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

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Apple 'failing to protect Chinese factory workers'

Today's post is shared from bbc.com/

Poor treatment of workers in Chinese factories which make Apple products has been discovered by an undercover BBC Panorama investigation.

Filming on an iPhone 6 production line showed Apple's promises to protect workers were routinely broken.

It found standards on workers' hours, ID cards, dormitories, work meetings and juvenile workers were being breached at the Pegatron factories.

Apple said it strongly disagreed with the programme's conclusions.

Exhausted workers were filmed falling asleep on their 12-hour shifts at the Pegatron factories on the outskirts of Shanghai.

One undercover reporter, working in a factory making parts for Apple computers, had to work 18 days in a row despite repeated requests for a day off.

Another reporter, whose longest shift was 16 hours, said: "Every time I got back to the dormitories, I wouldn't want to move.

"Even if I was hungry I wouldn't want to get up to eat. I just wanted to lie down and rest. I was unable to sleep at night because of the stress."

'Continuous improvement'

Apple declined to be interviewed for the programme, but said in a statement: "We are aware of no other company doing as much as Apple to ensure fair and safe working conditions.

"We work with suppliers to address shortfalls, and we see continuous and significant improvement, but we know our work is never done."

Apple said it...
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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). 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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Friday, December 19, 2014

Guardrail Maker Trinity Industries Conducts More Tests for Malfunction

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.nytimes.com



Trinity Industries on Tuesday conducted the second of eight crash tests of a potentially dangerous guardrail system, as questions grew over whether some of the units being evaluated were different than those previously installed.
The testing in San Antonio, overseen by the Federal Highway Administration, continued Tuesday with a pickup driven squarely into one of the suspect guardrails, known as the ET-Plus, which is made by Trinity. Tony Furst, the federal agency’s associate administrator for safety, told reporters afterward that “there was nothing remarkable” about the results, which appeared to indicate the unit functioned normally.
Critics have said that crash tests should be done from an angle of about five degrees, instead of zero, which they say better represents the types of crashes in which the guardrail malfunctioned. Mr. Furst has said that the tests were instead intended to confirm results from 2005, and that further tests could come later.
Guardrail systems work by collapsing when hit from the front, absorbing the impact of the crash and pushing the metal rail away from the vehicle. Because of design changes introduced in 2005, but not reported to the federal government, Trinity’s ET-Plus can malfunction, sending the rail into a vehicle and potentially injuring occupants.
Other questions have been raised about the tests, including whether the guardrails have been modified a second time.
Joshua Harman, the federal whistle-blower who prevailed...
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Asbestos scare puts tiny O.C. school district on financial brink

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.latimes.com


Oak View Elementary School

A small Orange County school district that was forced for close campuses and bus students elsewhere in the wake of an asbestos scare is now reeling under a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall.


"You went from being a stable district to a district that's facing insolvency," Wendy Benkert, assistant superintendent for business services at the Orange County Department of Education, told trustees for Ocean View School District.


Benkert said the district has run through $2.9 million of $4.3 million in general fund emergency reserves and faces an additional $9.2 million in costs related to asbestos removal and a modernization project at 11 schools.

Should the Huntington Beach school district fail to close its $7.8-million shortfall, it might need emergency funding or could be taken over by the state, Benkert warned.

"But I believe with prudent decisions you can turn this around," she said.

Asbestos was detected in some classrooms during the modernization project that began in July. The cleanup has closed three schools and left many parents furious as they have watched their children — more than 1,600 in all — be temporarily bused to classes at eight schools in four districts.

As the crisis has unfolded, district officials have remained in close contact with the Orange County Department of Education, which has oversight responsibility.

Benkert proposed several options for school board...
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NHTSA Building Legal Case to Force Takata Air-Bag Recall

Today's post was shared by Take Justice Back and comes from www.bloomberg.com



U.S. regulators investigating failures of Takata Corp. (7312) air bags are preparing for a legal fight in case the Japanese parts maker doesn’t comply with a request to expand a recall.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is working as quickly as possible to sort through tens of thousands of pages of documents from Takata, Honda Motor Co. (7267), and other automakers to build its case, David Friedman, the agency’s deputy administrator, said in an interview.
“This is a serious safety issue, and Takata needs to move forward,” Friedman said in a Dec. 12 interview. “If Takata fights us all the way to the end, I want to be able to walk into a courtroom with as close to a slam dunk as I can get.”
Takata rejected NHTSA’s request earlier this month for an expanded recall to replace drivers’ side air-bag inflators beyond about 8 million cars in high-humidity areas, where four motorists have died. The company says a recall is up to the automakers and even if it weren’t, regulators don’t have the safety data to support their decision.
NHTSA has cited data that shows humidity is less of factor than first thought in the malfunction risk for driver’s side air bags. NHTSA is hiring an independent expert to conduct more air-bag tests, Friedman said at a Dec. 3 Senate hearing.
In the interview, Friedman declined to commit to a timetable for the next step in the legal process to force a recall, which would be a...
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Medicare Cuts Payments To 721 Hospitals With Highest Rates Of Infections, Injuries

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from kaiserhealthnews.org

In its toughest crackdown yet on medical errors, the federal government is cutting payments to 721 hospitals for having high rates of infections and other patient injuries, records released Thursday show.
Medicare assessed these new penalties against some of the most renowned hospitals in the nation, including the Cleveland Clinic, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa.

infections hospital 570

One out of every seven hospitals in the nation will have their Medicare payments lowered by 1 percent over the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 and continues through September 2015. The health law mandates the reductions for the quarter of hospitals that Medicare assessed as having the highest rates of “hospital-acquired conditions,” or HACs.  These conditions include infections from catheters, blood clots, bed sores and other complications that are considered avoidable.
The penalties, which are estimated to total $373 million, are falling particularly hard on academic medical centers: Roughly half of them will be punished, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis.
Dr. Eric Schneider, a Boston health researcher who has interviewed patient safety experts for his studies, said research has demonstrated that medical errors can be reduced through a number of techniques. But “there’s a pretty strong sense among the experts we talked to that they are not widely...
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Public Easily Swayed On Attitudes About Health Law, Poll Finds

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from kaiserhealthnews.org

Just days before the requirement for most large employers to provide health insurance takes effect, a new poll finds the public easily swayed over arguments for and against the policy.

Six in 10 respondents to the monthly tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation) said they generally favor the requirement that firms with more than 100 workers pay a fine if they do not offer workers coverage.

But minimal follow-up information can have a major effect on their viewpoint, the poll found.

For example, when people who support the “employer mandate” were told that employers might respond to the requirement by moving workers from full-time to part time, support dropped from 60 percent to 27 percent. And when people who disapprove of the policy were told that most large employers will not be affected because they already provide insurance, support surged to 76 percent.

Opinion also remains malleable about the requirement for most people to have health insurance – the so-called “individual mandate.”

It remains among the least popular aspects of the law – with just a 35 percent approval rating. But when people are told that the mandate doesn’t affect most Americans because they already have coverage through an employer, support jumps to 62 percent. Conversely, when supporters are told that the requirement means...
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Medicare penalizes 23 New Jersey hospitals over errors, infections

Hospital acquired infections (HAI) are a major problem and take a toll on injured workers and employers. The Federal Government in its expanding roll to provide better services at les cost is now enforcing HAI rules by imposing penalties. Today's post is shared from northjersey.com/
The federal government will reduce its Medicare payments to 23 hospitals in the state — including six in North Jersey — in a crackdown on hospital errors and infections.
The list of hospitals, released Thursday, includes Hackensack University Medical Center, St. Mary’s Hospital in Passaic and Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus. In all, 721 hospitals nationwide will see their Medicare payments cut by 1 percent for the year that began Oct. 1.
New Jersey was one of 10 states where a third or more of the hospitals were penalized.
The financial incentives and public reporting are a two-pronged strategy under the health care reform law known as Obamacare aimed at reducing harm to patients from hospital stays. Hospital errors are estimated to cost Americans more than $17 billion a year and contribute to the deaths of 180,000 Medicare patients alone.
And because Medicare, the federal insurance program for those over 65, is one of the largest sources of hospital revenue, even a 1 percent reduction can have a sizable impact on health care facilities.
For example, Hackensack University Medical Center, with $1.2 billion in revenue in 2012, had more than $263 million in Medicare payments that year. So a reduction of 1 percent would cost it nearly $3 million.
Reached on Thursday night, hospital spokeswoman Nancy Radwin said that Hackensack “remains committed to reducing its hospital-acquired condition rates. As evidenced...
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Read more about hospital acquired infections and workers compensation
Hospital-Acquired Infections - The Next Wave of Litigation
Aug 15, 2008
The patient was admitted for the installation of a pacemaker and a resulting hospital acquired infection resulted in the loss of his right leg a portion of his left foot, a kidney and his a majority of his hearing. The award was ...
http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/
Protecting Healthcare Workers is a Goal of NIOSH
May 09, 2013
Some infections are contracted during treatment such as infection that are acquired during hospital stay. Those are called Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI). These infection are expensive to treat and are a major concern to .
http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/
Despite Progress, Three-quarters of a Million Infections ...
Mar 26, 2014
Hospital Acquired Infections are a compensable condition and significantly raise treatment costs and time to recuperate from a work related accident or disease. Today's post is shared from the US CDC. On any given day, ...
http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/
Workers' Compensation: CDC Reports Hospital Infections ...
May 31, 2013
Some infections are contracted during treatment such as infection that are acquired during hospital stay. Those are called Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI). These infection are expensive to treat and are a major concern to .
http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

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