Workers' Compensation

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Rail Company Involved in Quebec Explosion Files for Bankruptcy

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

BANGOR, Me. — The railroad company whose runaway oil train caused a fire and explosion that killed 47 people in a small town in Canada filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday.

The company — Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in United States and Canadian courts, citing debts to more than 200 creditors after the July disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

The company chairman, Ed Burkhardt, said previously that a bankruptcy filing was likely after service disruptions because its rail line remained closed in Lac-Mégantic. The company, based in Hermon, Me., also faces lawsuits and enormous cleanup costs related to the disaster.

The parked train, with 72 tankers full of crude oil, was unattended when it began rolling toward town, eventually derailing downtown. Several tankers exploded, destroying 40 buildings in the lakeside town of 6,000 residents.

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Fresno workers' compensation case highlights statewide problems

The activities of Sedgwick Claims continue to draw attention in California as the issue of inadequate delivery of medical care to injured workers becomes more acute. Workers' Compensation was intended as social remedial legislation providing benefits to injured workers in an efficient and effective manner. The system just isn't working any longer as the economics of reform emasculated the benefit program. Today's post was shared by Workers Comp Brief and comes from www.fresnobee.com

A workers' compensation company is being criticized for failing to provide medical care for a Fresno woman injured on the job more than 10 years ago.

The employee, Guadalupe Ortega, spoke out with her lawyer Tuesday morning during a press conference held by the California Applicants Attorneys Association across the street from her former employer, Lyons Magnus, a major food processor in Fresno.

Although doctors and Lyons Magnus confirmed her injuries are work related, the company's insurance carrier, Sedgwick Claims Management Services, only provided two years of temporary disability compensation — even though a qualified medical evaluator confirmed she is 70% disabled, Ortega said.

Ortega's plight highlights a larger problem for injured workers statewide who have run into more roadblocks over the past eight years to receive workers' compensation, said Ortega's lawyer, Brett Grove of Keeling Grove Law Offices in Fresno.

"Unfortunately, her experiences are not unique in the workers' compensation arena," Grove said.
Ortega's severe neck, shoulder and back injuries resulted in her losing her job, she said. Ortega became homeless, and her children were taken away from her.

"Sedgwick has turned my life into a living hell," Ortega said. "How can the state of California allow this insurance company to fail to pay legitimate claims?"

Sedgwick officials were unavailable for comment. The company is based in Memphis, Tenn., and calls itself the leading North American provider for...

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Garlock trial winds down; judge closes courtroom again

Asbestos bankruptcies have been problematic for injured workers and their families. The bankruptcies have drastically reduced benefits paid to individuals who have been exposed to asbestos fiber. Betting on time and delay, asbestos companies have utilized bankruptcy procedure to shield themselves from the economic consequences of asbestos disease: asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma.Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Legal Newsline) — The ongoing bankruptcy trial for Garlock Sealing Technologies wound down Monday with attorneys for the gasket manufacturing company and those representing asbestos claimants calling their last few witnesses with the judge closing the courtroom one more time during a lawyer’s testimony.

The bankruptcy trial, which began in July at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of North Carolina and is expected to end later this month after a week-and-a-half break, will determine the estimated liability of the company for current and future asbestos claims. One of the central questions that will help establish how much Garlock will owe the claimants revolves around whether Garlock products, many removed decades ago, and no other sources of asbestos, led to cases of mesothelioma. Judge George Hodges will ultimately decide the estimated liability of the company for current and future asbestos claims and how much money the company will need to devote to a trust to escape bankruptcy.

David Glaspy, a California lawyer who has defended Garlock on more than 25,000 asbestos claims, testified that having disclosure of exposure information claimants against the company would have helped the company significantly in their defense.

To try and limit the company’s liability, Garlock attorneys are asserting that some plaintiffs, taking advantage of confidentiality provisions enacted for special trusts established to pay claimants who...

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Workers compensation hike on California employers proposed

The next wave of chronic problems for California's workers' compensation system is now emerging....increased costs. Despite over 3 decades of reform that has decimated the system, costs continue tosoar. It seems that everytime reformers take another bit out of the benefit program, another cost complication emerges. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from blogs.sacbee.com

Last year, the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown enacted a major overhaul of the state's multi-billion-dollar system of compensating workers for job-related injuries and illnesses, aimed at stabilizing its costs.

The Workers Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau, however, believes that premiums for insurance that most employers carry to cover claims for treatment and cash benefits still should rise next year.
The independent bureau announced that taking into account the legislation's changes, premiums should rise by 3.4 percent next year to an average of $2.62 per $100 of payroll.

The recommendation is not binding, and insurers in the highly competitive workers comp market can charge whatever they wish. State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones also will weigh in with his recommendation.

The bureau also put another caveat on its recommendation - that it could be changed, depending on whether the state Division of Workers Compensation adopts a proposed new schedule of payments for physicians who treat job-related disabilities.

Last year's overhaul of the system, contained in Senate Bill 863, was a deal among most of the major stakeholders in the system, employers and labor unions most prominently. It followed a pattern of making major changes in the system roughly once a decade, usually after years of maneuvering by the major stakeholders.

Speedway owner accused of workers comp fraud

Employer fraud is a major problem for workers' compensation programs. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.pressconnects.com

The Tioga County Sheriffs Office, in cooperation with the New York State Workers Compensation Board, charged a 37-year-old Rochester man Thursday with 26 felony counts of offering a false instrument for filing.

Jason M. Bonsignore, of Edgemere Drive, was also charged with four counts each of failure to secure compensation for employees and fraudulent practice, also felonies under the New York State Workers Compensation Law.

The charges are the result of an investigation of Bonsignores business, Champion Speedway on Old Narrows Road in the Town of Owego.

Bonsignore was arraigned in the Town of Owego Court in front of Justice John Schumacher and released on his own recognizance.

Anyone who has any information on potential workers compensation fraud violations can visit www.wcb.ny.gov or call toll free at (888) 363-6001.

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Lead paint manufacturers facing California challenge

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.dailynews.com

In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised to 535,000 its estimate of the number of American children with potentially dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

But for U.S. communities combating the lead hazards, there might never be any money from the group some say is most responsible for creating the problem: The companies that made lead pigment used in the old, flaking paint still coating millions of dwellings.

The industry could be on the verge of defeating the last major legal assault by municipalities and states seeking damages to fund lead removal. Apart from one settlement, the industry has successfully defended roughly 50 lawsuits by states, cities, counties and school districts over the last 24 years.

Now, in a bench trial underway in San Jose, the industry is seeking a final victory in a case brought by 10 public agencies, including Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego. The suit seeks to force the defendants to inspect more than 3 million California homes, and to remove any lead paint hazards that are discovered, at an estimated cost of more than $1 billion.

Lead lawsuits once were expected by some experts to follow the path of tobacco litigation. States that sued to recover smoking-related health care costs wrested a $248 billion settlement in 1998 from cigarette makers.

As in the tobacco cases, public agencies in California and elsewhere hired

private law firms, including veterans of...

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Legal Fees and Reform

Today's post was shared by WorkCompCentral and comes from daviddepaolo.blogspot.com

Take a look at

WorkCompCentral job ads

What do you see?

Lots of employment opportunities for lawyers, primarily those on the insurance/employer defense end.

Some firms are even taking out full display ads for recruitment days and other practices that are typically the province of Corporate America.

Indeed, this does appear to be anecdotal evidence of a larger trend in California workers' compensation - as recent Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau data shows, spending on lawyers this past year totaled $1.2 billion and has been increasing at a dramatic rate, particularly for defense legal fees.

That's a lot of legal fees, which represents a lot of benefit contestation.

Break it down even further, though, and the anecdote of job ads for lawyers becomes even more salient - defense fees are double what applicant attorney fees are.

Here's the graphical depiction based on the WCIRB numbers:

The chart is interesting in a couple of aspects.

Note that following the 2004 reform, SB 899, defense fees skyrocket from $368 million in 2003 to nearly double at $642 million in 2006, while applicant attorneys, whose fees are largely pegged to permanent disability indemnity, lost some ground, but essentially remained flat.

Things stabilize a bit after 2006 until 2011 when the lawyers on both sides, start taking home a bit more pay, such that 2012 legal fees are double what they were in 2002 for both defense and applicant.

Compare to the Consumer Price Index rate of inflation - $100 in 2002...

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The Trend to Supersize Hospitals

The trickle down effect of the current trend to supersize hospitals through mergers and acquisitions may far reaching unintended consequences on medical costs for employers, insurance companies and injured workers. An consequence of the Affordable Care Act is to encourage hospitals to keep people healthy and avoid hospital admissions.

Hospital have been not only purchasing other hospitals reducing the number of independent hospitals in the US from 5,000 to 1,000, but it has also accelerated the trend for hospitals to purchase lucrative medical practices to earn income from diagnostic tests and to control the flow of hospital admissions.

An unintended consequence of this path may actually increase hospital costs because fewer hospital facilities exist, or the lack of competition may just lead to a universal medical care system. Workers' compensation insurance programs may therefore be required higher fees to hospitals.

"Hospitals across the nation are being swept up in the biggest wave of mergers since the 1990s, a development that is creating giant hospital systems that could one day dominate American health care and drive up costs."

Read the complete article, "New Laws and Rising Costs Create a Surge of Supersizing Hospitals" (NY Times)

Monday, August 12, 2013

Pending NJ Supreme Court Workers' Compensation Cases

The following is a list of Workers' Compensation cases pending before the NJ Supreme Court as of August 12, 2013.

Off-Premises: Parking Lot Case

A-59-12 Cheryl Hersh v. County of Morris (071433)

Did this employee’s injuries, which occurred when she was struck by a car while walking across a public street to her place of employment from a privately owned garage in which she parked her car at her employer’s expense, arise out of the course of her employment entitling her to benefits under the Workers’ Compensation Act, N.J.S.A. 34:15-1 to -142?

Certification granted: 5/9/13

Posted: 5/13/13

Argued:

Decided:

Conflict of Laws: Preemption

A-130-11 Jersey Central Power & Light Co. v. Lempke (070649)

Was defendant's workers' compensation proceeding in New Jersey a "first-filed litigation" that preempts her Pennsylvania lawsuit against multiple parties over the work-related accident that caused her husband's death?

Certification granted 7/12/12

Posted: 7/13/12

Argued:

Decided:

Cardiovascular: Causal Relationship

A-71-11 James P. Renner v. AT&T (068744)

Does the record support this workers' compensation claim under N.J.S.A. 34:15-7.2, which sets the standard of proof governing claims based on injury or death from cardiovascular causes?

Certification granted: 2/14/12

Posted: 2/14/12

Decided:

CMS Releases Revised List of Workers Compensation Set-Aside Contacts

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has released a revised list of contacts for Workers' Compensation Set-Aside Contacts. The contacts have been centralized in 6 areas of the US.

Click here to download the PDF version of the revised list of contacts.

Bloomberg Sees Higher Costs in a Union-Friendly Mayor

How government looks at the distribution of health care benefits is insightful as to predicting the future of workers' compensation. The change of delivery mechanism implied in the comments of NYC's Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, sketch out a potential future blueprint.Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

Warning of the fiscal danger if New York City fails to rein in its spiraling pension and health care costs, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday challenged his would-be successors to take a tough line in negotiations with the city’s unions, while worrying aloud that whoever is elected will be too beholden to labor.

“We can’t wake up tomorrow morning — the day after the election — and find that some candidate has made a back-room deal with one of the unions that sets the pattern for all the other unions that will eventually lead to stopping the growth in this city,” Mr. Bloomberg said, departing from his prepared remarks at the end of a speech in Brooklyn on the city’s economy and fiscal situation.

“We cannot afford certain things,” he continued. “It’s tough to say no. It’s particularly tough to say no when nobody wants anybody to get hurt. But the bottom line: this is the taxpayers’ money, and this is our future.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s speech, delivered at a former Pfizer manufacturing plant that is now home to some two dozen small companies, producing everything from 3D printers to kimchi, was in part an attempt to burnish his record of fiscal stewardship, which is hotly debated. He argued that he has determinedly tried to reform pensions and health care but has been stymied by unions.

Fiscal watchdogs note that his administration presided over a 40 percent increase in the city budget, and in his second term handed out raises without demanding concessions on pensions and...

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U.S. Companies Thrive as Workers Fall Behind

In 1911 most states enacted workers' compensation legislation creating a promise for a better system of benefits for injured workers. Over the decades that promise has been broken. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

American companies are more profitable than ever — and more profitable than we thought they were before the government revised the national income accounts last week. Wage earners are making less than we thought, in part because the government now thinks it was overestimating the amount of income not reported by taxpayers.

The major change in the latest comprehensive revision of the national income and product accounts — known as NIPA to statistics aficionados — is to treat research and development spending as an investment, similar to the way the purchase of a new machine tool would be treated by a manufacturer, rather than as an expense. That investment is then written down over a number of years.

The result is to make the size of the economy, the gross domestic product, look bigger, and to appear to be growing faster, in years when new research spending is greater than the amount being written down from previous years. For the same reason, corporate profits also look better in those years.

A lot of money is spent on research and development. Nicole Mayerhauser, the chief of the national income and wealth division of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles the figures, said that in 2012 the total was $418 billion, about one-third of which was spent by governments. That amounted to about 2.6 percent of G.D.P.

The other major conceptual change deals with pensions. Until now, corporate and government contributions to pension plans were counted as personal...

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The 10 Top Workers Compensation Blog Posts This Month (July-Aug 2013)

The 10 Top Workers Compensation Blog Posts This Month

(July-Aug 2013)

In order of popularity

“Opting Out” of Worker’s Compensation Hurts Worker...

Jul 25, 2013,

Infectious Disease: Cyclospora Infection Becomes M...

Jul 20, 2013,

Governor Christie Vetoes First Responder Workers' ...

Jul 18, 2013,

Cyclospora Outbreak Solved: Mexcian/California Sal...

Aug 2, 2013,

California Trial Starts Against Lead Paint Industr...

Jul 17, 2013,

Lead Paint - Industry Has Yet to Meet Its Responsi...

Jul 14, 2013,

Illinois: Employer Convicted of a Felony for Failu...

Aug 5, 2013,

Raising the Minimum Wage Is Good for the Economy

Jul 26, 2013,

OSHA Targets Occupational Exposure to Isocyanates

Jul 12, 2013,

The Oklahoma Opt-Out System is Bad Medicine for an...

Jul 28, 2013,

3 Responses for “What the Recent Data Breach Says About the State of Health IT”

The privacy of medical records is an essential component of the workers' compensation system. As the use of electronic records becomes more commonplace the need to maintain the records in a secure format becomes increasingly critical. Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com By David Do, MD

Earlier this month officials at Oregon Health Sciences University discovered that residents in several departments were storing patient information on Google Drive, and had been doing so for the past two years. Given They treated this discovery as a breach of privacy and notified 3000 patients about the incident.

While I don’t condone the storage of patient information on unapproved services like Gmail or Google Drive, this incident pretty much highlights the sorry state of information systems within the hospital and the unfulfilled need by physicians for tools that facilitate workflow and patient care.

It says something that the Oregon residents felt compelled to take such a drastic action. I don’t know what punishment – if any – those responsible were given by administrators for their “crimes.” I’ll leave it to readers to make up their own minds about the wisdom of the unauthorized workaround and the appropriateness of any punishment. But I do know that the message the incident sends is a very clear one.

We’re screwing this up. There is really no earthly reason why it should be any more difficult to share a patient record than it is to share a Word doc, a Powerpoint or yes, even a cloud-based Google Drive spreadsheet.

Why the Breach Happened
What’s going on here? Let’s say I admit a patient to the hospital. Our friend was hospitalized here just last month, and like many patients, he has dementia...

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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Specialty Compounding, LLC Issues Nationwide Voluntary Recall

Specialty Compounding, LLC Issues Nationwide Voluntary Recall of All

Lots of Unexpired Sterile Products Due to Reports of Adverse Events

Specialty Compounding, LLC, a subsidiary of Peoples Pharmacy Inc., is voluntarily recalling all lots of sterile medications within expiry.

The recall was initiated after reports of bacterial infection affecting 15 patients at two Texas hospitals, Corpus Christi Medical Center Doctors Regional and Corpus Christi Medical Center Bay Area, whose treatment included IV infusions of calcium gluconate from Specialty Compounding. There is a potential association between the infections and the medication at this time.

If there is microbial contamination in products intended to be sterile, patients are at risk of serious infections which may be life threatening.

“Because of the potential association between the hospital-based infections and sterile compounded medications produced by Specialty Compounding, we are voluntarily recalling all sterile products out of an abundance of caution,” said Ray Solano, R.Ph., pharmacist in charge at Specialty Compounding. “We deeply regret the impact this recall has on our patients and the hospitals that we serve, but patient safety must always be our first concern.”

Witnesses present divergent settlement figures in Garlock estimation trial

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Heckman

Attorneys representing claimants suing Garlock Sealing Technologies for asbestos exposure presented a second consultant who estimated the company would need to devote $1,293 billion to a trust to settle pending and future claims against the company, a figure a Nobel prize winning economist testified was unreliable because of what he said was questionable methodology Friday.

Francine Rabinovitz, president of Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Associates, said she relied on the past five years of asbestos litigation data to come up with the figure. A Garlock consultant previously testified the company would need to devote a significantly less amount – $270 million. Rabinovitz said she arrived at her figure by estimating the size of the population exposed to asbestos, the proportions of persons exposed to asbestos who develop mesothelioma, and the cost of defending asbestos claims among other factors.

Rabinovitz’s figure comes close to the estimate of Mark Peterson, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in social psychology who does estimations for trusts and was also called to offer his estimation in court by claimant attorneys. Peterson came up with a figure of $1.365 billion to cover liability Garlock would likely face from people who have pending claims against the company and future claimants who will develop cases of mesothelioma in the coming years.

Highly hazardous pesticides should be phased out in developing countries

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.fao.org

The tragic incident in Bihar, India, where 23 school children died after eating a school meal contaminated with monocrotophos, is an important reminder to speed up the withdrawal of highly hazardous pesticides from markets in developing countries, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.

Monocrotophos is an organophosphorus pesticide that is considered highly hazardous by FAO and the World Health Organization. Experience in many developing countries shows that the distribution and use of such highly toxic products very often poses a serious risk to human health and the environment.

The incident in Bihar underscores that secure storage of pesticide products and safe disposal of empty pesticide containers are risk reduction measures which are just as crucial as more prominent field-oriented steps like wearing proper protective masks and clothing.

The entire distribution and disposal cycle for highly hazardous pesticides carries significant risks. Safeguards are difficult to ensure in many countries.

N.Y. AG announces $600,000 agreement with masonry contractor

Employer fraud continues to be a major problem. NY State has enforced workers' compensation laws actively. Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Eric Schneiderman

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Thursday an agreement with a masonry contractor and its owners for allegedly underpaying masonry workers on a publicly funded senior housing facility project.

Masonry Services Inc. and its owners, James Herrera and Jaime Herrera, allegedly paid masonry workers between $8 and $23 an hour for work on the St. Marks Project, far below the applicable prevailing wage rates.

MSI also allegedly failed to pay overtime to workers despite the workers regularly working more than 40 hours per week.

“My office will continue to pursue contractors who illegally underpay workers, whether it’s on a small scale or in a larger settlement like this one,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “Contractors who work on publicly-funded affordable housing projects must comply with all applicable laws, plain and simple. MSI will be held accountable for failing to meet its obligations to hard-working New Yorkers, in addition to paying back the wages owed to its workers.”

Plaintiffs’ expert says lead paint abatement could cost $1.4 billion

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Kleinberg

Research director Dr. David Jacobs of the National Center for Healthy Housing and an authority in abatement procedures testified for plaintiffs Thursday that the cost of a lead paint abatement program could exceed $1.4 billion in the 10 California jurisdictions pursuing a “public nuisance” case against paint manufacturers.

The trial taking place in Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg’s court is now into its fourth week. The case is expected to continue next week when plaintiffs introduce their last witness and defendants take the stand to argue that no public health threat exists, and that for what little exposure does exist in California, lead paint is not the primary source.

The plaintiffs, including Los Angeles and Santa Clara Counties and the cities of San Diego and San Francisco, are asking one time lead paint and pigment manufacturers to pay for the abatement costs of eliminating lead paint from homes to protect public health. Defendants NL Industries, the Sherwin-Williams Company, ConAgra Grocery Products, DuPont and Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), claim the suit is without merit, that blood lead levels in California are close to zero and that other exposures, such as gasoline, are more likely to elevate blood lead levels than lead paint.

South Lakeland nurse killed himself after being wrongly accused of inappropriate contact with patient, inquest hears

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk

Suicide: South Lakeland nurse killed himself after being wrongly accused of inappropriate contact with patient, inquest hears

10:21am Friday 12th July 2013 in News

A NURSE was found hanged at his South Lakeland home after being wrongly accused of inapporpriate contact with a female patient, an inquest heard.

Christopher Milnes, 50, was fully exonerated but at the hearing his family hit out at Morecambe Bay NHS Trust for taking so long to inform him he was in the clear.

The false claim was made while Mr Milnes was working at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary in May 2012.

He was found dead at home in Chestnut Close, Holme, near Milnthorpe, on December 16.
A pathologist gave the cause of death as hanging and found no alcohol, drugs or underlying health conditions.

Respirators Are Not Enough: New Study Examines Worker Exposure to Silica in Hydraulic Fracturing Operations

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from ehstoday.com

A new study, “Occupational Exposures to Respirable Crystalline Silica During Hydraulic Fracturing,” found respirable crystalline silica, a human lung carcinogen, to be an occupational exposure hazard for workers at hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations. Researchers also found that the most commonly used type of respirator – the half-mask air-purifying respirator – might not provide enough protection for workers.

The study, published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (JOEH) July issue, is the first systematic investigation of worker exposure to crystalline silica during directional drilling and fracking operations, a process used to stimulate well production in the oil and gas industry.

Field researcher from the NIOSH Western States Office (WSO) and the Division of Applied Research and Technology (DART) collected 111 personal breathing zone samples at 11 sites in five states over a 15-month period to evaluate exposures to respirable crystalline silica during fracking operations.

“Certain work in this industry requires employees to be in areas where respirable silica levels may exceed defined occupational exposure limits like the OSHA Permissible Exposure Limit or the NIOSH Recommended Exposure Limits [RELs],” said researcher Michael Breitenstein, who is with the NIOSH DART in Cincinnati. “However, our study found that in some cases, full shift personal breathing zone exposures exceeded 10 times the...

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Saturday, August 10, 2013

Unpaid Intern? You Probably Aren't Protected Against Sexual Harassment

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

This story first appeared on ProPublica.

In 1994, Bridget O'Connor began an internship at Rockland Psychiatric Center, where one of the doctors allegedly began to refer to her as Miss Sexual Harassment, told her that she should participate in an orgy, and suggested that she remove her clothing before meeting with him. Other women in the office made similar claims.

Yet when O'Connor filed a lawsuit, her sexual harassment claims were dismissed because she was an unpaid intern. A federal appeals court affirmed the decision to throw out the claim.

Unpaid interns miss out on wages and employment benefits, but they can also find themselves in "legal limbo" when it comes to civil rights, according to law professor and intern labor rights advocate David Yamada. The O'Connor decision (the leading ruling on the matter, according to Yamada) held that because they don't get a paycheck, unpaid interns are not "employees" under the Civil Rights Act—and thus, they're not protected.

Federal policies echo court rulings. The laws enforced by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including the Civil Rights Act, don't cover interns unless they receive "significant remuneration," according to commission spokesperson Joseph Olivares.

"At least with respect to the federal law that we enforce, an unpaid intern would not be legally protected by our laws prohibiting sexual harassment," Olivares said in an email to ProPublica.

It's unclear how many interns are sexually harassed at work....

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Walmart Gets Desperate | The Nation

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

Walmart today went on the attack against The Nation for its alleged hypocrisy over the pay of interns, as some kind of excuse for their own failure to pay tens of thousands of Americans a decent wage.

About the Author

Some background: In the fall of 2012, The Nation Institute—which runs and administers the program—began a campaign to better fund its internship program. In the spring of 2013, interns asked for an increase to their stipend to help attract a more diverse pool of applicants. As of next month, The Nation Institute will be able to pay interns New York City minimum wage. (For more on this read here.) Additionally, The Institute will continue to help interns in need with additional funding for housing and travel, and The Nation pays interns as contributors if they write for the magazine or website.

This afternoon, The Daily Beast repeated Walmart's PR spin that The Nation "live[s] in glass houses," and that somehow the interns’ compensation disqualified The Nation from its vigorous reporting about Walmart's near-poverty wages, including an open letter that asked Wamart—the single largest employer in America—to increase wages to $12 per hour. The Huffington Post reported last year that “a cart pusher who started out at $8 per hour, for instance, can expect to be earning about $10.60 per hour after six years and a...

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Green Job Hazards: Wind Energy

Today's post was shared by US Dept. of Labor and comes from www.osha.gov

<< Back to Green Job Hazards

Green Job Hazards: Wind Energy

Wind turbines generate electricity from wind, and are being manufactured and installed all across the nation. Wind energy employers need to protect their workers from workplace hazards and workers should be engaged in workplace safety and health and need to understand how to protect themselves from these hazards.

While this is a growing industry, the hazards are not unique and OSHA has many standards that cover them. This page provides information about some of the hazards that workers in the wind energy industry may face.

Hazards and ControlsFatalities/Incidents

Wind Energy workers are exposed to hazards that can result in fatalities and serious injuries. Many incidents involving falls, severe burns from electrical shocks and arc flashes/fires, and crushing injuries have been reported to OSHA. Some examples are given below:

On August 29, 2009 at 08:30 hours a 33-year-old male lineman was shocked as he grasped a trailer ramp attached to a low boy trailer containing an excavator. The excavator was being operated in anticipation of being off-loaded from the trailer. The trailer was parked on a rural aggregate road adjacent to an access road for a wind turbine generator. The excavator operator rotated the upper works of the machine prior to moving the machine from the trailer. During the rotation the boom contacted a 7,200 volt primary rural power line. The power line was approximately 12 feet from the road with the trailer...

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Democrats Jump on the 'Death Panel' Bandwagon

Many workers' compenssation systems strickly control medicsl care.Will workers' compensation insurace companies buy into the "death panel" consequence just to cut costs? Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Rod Lamkey Jr./ZUMAPress

In 2009, Sarah Palin claimed Obamacare would create "death panels," or bands of bureaucrats who would decide whether old or disabled Americans were worthy of medical care. That notion turned out to be a figment of her imagination. But now, a growing cohort of Democratic lawmakers is cozying up to the idea, charging that the cost-cutting board that Obama's health care law creates will indeed hurt people on Medicare, The Hill reports.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Reps. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.), Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.) have all signed onto bills repealing the powers of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel created by the Affordable Care Act that will make recommendations on how to reduce Medicare spending once Medicare cost growth reaches a certain level.

The lawmakers have said they oppose the board because it would limit care for Medicare patients, even though the health care law says that any cuts would have to affect doctor reimbursement rates or the prices for certain drugs, not patient care.

All five lawmakers are worried about losing their seats in 2014. Barber, Kirkpatrick, Sinema and Esty have also voted with Republicans to delay the law's individual and employer mandates—the requirements that Americans purchase insurance and that employers of a certain size offer coverage, respectively.

The Democratic death panel fear-mongering follows an editorial that former Democratic...

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Tuesday, August 13, 2013

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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Suicide: South Lakeland nurse killed himself after being wrongly accused of inappropriate contact with patient, inquest hears

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Saturday, August 10, 2013

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