The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — the nation's beleaguered disaster response agency — should be abolished and rebuilt from scratch to avoid a repeat of multiple government failures exposed by Hurricane Katrina, a Senate inquiry has concluded.
In one of the largest penalties ever issued nationally by safety regulators, OSHA last week fined BP Products North America, Inc. more than $2.4 million for unsafe operations at the company's Oregon, Ohio, refinery.
About 14,000 employers have been notified by OSHA that injury and illness rates at their work sites are higher than average and that assistance is available to help them fix safety and health hazards.
A McWane-owned company and four of its managers have been convicted in New Jersey on criminal counts ranging from polluting the Delaware River to intimidating workers and covering up details of a workplace fatality.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the National Mental Health Association has developed some mental health tips to help all Americans, including workers, manage life’s day-by-day demands. Stress at work can lead to missed deadlines, trouble concentrating, reduced productivity and increased sick days, says NMHA (www.nmha.org).
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will no longer set up fake workplace safety meetings to apprehend illegal aliens, the Washington Times reports.
Fru-Con Construction Corp. has paid a total of $11.25 million in wrongful death claims, attorney fees and other expenses to the families of three of four ironworkers killed in the 2004 collapse of a truss crane used to build the new I-280 bridge in Toledo, Ohio, the Toledo Blade reports.
According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2006-07 Edition, released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of occupational health and safety specialists and technicians is expected to increase as much as 17 percent through 2014.
Designed to help reduce roadway crashes and the high costs associated with them, the new ANSI Z15.1 Safe Practices for Motor Vehicle Operations was approved in February by the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), secretariat of the Z15 Accredited Standards Committee.
Workers’ compensation fraud has grown to become a multi-billion dollar a year problem, according to a report on MaineToday.com. According to the report, the American Insurance Association estimates workers' comp fraud losses at $3 billion a year, while industry watchdog the National Insurance Crime Bureau puts it at $5 billion.