Workplace hazards today are broad and complex. Where specificity of law is absent or ambiguous, such as workplace safety for Covid-19, OSHA’s “General Duty” clause, section (5)(a)(1) of the OSH Act, becomes an enforcement incentive.
Women have made amazing strides in many fields and industries throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Unfortunately, there are many others in which it remains a big challenge for a woman to rise to the top — or even, in some cases, to enter the industry at all.
In this series, the concept of and need for whistleblowers will be explored along with historical and present-day cases. In this part one, the concept of whistleblowers, OSHA’s language regarding them and types of whistleblower reports are explored.
Every year, AdvisorSmith researches the most dangerous jobs in the United States based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. The list doesn’t usually vary by too much, but there are some statistics worth a second look in the current list, which uses data from 2014-2018.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) H.R. 2694 passed the U.S. House of Representatives in September by a vote of 329 to 73. At the time of this writing it is uncertain if the Senate, followed by President Trump’s signature, has passed the PWFA into law.
For all the COVID-19 safety guidelines circulating, some hundreds of pages long, basic best practices are straightforward and known by most Americans. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, recently recounted them in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association.
As the U.S. has begun to reopen with the coronavirus continuing to affect the country six months after many shelter-in-place mandates developed, workers across a multitude of industries — from manufacturing plants to agriculture to meat processing — are getting sick.