Compensation Expert Kenneth Feinberg to Advise GM

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

smaller Larger facebook twitter google plus linked in Email Print facebook twitter google plus linked in Email Print smaller Larger facebook twitter google plus linked in Email Print America’s unofficial arbitrator-in-chief has a new job — advising General Motors Co. on how to handle the ignition-switch defect linked to at least 13 deaths. While testifying before Congress on Tuesday, GM Chief Executive Mary Barra disclosed that the company had hired Kenneth Feinberg, reports WSJ’s Neal E. Boudette. While Ms. Barra didn’t say the company would set up a compensation fund for victims, bringing on board Mr. Feinberg is a strong sign that one may be in the works. The 68-year-old Massachusetts-native has spent a career grappling with who is owed what in the aftermath of what seems like every major tragedy and crisis to strike America in recent years. A Yale business professor once dubbed him a “modern-day King Solomon.” After the 2010 BP oil spill, he was tapped to manage the company’s $20 billion damage fund. Before leaving the post in 2012, he handed out $6.1 billion to more than 200,000 individuals and businesses. Before that, he served as the Obama administration’s “pay-czar”, a job created by the 2009 stimulus law to oversee executive compensation practices at financial firms bailed out during the financial crisis. He’s administered or...

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Paying a Visit to the Doctor: Current Financial Protections for Medicare Patients When Receiving Physician Services

With the recent decision to enact a 17th short-term “fix” to avert deep cuts in Medicare payments to physicians, Congress will likely return within the year to the question of whether and how to replace the widely-criticized formula that Medicare uses to calculate payments for physician services, called the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) system.1  For the most part, recent proposals on reforming the physician payment system leave intact current financial protections that shield beneficiaries from unexpected and confusing charges when they see physicians and practitioners.  These protections include the participating provider program, limitations on balance billing, and conditions on private contracting.  This issue brief describes these three protections, explains why they were enacted, and analyzes the implications of modifying them for beneficiaries, providers, and the Medicare program. Main Findings The participating provider program was enacted in 1984 for two purposes: (1) to assist Medicare patients with identifying and choosing providers who charge Medicare-approved rates; and (2) to encourage providers to accept these rates.  Given this program’s strong provider incentives, the number of participating providers grew rapidly across all states and today, the vast majority (96%) of eligible physicians and practitioners are “participating providers”—agreeing to charge Medicare’s standard fees when they see...

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Why walk-in health care is a fast-growing profit center for retail chains

Sarah Torresen, 16, left, accompanied by her mother, Dianne, middle, is seen by Katherine Skiff, at the Tenleytown CVS MinuteClinic in Washington. The MinuteClinic is a walk-in medical clinic within CVS pharmacies where customers can see nurse practitioners and physician assistants for minor ailments. It was a cold Monday in late March, and at 8:30 a.m. 23-year-old Lindsey Menard was second in line to be seen at the MinuteClinic in a CVS Pharmacy in D.C.’s Tenleytown. ¶ “It was the closest place that was open early,” she said. Her doctor’s office was downtown, and traveling downtown “just seemed like too much of a hassle when I’m dying,” said Menard, 23, who lives nearby with her parents and teaches with the Metro D.C. Reading Corps. ¶ CVS is fast expanding its MinuteClinics, exemplifying a trend of retailers opening health-care services to supplement traditional doctors’ offices. CVS, the largest retail clinic operator in the Washington area, has 800 clinics nationwide, and it expects to add 150 more this year and to have 1,500 clinics by 2017, or almost as many as the more than 1,600 retail clinics across the country now, according to the Convenient Care Association. ¶ Retail walk-in clinics are relatively new on the health-care landscape, dating to 2000. After several years of very slow growth coinciding with the recession and its aftermath, they are taking off again. Accenture, a global...

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Some Democrats Fight Obama Over Medicare

WASHINGTON—More than two dozen Democrats are fighting the Obama administration over planned cuts to private plans offered in Medicare, tied in part to the 2010 health overhaul, which could divide the party on health care in the run-up to this year's midterm elections. The cuts to Medicare Advantage insurers, which are expected to be included in planned 2015 payments to be unveiled Monday, have drawn increasingly vocal opposition from Democrats who fear that insurers will use the cuts to justify higher premiums or fewer options for enrollees. Other Democrats defend some of the cuts as needed changes. As part of the Affordable Care Act's roughly $700 billion in Medicare savings over 10 years, lower payments to Medicare Advantage insurers are supposed to bring them in line with spending under traditional Medicare. The health law used some of those savings to help pay for its expansion of insurance coverage. The fight could siphon attention from the White House's announcement last week that more than seven million people had signed up for private coverage under the health law. Republican attacks this year, echoing a similar campaign in 2010, have put pressure on vulnerable Democrats to repudiate the cuts. On Friday, 22 House Democrats joined seven Republicans in a letter urging Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius not to reduce rates in 2015, citing "an outcry of concern from our constituents who rely on this program." A bipartisan...

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Arraignment set in Lowell workers' comp case

BOSTON -- A Lowell business owner is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday on charges he avoided higher insurance premiums by understating his payroll and the number of jobs performed. Kruy Kroch, 50, of Lowell, will be charged in Middlesex Superior Court on charges of workers' compensation fraud (five counts) and larceny over $250 (five counts). Kroch owns MK Environmental, Inc., an asbestos abatement company at 171 Lincoln St., #2. He is past president of MK Environmental Inc., which is listed as "inactive." The company phone number is no longer in service. MK Environmental was insured by Travelers Indemnity Company for workers compensation insurance and employers liability insurance from April 2007 through December 2012, according to Attorney General Martha Coakley's office. Kroch allegedly told his insurance provider he employed up to 30 workers, with at least four full-time from 2007 to 2012, and misclassified the work of his company, according to authorities. This meant Koch paid a minimum premium rate, underpaying Travelers by thousands of dollars and exposing the insurer to additional risk, Coakley's office said.

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No Spring Thaw in the Job Market

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

One of the many good things about the arrival of spring is that politicians, economists and other policy makers can no longer blame the winter weather for the slow economy and the grinding pace of job growth. The employment report for March, released Friday, indicates that weather did not have as negative an impact in January and February as originally believed; job tallies for those months were revised upward. Accordingly, the springtime bounce in employment was not as great as anticipated. The 192,000 new jobs created in March fell short of the consensus forecast for stronger growth. Monthly job growth averaged 178,000 in the first quarter, compared with the monthly average of 194,000 in all of 2013. That’s not progress. The sluggish job market is consistent with economic growth forecasts for the first quarter of 2014, which generally top out around 2.5 percent, and broader economic-growth data from the last quarter of 2013, which showed little momentum heading into 2014. In March, after almost five years of achingly slow recovery, private-sector employment finally surpassed its prerecession peak. But there is more to a healthy job market than replacing private-sector jobs that were lost. A more complete picture must also include the government jobs that have been lost since the recession but never replaced, as well as jobs that were needed to keep up with population growth but never created. All told, the economy is still short a stunning 7.3 million jobs. It...

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In Bid for Revote, Union Claims Tennessee Officials Frightened Workers

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




A Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. Volkswagen, unlike most American companies, said publicly that it did not oppose unionization. VW workers voted 712-626 against the union.

The United Automobile Workers has seized on leaked documents from Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee in its efforts to persuade the National Labor Relations Board to order a new unionization election at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga.

The union, which lost a vote in February, plans to argue in a hearing later this month that Mr. Haslam and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, both Republicans, frightened VW workers at the plant with anti-union statements that made a fair vote impossible. The board’s director for the region that includes much of the Southeast has set the hearing for April 21.

In the documents, revealed earlier this week, Mr. Haslam proposed nearly $300 million in incentives to help the VW plant add a second production line, contingent on the unionization effort’s “being concluded to the satisfaction of the state.” The documents, including the outlined incentives, were made public Monday by WTVF, a Nashville television station.

Bob King, the U.A.W.’s president, said in an interview on Friday that the documents showed that Mr. Haslam was improperly trying to pressure VW to oppose unionization and was signaling to workers that their plant would not obtain the subsidies needed to expand if they voted to join the union.

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Graduate Students on Strike

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

University of California graduate students explain why they’re striking. This week, our union, United Auto Workers Local 2865, has called a system-wide strike in protest of unfair labor practices (ULPs) by the university. Although particular grievances differ from campus to campus, in aggregate, they concern the university’s unwillingness to bargain over key aspects of our employment, including class size and the number of terms (quarters, semesters) students are able to work. Also at issue is the university’s history of illegal intimidation of student workers. For example, this past November, an administrator at UCLA threatened overseas students with the loss of their visas for participating in a sympathy strike — a claim as insulting as it was untrue. The reasons for striking are serious, but also banal. By any measure, our labor is appallingly undervalued by the managers of the UC, its remuneration calibrated neither to the ballooning costs of living in present-day California nor to the wages of our peers at equivalent out-of-state universities. Nonetheless, many of us persist in believing that, no matter how untenable or degrading, our working conditions can always be tolerated, since they are only temporary, lasting no longer than our apprenticeships. The ideology of grad school rationalizes this deficit as the price of shelter from the “working world,” of which the academy is surely the opposite. Those who do not support the strike...

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Points for Product Placement: N.C.A.A. Cashes In, but Not the Players

Traevon Jackson using a ladder and scissors from N.C.A.A. sponsors as he cut down the net after Wisconsin advanced to the Final Four with an overtime victory against Arizona in Anaheim, Calif. ARLINGTON, Tex. — The new champions of men’s college basketball, whoever they may be, will cut down a net here Monday night. And when they do, they will climb to the basket on a blue-and-yellow Werner ladder, and they will clip the cords with a pair of orange Fiskars scissors. They will also probably wear Nike hats and T-shirts, and they might sip from Powerade cups as they cheer on their teammates. In a tournament that has been packed with upsets and surprises, one of the few mainstays has been the prominence of the logos of corporate sponsors alongside the N.C.A.A.’s. In total, some 19 major partners and corporate supporters are listed in the official fan guide of the Final Four. The rabid commercialization is hardly new to March Madness and the Final Four — and it is not uncommon in professional sports and at the Olympics. But the N.C.A.A.’s opponents are using it as fresh ammunition with the model for college athletics increasingly under siege. The N.C.A.A. is facing lawsuits that seek to give players a bigger slice of the billions of dollars in revenue generated by men’s basketball and football. The athletic association is also facing a unionization movement, emboldened by a recent ruling that the Northwestern football team could...

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Even Small Medical Advances Can Mean Big Jumps in Bills

CATHERINE HAYLEY, whose diabetes was diagnosed when she was 9, describing the digital insulin pump that helps keep her alive." data-mediaviewer-credit="Luke Sharrett for The New York Times" data-mediaviewer-src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/06/us/JP-PROCEDURES-1/JP-PROCEDURES-1-superJumbo-v2.jpg" itemid="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/06/us/JP-PROCEDURES-1/JP-PROCEDURES-1-master675-v2.jpg" itemprop="url" src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/06/us/JP-PROCEDURES-1/JP-PROCEDURES-1-master675-v2.jpg" "It’s the most expensive thing I own, aside from my house." CATHERINE HAYLEY, whose diabetes was diagnosed when she was 9, describing the digital insulin pump that helps keep her alive. Luke Sharrett for The New York Times MEMPHIS — Catherine Hayley is saving up for an important purchase: an updated version of the tiny digital pump at her waist that delivers lifesaving insulin under her skin. Such devices, which tailor insulin dosing more precisely to the body’s needs, have transformed the lives of people with Type 1 diabetes like Ms. Hayley. But as diabetics live longer, healthier lives and worries fade about dreaded complications like heart attacks, kidney failure, amputations and blindness, they have been replaced by another preoccupation: soaring treatment costs. “It looks like a beeper,” said Ms. Hayley, a 36-year-old manager here for an...

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New Obama order to lead midterm equal pay push

At the White House Tuesday, President Barack Obama will sign two new executive actions on equal pay as Senate Democrats move for a show-vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act — launching Democrats’ first large-scale coordinated message effort ahead of this year’s midterms. One of the new executive orders on Tuesday, Equal Pay Day, will prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against workers who discuss their salaries — a move one White House official called “a critical tool to encourage pay transparency.” Continue Reading Obama will also sign a presidential memorandum instructing Labor Secretary Tom Perez to create new regulations requiring federal contractors to report salary summary data to the government, including sex and race breakdowns. The hope, according to the White House, is that this will encourage other employers to submit data voluntarily, enabling more targeted government enforcement. (Also on POLITICO: Obama's challenge: Don't blow it) The president will bring Lily Ledbetter — namesake of the first bill he signed as president, expanding women’s ability to recover wages lost to discrimination — back to the White House for the signing event in the East Room on Tuesday. And Obama will make a speech calling on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act — but, like the minimum wage raise for federal contractors Obama announced in his State of the Union in January, the...

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Obama to Sign Actions Aimed at Boosting Contractor Pay Fairness

President Barack Obama will movethis week to increase the transparency of U.S. federalcontractors pay practices regarding men’s and women’s earnings,according to a White House official. Taken in coordination with the planned consideration oflegislation in the Democrat-led Senate aimed at eliminating paydisparities between men and women, the two executive actionsmark the latest push by the White House to emphasize “equalpay” proposals. Obama and his fellow Democrats have seized on equal pay asan issue ahead of November’s state and congressional elections,seeking to give a boost to low-income workers whose pay hasstagnated following the recession. Obama is using executiveorders as legislation in Congress, such as a bill to increasethe federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25, stalls. Obama will sign an executive order to do away with ‘gagrules’’ that prevent individuals working on contract for thegovernment from discussing pay with one another, according tothe White House official. It would prohibit federal contractorsfrom retaliating against employees who discuss theircompensation. In a second action, Obama will instruct the LaborDepartment to draft rules requiring contractors to provide paydata by sex and race -- a proposal akin to the Senate measurescheduled for consideration this week. Obama will use his actions to call on Congress to pass thebill, which is known as the “Paycheck Fairness Act,”...

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1 in 13 minimum wage workers has a college degree

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

You may increasingly need a college degree to get a job, but there’s no guarantee that  job will pay decent wages. Here’s a breakdown of all workers who earn at or below the minimum wage, sorted by educational attainment, from a recent Labor Department release: Altogether, 7.9 percent of workers earning at or below the minimum wage have at least a bachelor’s degree. That said, only a very small share of college graduates overall actually wind up in minimum wage jobs. Of all bachelor’s degree holders who are paid at hourly rates (that is, excluding salaried workers), just 1.9 percent earned at or below the minimum wage. The share of workers overall who make at or below the minimum wage has declined in the last few decades, likely at least in part because the value of the minimum wage has fallen in inflation-adjusted terms. While minimum-wage workers are often stereotyped as being pimply teenagers working part-time to collect a little pocket money, actually about half of minimum wage workers are at least 25 years old, and about a third of minimum wage workers typically log at least 35 hours a week.

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Northwestern quarterback says 'confident' of unionization vote

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

WASHINGTON, April 3 (Reuters) - A Northwestern University quarterback who is behind a push to unionize the school's football team said on Thursday he is "very confident" that his teammates will vote on April 25 to join the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA). Kain Colter, a senior at Northwestern, appeared on a panel and took questions in Washington, D.C., along with CAPA co-founder Ramogi Huma, a former University of California-Los Angeles football player who now advocates for student athletes. The two met earlier in the week with congressional lawmakers to talk about the Northwestern players' novel effort to form what could be the first labor union for U.S. college athletes. "The hard part is over," Colter said of the upcoming vote, noting most of his teammates had signed pledge cards, which triggered the election. "The key thing is these players aren't voting for themselves ... they're voting for future generations," he added. The drive that Colter and Huma are heading has triggered a national debate about college athletes and their treatment by schools and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), with some condemning the union effort and others praising it. It began late last month when a regional director with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said the Northwestern football players were effectively employees of the school and could therefore vote on whether to unionize. The players spend 40 to 50 hours a week...

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Like Them or Hate Them, Injury Lawsuits Sometimes Expose Health and Safety Hazards

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.fairwarning.org

GM CEO Mary Barra testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee as Congress tries to fix blame for long delays in recalling cars with defective ignition switches linked to at least 13 crash deaths. Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters. Protecting consumers from dangerous product defects should be the job of federal regulation, and often it is. But sometimes product injury litigation, carried out in the arena of the courtroom, plays a critical role in exposing hazards that elude regulators and that manufacturers conceal. Two current, highly publicized examples are the General Motors ignition switch malfunction and the Toyota “sudden unintended acceleration” hazard, both serious defects that regulators failed to move against as promptly and vigorously as they should have. Earlier this year GM recalled more than two million Cobalts and other vehicles with the defective ignition switches. If jarred, the switches can inadvertently shut down a car’s engine and electrical system, thus disabling its air bags, power brakes and power steering. Only now has the company admitted knowing about the defect for more than ten years, even though it was being sued as early as 2009 for crash deaths caused by the faulty switch. It turns out that the defect was not exposed by engineers from GM or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration but by an outside engineer. Mark Hood was working for a plaintiff’s attorney in Melton v. GM, a Georgia lawsuit...

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FMCSA Orders DND International to Shut Down

Today's post was shared by Trucker Lawyers and comes from www.fmcsa.dot.gov

Illinois-based trucking company declared to be an imminent hazard to public safety WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has ordered DND International, Inc., USDOT No. 1434005, to immediately shut down after declaring the Naperville, Illinois-based trucking company to be an imminent hazard to public safety.  FMCSA investigators found the carrier had committed widespread, serious violations of federal regulations that protect the safety of the motoring public.  DND International’s compliance with federal safety regulations has been the focus of an intensive FMCSA investigation that began immediately following a Jan. 27 crash that killed an Illinois Tollway worker and seriously injured an Illinois State Police trooper. “Federal rules limiting the hours that commercial truck and bus drivers can be on the job serve to protect everyone traveling on our highways and roads,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.  “Companies that sidestep and disregard these regulations and needlessly expose the motoring public to harm will not be allowed to operate.” Federal safety regulations prohibit commercial truck drivers from driving for more than 11 hours each shift and/or remaining on duty after 14 hours of work.  Motor carriers and their drivers are also required to retain supporting documentation such as receipts for tolls and fuel purchases. ...

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EPA Takes Action to Protect Public from an Illegal Nano Silver Pesticide in Food Containers; Cites NJ Company for Selling Food Containers with an Unregistered Pesticide Warns Large Retailers Not to...

Today's post was shared by US EPA News and comes from yosemite.epa.gov

 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued an order to the Pathway Investment Corp. of Englewood, New Jersey to stop the sale of plastic food storage containers that have not been tested or registered with the EPA, in violation of federal pesticides law. The company’s Kinetic Go Green Premium Food Storage Containers and Kinetic Smartwist Series Containers both contain nano silver as an active ingredient, and the company markets other products as containing nano silver, which the company claims helps reduce the growth of mold, fungus and bacteria. Such claims can only be made on products that have been properly tested and are registered with the EPA.

“Claims that mold, fungus or bacteria are controlled or destroyed by a particular product must be backed up with testing so that consumers know that the products do what the labels say,” said EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck. “Unless these products are registered with the EPA, consumers have no information about whether the claims are accurate. The EPA will continue to take action against companies making unverified public health claims.”

Some pesticides have been linked to various forms of illnesses in people, ranging from skin and eye irritation to cancer. Some pesticides may also affect the hormone or endocrine systems. In many situations, there are non-chemical methods that will effectively control pests.

Under federal pesticide...

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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

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Out of Work, Out of Benefits, and Running Out of Options

Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com

Abe Gorelick has decades of marketing experience, an extensive contact list, an Ivy League undergraduate degree, a master’s in business from the University of Chicago, ideas about how to reach consumers young and old, experience working with businesses from start-ups to huge financial firms and an upbeat, effervescent way about him. What he does not have — and has not had for the last year — is a full-time job. Five years since the recession ended, it is a story still shared by millions. Mr. Gorelick, 57, lost his position at a large marketing firm last March. As he searched, taking on freelance and consulting work, his family’s finances slowly frayed. He is now working three jobs, driving a cab and picking up shifts at Lord & Taylor and Whole Foods. “I’m not in my basement, unshaven, unshowered, drinking a bottle of Scotch a day,” Mr. Gorelick said. “I’m out there working these jobs, meeting people and trying to make something happen. But it is exhausting. It is stressful. It is difficult.” For people experiencing such long spells without appropriate work, it is a crisis. Often, it is also a conundrum: What should a worker who finds himself out of a job for six months or more do? “There is this very pressing issue,” said Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “and there is this great gap in knowledge about what to do about it, both for policy...

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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman  1.973.696.7900  jon@gelmans.com  have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

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Charts: The Worst Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Since the ...
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Workers' Compensation: Why Injured Workers (and their lawyers ...
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A new basis for disqualifying workers from receiving Unemployment Compensation benefits will be called “Substantial Fault” which may include a series of inadvertent errors made by the employee and violations of work ...
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Workers' Compensation: Unemployment benefits, the cruelest cut of all
Jan 03, 2014
It would be one thing if there were a logical reason to cut off unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work the longest. But no such rationale exists. On both economic and moral grounds, extending benefits for ...
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10 Reasons That Long-Term Unemployment Is a National Catastrophe
Dec 27, 2013
Unemployment is bad. Obviously long-term unemployment is worse. But it's not just a little worse, it's horrifically worse. As a companion to our eight charts that describe the problem, here are the top ten reasons why long-term ...
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After Push by Obama, Minimum-Wage Action Is Moving to the States

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

The more President Obama talks about the need to raise the federal minimum wage, the less likely it appears that Republicans in Congress are inclined to do it.

But the stalemate matters less and less. In the last 14 months, since Mr. Obama first called for the wage increase in his 2013 State of the Union address, seven states and the District of Columbia have raised their own minimum wages, and 34 states have begun legislative debates on the matter. Activists in an additional eight states are pursuing ballot referendums this year to demand an increase in wages for their lowest-paid workers.

The result is an outside-the-Beltway variation on Mr. Obama’s pledge to use his executive powers to bypass an obstructionist Republican Party in Congress. In this case, White House aides said they believed that Mr. Obama’s feverish rhetorical push for a higher minimum federal wage, to $10.10 per hour from $7.25, has helped generate political pressure on states to act.

On Wednesday, the president continued the push at the University of Michigan, the latest in an almost weekly focus on the subject in speeches, blog posts, radio addresses and events. In March, Mr. Obama delivered remarks on the topic at universities in Florida and Connecticut. In February, he issued an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors. In January, he demanded a raise for America’s workers at a Costco in Maryland.

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After Push by Obama, Minimum-Wage Action Is Moving to the States
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Feds: Olivet knowingly exposed workers to asbestos

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.poughkeepsiejournal.com

The Department of Labor citation can be viewed in full at poughkeepsiejournal.com The new owner of a long-empty former state hospital in the Town of Dover must face charges lodged by the U.S. Department of Labor that it knowingly exposed workers to hazards of asbestos and lead. Olivet was cited for 45 willful violations of rules relating to worker safety and one serious violation, the notice said. The investigation and citing were done by the Labor Departments Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA determined that Olivet knowingly failed to take basic safety precautions, the statement said. The company neither informed their own employees nor the contractors about the presence of asbestos and lead, despite knowing that both hazards existed. It did not provide training or notice or required protections, the agency said. Anna Oh, a spokeswoman for Olivet, said, Olivet has been working together and cooperating with OSHA and other agencies to ensure that our employees work in a safe and healthful workplace. We are reviewing the notice and will address the citations in a timely manner, and will look closely at them in the hope of working with the agency to resolve them, she said. A formal response is due 15 days after the...

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Workers' Compensation: US Asbestos Import Deceased But Still Not ...

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Feds: Olivet knowingly exposed workers to asbestos

16 hours ago

WINGDALE — The new owner of a long-empty former state hospital in the Town of Dover must face charges lodged by the U.S. Department of Labor that it knowingly exposed workers to hazards of asbestos and lead.

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'Bakers contract cancer from asbestos in old ovens': tv programme

Jan 15, 2014

The figure, to be included on Tuesday evening in tv programme Zembla, follows Zembla's claims in last week's programme that the Bakkersland bakery group had problems with asbestos in three of its factories over the past ...

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VA pays out $200 million for nearly 1,000 veterans’ wrongful deaths

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from cironline.org

An Iraq War veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder and a history of drug dependency is found dead on the floor of his room at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in West Los Angeles after doctors give him a 30-day supply of the anti-anxiety medication alprazolam and a 15-day supply of methadone. In Shreveport, La., a veteran overdoses on morphine while housed in a locked VA psychiatric unit. In a Minnesota VA psych ward, a veteran shoots himself in the head. In Portland, Ore., a delusional veteran jumps off the roof of the VA hospital. These are some of the deaths that resulted in more than $200 million in wrongful death payments by the Department of Veterans Affairs in the decade after 9/11, according to VA data obtained by The Center for Investigative Reporting. In that time, CIR found the agency made wrongful death payments to nearly 1,000 grieving families, ranging from decorated Iraq War veterans who shot or hanged themselves after being turned away from mental health treatment, to Vietnam veterans whose cancerous tumors were identified but allowed to grow, to missed diagnoses, botched surgeries and fatal neglect of elderly veterans. “It wasn’t about the money, I just thought somebody should be held accountable,” said 86-year-old Doris Street, who received a $135,000 settlement in 2010 as compensation for the 2008 death of her brother, Carl Glaze. The median payment in VA wrongful death cases was $150,000. Click for larger image Glaze, a...

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