Copyright

(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

U.S., state officials ask about asbestos

Today's post is shared from timesunion.com/
Federal and state environmental agents have interviewed the former city engineer and his assistant about the city's handling of two demolition projects involving asbestos, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The emergency razing of 4-6-8-10 King St. in August 2013 and the tearing down of buildings at the King Fuels site in South Troy this year have drawn the attention of criminal investigators from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The agents asked Russ Reeves, the former city engineer, and Barbara Tozzi, a former city engineering assistant, about the circumstances of the work and the handling of asbestos, the person, who wished to remain anonymous, said. The agents also queried Reeves regarding the nature of relationships at city hall and the involvement of individuals in the projects.
Stop-work orders were issued for both demolition projects by the state because of concerns about procedures for dealing with asbestos in the 19th-century structures.
The questions were similar to those asked by the FBI when one of its agents interviewed Reeves earlier this year. The state Labor Department also has investigated the asbestos removal.
The city's request for proposals for the development of the Scolite site on the Hudson River in South Troy also was discussed in the latest interview, the person said.
Reeves resigned as city engineer, saying that city officials were not concerned about public safety when the...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Mechanic can sue Ford for further damages in asbestos case

The state Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed a former Bay Area service station owner to seek additional damages from Ford Motor Co. for exposing him to brake-lining asbestos that has afflicted him with terminal cancer.
A jury awarded Patrick Scott $1.5 million in damages and legal costs against Ford in November 2012. Wednesday's order allows him to ask another jury for punitive damages. Scott and his wife, Sharon, have settled claims against other automakers for undisclosed amounts.
Scott worked in a Navy shipyard, where he was also exposed to asbestos, before opening his first service station in Sausalito in 1965. He leased an Atlantic Richfield station in San Francisco in 1970, then moved his business to a Beacon station in St. Helena in 1977.
He stopped working in 2011 after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable form of lung cancer that is caused by asbestos but typically does not show up until decades after exposure.
Asbestos has long been used in the linings of motor vehicle brakes and clutches and is still used in brake pads, though it is banned in some other products. Scientists had established its connection to cancer by the mid-1950s, but the federal government did not regulate workplace asbestos exposure until 1971.
According to court records, Ford mentioned asbestos in one of its publications in 1975 but did not put warnings on brake cartons until at least 1980. A Ford internal investigation cited by Scott's lawyers found mesothelioma among company...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Monday, July 21, 2014

Part-Time Schedules, Full-Time Headaches

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

A worker at an apparel store at Woodbury Common, an outlet mall north of New York City, said that even though some part-time employees clamored for more hours, the store had hired more part-timers and cut many workers’ hours to 10 a week from 20.
As soon as a nurse in Illinois arrived for her scheduled 3-to-11 p.m. shift one Christmas Day, hospital officials told her to go home because the patient “census” was low. They also ordered her to remain on call for the next four hours — all unpaid.
An employee at a specialty store in California said his 25-hour-a-week job with wildly fluctuating hours wasn’t enough to live on. But when he asked the store to schedule him between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. so he could find a second job, the store cut him to 12 hours a week.
These are among the experiences related by New York Times readers in more than 440 responses to an article published in Wednesday’s paper about a fledgling movement in which some states and cities are seeking to limit the harshest effects of increasingly unpredictable and on-call work schedules. Many readers voiced dismay with the volatility of Americans’ work schedules and the inability of many part-timers to cobble together enough hours to support their families.


In a comment that was the most highly recommended by others — 307 of them — a reader going by “pedigrees” wrote that workers were often reviled for not working hard enough or not being educated...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Justices Find NLRB Recess Appointments Invalid

Today's post was shared by WSJ Law Blog and comes from blogs.wsj.com



President Barack Obama exceeded his authority in appointing three National Labor Relations Board members during a brief Senate break in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, holding that presidents may only exercise their appointment powers during recesses of 10 or more days.
WSJ’s Jess Bravin and Melanie Trottman have a break down of the decision:
The decision provides a narrow win for employers who contested the validity of labor board rulings made by the recess appointees. But by a 5-4 vote, the court refused to virtually eliminate the president’s power to fill vacancies when the Senate wasn’t transacting business, as a lower court had done.
The majority opinion, by Justice Stephen Breyer, cited more than a century of historical practice that has treated the recess power more broadly, saying that was entitled to judicial respect. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined him.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in a separate opinion, said the majority gave too broad an interpretation of the president’s power to fill positions without the Senate’s consent. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined him.
The case came from a labor dispute involving a Pepsi bottler in Washington State, the Noel Canning unit of Noel Corp., which contested a National Labor Relations Board ruling that it had unlawfully refused execute a collective­ bargaining agreement with a labor...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Employment Status An Issue: Who's their real boss

Today's post is shared from http://www.mercurynews.com
Who's your boss?
For an increasing number of American workers, it's a hard question to answer. To cut costs and avoid liability, more companies are hiring workers on a temporary or contract basis. More than 17 million people, 12 percent of the U.S. workforce, are now employed as temps, contract or freelance workers.
If you're a temp, which company is responsible for your pay, your schedule — and your right to a safe workplace? The agency that hired you, or the company that hired the agency?
The right answer, according to a group of temporary workers at a recycling plant in Milpitas, is both. They get paid by one company — Leadpoint Business Services — but work under the direction of a different one — Browning Ferris Industries (BFI), which operates the facility.
When temps at Milpitas filed a union organizing petition last year, they asked the National Labor Relations Board to recognize both Leadpoint and BFI as joint employers. Seeking representation by the Teamsters, the workers argued that since two companies share control over the work environment, both should come to the bargaining table.
The regional office of the NLRB disagreed, finding Leadpoint alone was the employer. The temporary workers have appealed. My organization — the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health — recently joined an amicus brief in support of their claim that both companies are joint...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

CCWC at Disneyland


photo

Today's post is authored by Julius Young and shared from workcompzone.com

I’ve been attending the 2014 California Coalition on Workers’ Compensation annual conference at Disneyland, which wrapped up yesterday.
On Wednesday the conference kicked off with a blogger’s panel featuring myself, insurance consultant and blogger Peter Rousmaniere, Workcompcentral.com publisher David DePaolo, and WorkersCompensation.com publisher Bob Wilson.  Mark Walls of Safety National Insurance moderated a lively discussion that got into some “out of the box” discussions about the direction of workers’ comp; in a coming post I’ll reprise some of the thoughts from the panel and offer some further insights.
CCWC is a major player on the California workers’ comp scene. Many of California’s big employers are members. I’m talking companies like Safeway, Walt Disney and UPS. CCWC is one of several prominent employer advocates in Sacramento along with the Cal Chamber and groups like WCAN (Workers Compensation Action Network).
Members of CCWC were pivotal in drafting and pushing through the 2012 SB 863 California comp reforms. Key board members clearly have the ear of Brown Administration policymakers. And the Sacramento lobbyists used by CCWC, Paul Yoder and Jason Schmelzer, are a talented bunch.
In short, the conference attracts many of the key employer and insurer players in California workers’ comp.
Here are some of the more interesting things I heard and some of my random impressions from the...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Using Mobile Technology for Work Linked to Higher Stress

Today's post was shared by Work Org and Stress and comes from www.gallup.com

Heavier users carry more stress, but also rate lives better

by Dan Witters and Diana Liu
This article is part of a weeklong series analyzing how mobile technology is affecting politics, business, and well-being.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. workers who email for work and who spend more hours working remotely outside of normal working hours are more likely to experience a substantial amount of stress on any given day than workers who do not exhibit these behaviors. Nearly half of workers who "frequently" email for work outside of normal working hours report experiencing stress "a lot of the day yesterday," compared with the 36% experiencing stress who never email for work.


Daily Stress by Email Usage and Remote Working Habits
Daily Stress by Email Usage and Remote Working Habits

Time spent working remotely outside of working hours aligns similarly, with 47% of those who report working remotely at least seven hours per week having a lot of stress the previous day compared with 37% experiencing stress who reported no remote work time.
These data were collected from March 24 through April 10, 2014, as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index for a special Gallup study exploring the effects of mobile technology on politics, business, and well-being in the United States. Gallup interviewed 4,475 working U.S. adults, and the findings hold true after controlling for age, gender, income, education, race/ethnicity, region, marital status, and children in household.
Workers Who Use Mobile Technology Rate Their Lives...
[Click here to see the rest of this post]