pregnant with her third child, lives next to the black people’s cemetery in the part of town called No Name, where multiple generations crowd into cheap clapboard houses and trailers.
So it took only a minute to walk to the graves of Ms. Brown’s first two children, marked with temporary metal signs because she cannot afford tombstones.
Her son, who was born with deformities in 2002, died in her arms a few months later, after surgery. Her daughter was stillborn the next year. Nearby is another green marker, for a son of Ms. Brown’s cousin who died at four months, apparently of pneumonia.
The main causes of infant death in poor Southern regions included premature and low-weight births; Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is linked to parental smoking and unsafe sleeping positions as well as unknown causes; congenital defects; and, among poor black teenage mothers in particular, deaths from accidents and disease.
Dr. William Langston, an obstetrician at the Mississippi Department of Health, said in a telephone interview that officials could not yet explain the sudden increase and were investigating. Dr. Langston said the state was working to extend prenatal care and was experimenting with new outreach programs. But, he added, “programs take money, and Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation.”
Doctors who treat poor women say they are not surprised by the reversal.
“I think the rise is real, and it’s going to get worse,” said Dr. Bouldin Marley, an obstetrician at a private clinic in Clarksdale since 1979. “The mothers in general, black or white, are not as healthy,” Dr. Marley said, calling obesity and its complications a main culprit.
Obesity makes it more difficult to do diagnostic tests like ultrasounds and can lead to hypertension and diabetes, which can cause the fetus to be undernourished, he said.
Another major problem, Dr. Marley said, is that some women arrive in labor having had little or no prenatal care. “I don’t think there’s a lack of providers or facilities,” he said. “Some women just don’t have the get up and go.”
But social workers say that the motivation of poor women is not so simply described, and it can be affected by cuts in social programs and a dearth of transportation as well as low self esteem.
“If you didn’t have a car and had to go 60 miles to see a doctor, would you go very often?” said Ramona Beardain, director of Delta Health Partners. The group runs a federally financed program, Healthy Start, that sends social workers and nurses to counsel pregnant teenagers and new mothers in seven counties of the Delta. “If they’re in school they miss the day; if they’re working they don’t get paid,” Ms. Beardain said.
Poverty has climbed in Mississippi in recent years, and things are tougher in other ways for poor women, with cuts in cash welfare and changes in the medical safety net.
In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance program; locations and hours for enrollment changed, and documentation requirements became more stringent.
As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred by the new procedures from enrolling.
One former Medicaid official, Maria Morris, who resigned last year as head of an office that informed the public about eligibility, said that under the Barbour administration, her program was severely curtailed.
“The philosophy was to reduce the rolls and our activities were contrary to that policy,” she said.
Mississippi’s Medicaid director, Dr. Robert L. Robinson, said in a written response that suggesting any correlation between the decline in Medicaid enrollment and infant mortality was “pure conjecture.”
Dr. Robinson said that the new procedures eliminated unqualified recipients. With 95 enrollment sites available, he said, no one should have had difficulty signing up.
As to Ms. Morris’s charge that information efforts had been curbed, Dr. Robinson said that because of the frequent turnover of Medicaid directors — he is the sixth since 2000 — “our unified outreach program was interrupted.” He said it has now resumed.
The state Health Department has cut back its system of clinics, in part because of budget shortfalls and a shortage of nurses. Some clinics that used to be open several days a week are now open once a week and some offer no prenatal care.
The department has also suffered management turmoil and reductions in field staff, problems so severe that the state Legislature recently voted to replace the director.
Oleta Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the Children’s Defense Fund, said: “When you see drops in the welfare rolls, when you see drops in Medicaid and children’s insurance, you see a recipe for disaster. Somebody’s not eating, somebody’s not going to the doctor and unborn children suffer.”
Visits with pregnant women and mothers in several Delta towns suggest that many poverty-related factors — including public policies, personal behaviors and health conditions — may contribute to infant deaths.
Krystal Allen, a cousin of Jamekia Brown’s, was 17 when she had her first baby. When he was 4 months old, she said, he developed breathing problems. Ms. Allen took the child to an emergency room, where he was put on a vaporizer and given an antibiotic and a prescription and they were sent home, where they slept for a few hours.
“When I woke up I thought he was sleeping, and I was getting ready for church,” Ms. Allen said. “But he was dead.”
Now 21, a mother of two with a third on the way, Ms. Allen lives in a sparsely furnished house in Hollandale with her unemployed boyfriend and his mother. Her children live with her parents.
Ms. Allen greeted visitors with breakfast in hand: a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of chips.
Janice Johnson, a social worker with Delta Health Partners, urged her to eat more healthily. “I’m going to change my diet one day,” Ms. Allen replied.
She had been to a doctor for one visit but had to sign up for Medicaid to get continued care. That required a 36-mile trip to an office in Greenville.
“Can’t you go this Friday?” Ms. Johnson asked.
“Well, if my mom is going to Greenville,” Ms. Allen replied, “and if she has gas in the car.”
As for Ms. Brown, having lost two babies and suffering from thyroid disease and hypertension, her latest pregnancy is considered high risk. Ms. Johnson has helped arrange for intensive medical monitoring.
Eunice Brown, 21, another of Ms. Johnson’s clients, was fortunate nothing went wrong with her first pregnancy. She was afraid to tell her mother. In the eighth month of her pregnancy, she went to the hospital with a stomach ache and delivered a healthy baby.
“I was 15 and I didn’t think prenatal care mattered that much,” she said in the one-bedroom home she shares with her mother, her three children and two nieces her mother is tending. Ms. Brown, who was three months’ pregnant with her fourth child, said she would apply for Medicaid “when I get the transportation.” The family has lived mainly off her welfare checks and her intermittent work, in elderly day care, which led her welfare check to be reduced from $194 a month to $26 a month. A father “sometimes helps with money,” she said.
In the past 10 years, the infant mortality rate for blacks in most of the Delta has averaged about 14 per thousand in some counties and more than 20 per thousand in others. But just to the south of Hollandale, Sharkey County, one of the poorest, has had a startlingly different record. From 1991 through 2005, the rate for blacks hovered at around 5 per thousand.
State officials say the county’s population is too small — it registers only 100 births a year — to be statistically significant. But many experts feel it is no coincidence that a steep drop in infant deaths followed the start of an intensive home-visiting system run by the Cary Christian Center, using local mothers as counselors.
“If this is a fluke it’s a 15-year fluke,” said Dr. Glick, the neonatologist.
The program, which is paid for with private money, buses nearly all pregnant blacks in Sharkey and a small neighboring county to pre- and postnatal classes.
Irma Johnson, who has worked for the Cary Center for 14 years, was a soothing presence as she visited Erica Moore, a 24-year-old with young twins. With Vaseline, warm water, a toothbrush and soft murmurs, she showed her how to combat cradle cap, a scaly buildup on the scalp.
But personal attention cannot always change ingrained attitudes.
Barbara Williams, another veteran counselor of the Cary center, made an unannounced visit to a cluster of trailers in Anguilla occupied by the extended Jackson family.
“I’ve been following this family for 18 years, and they’re in a bad cycle,” Ms. Williams said, noting that three generations of women had dropped out of high school.
As Ms. Williams entered one crowded trailer a young woman tried to hide, then stood defiantly. The woman, Victoria Jackson, 22, already has three small children and was five months pregnant.
No, she said, she has not signed up for Medicaid and she has not seen a doctor, and she brushed aside offers of help.
Ms. Williams, visibly upset, said later, “Victoria never gives a reason why she doesn’t see a doctor. I guess she thinks she’s gotten away with it three times already.”
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Workers’ Memorial Day 2007
Workers Memorial Day 2007, a day to remember those who have suffered and died on the job and to renew the fight for safe workplaces, will be observed by the Allegheny County Labor Council (ACLC), AFL-CIO, in Pittsburgh, PA on Monday, April 30 at noon in Market Square. This ceremony will also commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Pittsburgh Survey, (1907-1908) the pioneering work of Crystal Eastman and others which investigated the horrendous living conditions of Pittsburgh’s working class. Leo W. Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers, whose leadership saw the enactment of the Westray Bill of the Criminal Code of Canada, which holds corporations criminally liable when workers are killed or injured, will be the keynote speaker. The ACLC Bell, symbolic of a worker whose untimely death may have saved many, will be struck to remember those who have died due to unsafe working conditions this past year in Western Pennsylvania.
Crystal Eastman, founder of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, came to Pittsburgh 100 years ago in 1907 and began an investigation of the labor conditions. Her report, Work Accidents and the Law, cataloged 526 workplace deaths that occurred in only 1 year in Allegheny County and highlighted the inadequacy of worker protection and compensation. This report was one of a 6 volume series that is known collectively as The Pittsburgh Survey, which examined life and labor in America’s 5th largest city, home to a massive exploited immigrant labor force. The progressive reforms this series called for were hindered by the oppressive power of Pittsburgh’s industrialists and its political machine.
Unfortunately 100 years later in 2007, workers still face many obstacles to achieving a safe workplace. The Bush administration, acting on behalf of corporate interests has moved to roll back and weaken existing worker protections. It has the worst record on safety rules in OSHA’s entire history, issuing no new significant rules during its first term. In 2006, as a result of the Sago mine disaster, the number of coalmine deaths doubled, with 47 coal miners killed on the job. After withdrawing dozens of needed safety rules under development in 2001, the Bush administration now is being compelled to issue stronger mine safety protections. Since Bush took office, there have been repeated attempts at slashing funding for OSHA, MSHA and NIOSH and since 2001 OSHA’s budget has been cut by $25.4 million.
OSHA lacks the resources to protect the 100 million workers under its jurisdiction. With its only 900 inspectors, it would take 110 years for OSHA to visit every worksite under its jurisdiction. The number of hours spent per OSHA inspection continues to decrease and the number of cases “downgraded” to less serious violations is rising. Penalties for serious violations remain low and are routinely reduced through a process called abatement. The killing of a worker through the “willful” violation of a safety law is a misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of 6 months in jail. In the 20 years between 1982 and 2002, only 1700 out of 170,000 workplace fatalities were deemed “willful”. OSHA declined to seek prosecution in 93% of these 1700 “willful” violations and less than 20 of these “willful” violators ever were imprisoned.
Each year, approximately 4.2 million workers are injured, over 5000 are killed and another 50,000 die due to occupational exposure. American workers need a strong OSHA and MSHA that puts workers, not employers, first and protects health and safety not corporate interests. Crystal Eastman’s pioneering work in Allegheny County 100 years ago was an important landmark in this ongoing struggle for workplace health and safety. Workers’ Memorial Day 2007 in Pittsburgh PA, will celebrate her important contribution to workplace safety, honor those who have lost their lives while on the job in western PA, and promote the health and safety of all workers.
Donna Puleio Spadaro, MD
Allegheny County Labor Council Workers’ Memorial Day Committee
The author’s brother, Gary Puleio, fell 25 feet from a concrete tower and was killed on August 15, 2001. After admitting no wrongdoing, the company which had informally settled multiple serious violations only months before Gary was killed, paid a $6000 fine.
Workers Memorial Day 2007, a day to remember those who have suffered and died on the job and to renew the fight for safe workplaces, will be observed by the Allegheny County Labor Council (ACLC), AFL-CIO, in Pittsburgh, PA on Monday, April 30 at noon in Market Square. This ceremony will also commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Pittsburgh Survey, (1907-1908) the pioneering work of Crystal Eastman and others which investigated the horrendous living conditions of Pittsburgh’s working class. Leo W. Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers, whose leadership saw the enactment of the Westray Bill of the Criminal Code of Canada, which holds corporations criminally liable when workers are killed or injured, will be the keynote speaker. The ACLC Bell, symbolic of a worker whose untimely death may have saved many, will be struck to remember those who have died due to unsafe working conditions this past year in Western Pennsylvania.
Crystal Eastman, founder of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, came to Pittsburgh 100 years ago in 1907 and began an investigation of the labor conditions. Her report, Work Accidents and the Law, cataloged 526 workplace deaths that occurred in only 1 year in Allegheny County and highlighted the inadequacy of worker protection and compensation. This report was one of a 6 volume series that is known collectively as The Pittsburgh Survey, which examined life and labor in America’s 5th largest city, home to a massive exploited immigrant labor force. The progressive reforms this series called for were hindered by the oppressive power of Pittsburgh’s industrialists and its political machine.
Unfortunately 100 years later in 2007, workers still face many obstacles to achieving a safe workplace. The Bush administration, acting on behalf of corporate interests has moved to roll back and weaken existing worker protections. It has the worst record on safety rules in OSHA’s entire history, issuing no new significant rules during its first term. In 2006, as a result of the Sago mine disaster, the number of coalmine deaths doubled, with 47 coal miners killed on the job. After withdrawing dozens of needed safety rules under development in 2001, the Bush administration now is being compelled to issue stronger mine safety protections. Since Bush took office, there have been repeated attempts at slashing funding for OSHA, MSHA and NIOSH and since 2001 OSHA’s budget has been cut by $25.4 million.
OSHA lacks the resources to protect the 100 million workers under its jurisdiction. With its only 900 inspectors, it would take 110 years for OSHA to visit every worksite under its jurisdiction. The number of hours spent per OSHA inspection continues to decrease and the number of cases “downgraded” to less serious violations is rising. Penalties for serious violations remain low and are routinely reduced through a process called abatement. The killing of a worker through the “willful” violation of a safety law is a misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of 6 months in jail. In the 20 years between 1982 and 2002, only 1700 out of 170,000 workplace fatalities were deemed “willful”. OSHA declined to seek prosecution in 93% of these 1700 “willful” violations and less than 20 of these “willful” violators ever were imprisoned.
Each year, approximately 4.2 million workers are injured, over 5000 are killed and another 50,000 die due to occupational exposure. American workers need a strong OSHA and MSHA that puts workers, not employers, first and protects health and safety not corporate interests. Crystal Eastman’s pioneering work in Allegheny County 100 years ago was an important landmark in this ongoing struggle for workplace health and safety. Workers’ Memorial Day 2007 in Pittsburgh PA, will celebrate her important contribution to workplace safety, honor those who have lost their lives while on the job in western PA, and promote the health and safety of all workers.
Donna Puleio Spadaro, MD
Allegheny County Labor Council Workers’ Memorial Day Committee
The author’s brother, Gary Puleio, fell 25 feet from a concrete tower and was killed on August 15, 2001. After admitting no wrongdoing, the company which had informally settled multiple serious violations only months before Gary was killed, paid a $6000 fine.
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