Fashion Safety: Charges of Child Labor Confront Walmart and The GAP

Child labor infractions and workplace safety conditions in Bangladesh have been raised against Walmart and The GAP by Al Jazeera America in a report aired in its initial week of broadcasting.

Children as young as 12 make clothes with
Old Navy tags in a Dhaka factory with no fire exit or fire extinguishers.

"Fault Lines repeatedly asked for on-camera interviews with representatives of Walmart and Gap, but by our deadline, both companies had denied our requests. Instead, they issued written comments in response to the reporting in our investigative film, "Made in Bangladesh," which examines some of the practices of U.S. retailers in Bangladesh's garment industry. Walmart's comments come in the form of a Q&A we did with a company spokesperson, while Gap issued a statement in response to our findings in Bangladesh that we outlined to them. Both statements are posted in full."

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Who Is Paying the Bills for Occupational Illnesses and Disease?

A recently published study from the US Department of Health and Human Services (NIOSH) reports that 45% of emergency room medical expenses for occupational illnesses and disease are not expected to be paid by workers' compensation insurance coverage.

Click here to read the complete report: Use of Workers’ Compensation Data for Occupational Safety  and Health: Proceedings from  June 2012 Workshop (May 2013) Identifying Workers’ Compensation as the Expected Payer in  Emergency Department Medical Records,  Larry L. Jackson, PhD, Susan J. Derk, MA, Suzanne M. Marsh, MPA, Audrey A. Reichard, OTR, MPH  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Jobs are coming back, but they don't pay enough

Workers' Compensation benefits are usually based on an individual's wages and limited by the State Average Weekly Wage (SAWW). Likewise, premiums paid by employers are also determined by payroll costs. As medical costs soar, wage are not keeping up with wages, therefore premiums must rise. The result is a push by employers to limit workers' compensation claims through regulation and statutory reforms. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.baltimoresun.com

The good news as Labor Day approaches: Jobs are returning. The bad news: Most of them pay lousy wages and provide low, if not nonexistent, benefits. The trend toward lousy wages began before the Great Recession. According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, weak wage growth between 2000 and 2007, combined with wage losses for most workers since then, means that the bottom 60 percent of working Americans are earning less now than 13 years ago. This is also part of the explanation for why the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has been increasing even as the economy has started to recover — from 12.3 percent in 2006 to around 14 percent this year. More than 35 million Americans now live below the poverty line. Many of them have jobs. The problem is that these jobs just don't pay enough to lift their families out of poverty.

Has the Internet Raised or Lowered Healthcare Costs?

The next trip to see the company doctor my be by computer. Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Matt Yglesias writes about the awesome power of information technology to diagnose illnesses and save a trip to the doctor: I was having a kind of weird problem with my left thumb over the course of the past few days....Finally I figured out that it looked to me like an infection of the cuticle....That brought me to a Wikipedia page...."paronychia"....led to a bit more Googling....typically happens to habitual fingernail biters (guilty) or people who've recently been in the water a lot (swimming pool on vacation). Everyone basically agrees that this isn't a huge deal and that you can obtain some physical relief by occasionally soaking the thumb in hot water while waiting for it to clear up. I took that advice starting yesterday morning, and today I feel a lot better....So there we have it. In a small but real way, information technology reduced the cost of this particular health care service. Productivity for the win. Obviously there are lots of things we aren't going to treat in this way, but I'm quite optimistic that information technology in the health care sector is going to do us a lot of good.

Mexican Consulate, Labor Dept. Partner On Worker Protection

Today's post was shared by US Dept. of Labor and comes from indianapublicmedia.org

Photo: Sam Klemet/WFYI Students walk outside the Mexican Consulate in Indianapolis. The United States Department of Labor is partnering with Mexican Consulates across the country, including in Indiana, to ensure worker protection. Juan Manuel Solana Morales says some Mexicans who come to the United States to work, often don’t know about all of their rights. “Sadly, we have detected that when we have new immigrants, they have different laws, different knowledge, different culture,” said Juan Manuel Solana Morales. “And, when they arrive here in the United States, sometimes they don’t understand the kind of rights that they have.” Morales is the Consul of Mexico in Indianapolis.

US Labor Department announces final rules to improve employment of veterans and people with disabilities

Hiring workers with pre-existing disabilities creates workers' compensation future costs of workers' compensation fears for many employers. As Second Injury Funds have evaporated as an economic insulator for employers, other mechanisms have been generated such as ADA claims and Federal employment regulations.

The U.S. Department of Labor today announced two final rules to improve hiring and employment of veterans and for people with disabilities. One rule updates requirements under the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974; the other updates those under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. For more than 40 years these laws have required federal contractors and subcontractors to affirmatively recruit, hire, train and promote qualified veterans and people with disabilities respectively.

"In a competitive job market, employers need access to the best possible employees," said Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez. "These rules make it easier for employers to tap into a large, diverse pool of qualified candidates."

"Strengthening these regulations is an important step toward reducing barriers to real opportunities for veterans and individuals with disabilities," said Patricia A. Shiu, director of the department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which enforces both laws.

The VEVRAA rule provides contractors with a quantifiable metric to measure their success in recruiting and employing veterans by requiring contractors to annually adopt a benchmark either based on the national percentage of veterans in the workforce (currently 8 percent), or their own benchmark based on the best available data. The rule strengthens accountability and record-keeping requirements, enabling contractors to assess the effectiveness of their recruitment efforts. It also clarifies job listing and subcontract requirements to facilitate compliance.

The Section 503 rule introduces a hiring goal for federal contractors and subcontractors that 7 percent of each job group in their workforce be qualified individuals with disabilities. The rule also details specific actions contractors must take in the areas of recruitment, training, record keeping and policy dissemination — similar to those that have long been required to promote workplace equality for women and minorities.

The rules will become effective 180 days after their publication in the Federal Register. More information is available atwww.dol.gov/ofccp/VEVRAARule/ and www.dol.gov/ofccp/503Rule/.

OFCCP enforces Executive Order 11246, Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974. These three laws require those who do business with the federal government, both contractors and subcontractors, to follow the fair and reasonable standard that they not discriminate in employment on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, national origin, disability or status as a protected veteran. For general information, call OFCCP's toll-free helpline at 800-397-6251 or visit http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/.
Read this news release en Español.

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Speed Camera Enforcement Will Begin on Sepember 9th, the First Day of School

Transportation accidents generate substantial workers' compensation claims. New York City is taking a bold step through the use to technology to change driver safety and reduce accidents. Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from mikebloomberg.com

Mayor Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today announced enforcement of speed cameras near school locations will take effect on the first day of the school year, Monday, September 9th. The Administration pressed for passage of State legislation to approve the use of speed cameras in New York City for more than a decade, and this year legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Deborah Glick and State Senator Jeff Klein was approved by the State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo. The law provides the City with a significant tool in its efforts to continue to reduce traffic fatalities citywide and curb speeding near schools. The last five years have been the safest since traffic fatality records began being kept in 1910, due to efforts including the use of red-light cameras, pedestrian countdown signals, Neighborhood Slow Zones, aggressive enforcement of traffic laws, safety education campaigns and corridor and intersection redesigns. Traffic fatalities have decreased by 30 percent since 2001, but speeding remained the contributing factor in 81 fatal traffic crashes in 2012, roughly 30 percent, and fatal hit-and-run crashes increased by 31 percent between 2010 and 2012. There is a 70 percent chance a child will be killed if hit by a car at 40 miles per hours, but an 80 percent chance that child survives if hit by a vehicle travelling 30 miles per hour, the City’s speed limit. The law allows the City to implement a speed camera...

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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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