One month after ISHN published its October issue cover story on Tesla’s quest to have the safest factory in the world, Tesla’s safety and health practices were again in the news. On November 5, 2018, the Center for Investigative Reporting published an article, “Inside Tesla’s factory, a medical clinic designed to ignore injured workers.”

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Wisconsin in Green Bay has awarded a machine operator $100,000 in back wages and compensatory damages after his employer Dura-Fibre LLC – based in Menasha, Wisconsin – terminated him for reporting injuries he and a co-worker sustained.

More than half of the nearly 3.0 million private industry injury and illness cases reported in 2014 involved days away from work, job transfer, or restriction (DART cases), according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Approximately 84,000 pounds of sulfuric acid spilled from the Tesoro Refinery earlier this year because of insufficient tightening between a tube and a compression joint at a sulfuric acid sampling station, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), which investigated the incident.

According to a 2012 study of more than 1,300 U.S. workers, 75 percent of employees believe their company is not well-prepared for a natural disaster.

If your employees work outdoors, what steps are you taking to protect them from heat-related illnesses?