Gouvernor Cuomo Unveils Task Force to Protect Immigrant Workers

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E-Waste Recycling Workersat Risk for Take-Home Toxins

Green doesn't always mean safe.  Workers in recycling centers can be exposed to hazardous material in levels that can affect their helath and the health of their family members, if the residue remains on their clothes, when they return home at the end of the day.  Click here for the full article.

Injured on the Job?: An Employee's Guide to Workers' Compensation in New York State

Here is the link to the New York State Guide for workers to navigate the Workers' Comp System.

A Tattered Safety Net for Workers

For many chemicals, legal exposure limits carry high cancer risks

OSHA’s limits for known or likely human carcinogens almost always fall far short of protections the government seeks to give the general public. That’s according to an analysis by Adam M. Finkel — a former OSHA health regulatory divisions director now at the University of Pennsylvania — and the Center for Public Integrity.

The analysis estimates excess risk over time: If 1,000 workers are exposed to a chemical’s legal limit over their entire careers, how many will likely get cancer as a result? OSHA considers a 1-in-1,000 risk to be “clearly significant.” Below, compare estimated risks at OSHA limits to the risks at often-tighter “Threshold Limit Values” recommended by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists, a nonprofit supported in part by industry. The method isn’t exact — no risk calculation is — but it shows how much hazards can vary under the law. (Details about how and where such chemicals are used, meanwhile, are partial rather than comprehensive because such information is limited.) Read about our methodology here.

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Keeping Nurses Safe on the Job Is not Only the Right Thing to Do, but it Saves Big Money

A new report released by Public Citizen looks at health providers who use safe patient handling equipment consistently and who have successfully reduced worker injuries, leading to big cost savings.  Click here for the full report.

OSHA Initiative to Help Keep Nurses Safer

OSHA To Go After Hospitals For Ergonomic Hazards                    

By VERONICA VOLK 

Hospitals could be penalized by the federal Occupation Safety and Hazard Administration for risking injury to nurses. OSHA announced it intends to issue fines for ergonomic hazards in hospitals. The nursing profession has the highest rate of on-the-job injuries of any other in the country.

Jennifer Chesebro is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Nurse Practitioning at Brockport. She says she thinks hospitals want to do more to protect nurses, and this push from OSHA might incentivize them to do so.

"I think this encouragement, this great website OSHA has talking about how important it is, and how important it is to try to protect our nurses from all the injuries, how many injuries there really are, and things that can be done to help: I hope that makes a difference. I think it might."

Chesebro says she sees physical therapists used in training new hospital employees, but that does not go far enough. OSHA announced it will partly focus on whether or not hospitals utilize equipment to help nurses move patients.

Extreme Worker Surveillance a Cause of Illness

These Workers Have a New Demand: Stop Watching Us

How workplace surveillance has become a menace to health and safety.

Jessica Bruder

May 27, 2015   |    This article appeared in the June 15, 2015 edition of The Nation

(Credit: Allie Whitehead)

Four years ago, I was out jogging with an old friend when she told me a puzzling story: Her longtime UPS driver had just reappeared after more than a monthlong absence. He’d been hospitalized for stress, she told me.
Stress? How stressful could that job be? So I asked to meet him.

Over coffee, the deliveryman, whom I’ll call Bill (he asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the company), explained that United Parcel Service had been upgrading its systems for tracking employees. Now the truck he drove was full of sensors. They reported when he opened the bulkhead door. When he backed up. When his foot was on the brake. When he was idling. When he buckled his safety belt. A high-resolution stream of data, including all that information and his GPS coordinates, flowed back to the UPS offices. The system is called “telematics.”

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