TITLE: Teen's death in Wisconsin sawmill highlights "21st century problem" across the U.S.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/child-labor-laws-wisconsin-sawmill-florence-hardwoods/
EXCERPT: In the 1990s, federal watchdogs looking into reports of employers using underage workers would typically find teens working overly long hours in malls, movie theaters and grocery stores; in the worst cases, minors would be discovered in grueling jobs like farming or construction.
In recent years, however, investigators have documented a surge in underage workers in potentially dangerous jobs. Among other types of work, young employees are now found in manufacturing facilities and in meat processing plants, where the work might entail using toxic chemicals to clean the blood and other remains on the slaughterhouse floor.
"This is a 21st century problem in the United States — this isn't a third-world country. In the United States this is happening now. We have very young minors doing serious, hazardous jobs, using dangerous equipment," a spokesperson for the Labor Department told CBS MoneyWatch.
Multiple factors are driving the troubling rise in child labor, which conjures images from the turn of the 20th century through the 1930s, when American children 10 and younger commonly worked on farms, on the street and in industrial settings.
In recent years, an influx of migrant children fleeing poverty and violence in Latin America has provided a pipeline of workers for employers willing to exploit them, particularly given that many kids arrive in the U.S. without a parent. As of December 1, there were more than 10,500 unaccompanied children in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services.
A number of states are also moving to weaken rules against child labor. Since 2021, at least 10 states have introduced or passed laws rolling back protections for children, the Economic Policy Institute noted in a recent report. The legislative push is "part of a coordinated campaign backed by industry groups intent on eventually diluting federal standards that cover the whole industry," according to the left-leaning think tank.
Relatedly, a tight labor market has made it harder for meat processors, farms, roofing contractors and other employers to find workers willing to do physically taxing, often low-paying work.
Meanwhile, although in 2023 the Labor Department has slapped businesses with more than $8 million for employing minors, for larger employers such fines are often considered the cost of doing business. The maximum civil monetary penalty for a child labor violation is $15,138 a child.
"We've seen these penalties paid the next day. They cut the check and move on — that is a challenge for us," said the Labor Department spokesperson, who noted that the agency has urged Congress to increase the allowable fines.
Another factor is that many workers are hired through outside staffing firms, insulating employers from potential liability if violations occur. For instance, major poultry and meat producers have often denied any knowledge of children working in their plants, pointing to the third-party firms they hire to recruit employees.
TITLE: When Immigrant Dairy Farm Workers Get Hurt, Most Can’t Rely on Workers’ Compensation
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigrant-wisconsin-dairy-workers-excluded-workers-compensation-injuries
EXCERPT: For most workers in Wisconsin who get hurt on the job, the state’s workers’ compensation system is there to cover medical expenses and pay a portion of their wages while they heal.
“One of the bedrock principles of worker’s compensation is universal coverage,” the state’s Department of Workforce Development, which oversees the workers’ compensation system, says on its website. “That means that virtually every employee is covered.”
But the law is different for farms, and many immigrant dairy workers — the backbone of one of the state’s most celebrated yet dangerous industries — don’t get this protection. Wisconsin exempts all kinds of farms with fewer than six employees not related to the owners from the requirement to have workers’ compensation coverage.
No state or federal agency appears to track how many of Wisconsin’s 5,700 or so dairy farms fall into that category — or how many workers go without coverage. Neither does the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, one of the state’s most powerful lobbying groups.
But the number of those farms is likely in the thousands since many employ only one or two workers. According to one national study, more than 23,000 agricultural workers in Wisconsin were exempt from workers’ compensation coverage in 2020; that’s a larger number of excluded agricultural workers than in almost every other state in the country.
The workers’ compensation exemption comes on top of limits on the federal government’s enforcement of occupational health and safety laws on these same small farms, which effectively leaves employers to police themselves.
It’s not just workers on small farms who go unprotected. Many injured workers on large farms said they are too afraid of retaliation from their employers to pursue claims. The problem is exacerbated by immigration status: Most immigrants who work on Wisconsin dairy farms are in the United States illegally and fear getting fired or deported.
“Workers’ compensation really doesn’t work for anyone, not even the workers it’s supposed to work for. It really doesn’t,” said Lola Loustaunau, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers who is studying access to workers’ compensation for immigrant workers in high-risk industries. “That gets increasingly worse the more precarious workers are.”
ProPublica reported this week on how immigrant dairy workers are frequently hurt on the job and often go without medical care. When their injuries are so severe that they can no longer work like they used to, they can get fired and thrown out of the housing many employers provide. Many are left with few legal options.
“The farm owner didn’t want to help me with anything,” said a 47-year-old man who was unable to work for several months this year after the muscles and tendons in his shoulder were ripped from the bones when a cow slammed him against a wall. “They don’t really see us as full humans.”
TITLE: Tesla robot attacked an engineer and left a trail of blood: Report
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/tesla-robot-attacked-engineer-texas-factory
EXCERPT: One of the manufacturing arms at the electric car manufacturer pinned an engineer who was programming software into two nearby robots in 2021, according to legal documents reviewed by the Daily Mail. The claw dug into the worker's back and arm, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. The incident left the victim with an open wound on his left hand.
The robot inflicted a "'laceration, cut, open wound" on an engineer on Nov. 10, 2021, according to Tesla's Form 300 Report to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The engineer fell "a couple of feet down a chute designed to collect scrap aluminum, leaving a trail of blood behind him," witnesses told the Information.
While no other robot-related incidents were reported in 2021 or 2022, the attack reflects growing concerns about how AI-powered machinery is treating humans and the state of safety of the Tesla factory. The company is legally required to report on-the-floor injuries.
AI-caused injuries have earned some scrutiny. AI-powered robotaxis caused multiple injuries in San Francisco, leading to the company Cruise recalling all of its vehicles and its leadership stepping down. Amazon warehouses that operate with robotic technology had an injury rate of 7.9 per 100 workers, or more than 50% more than the average warehouse, according to one study.
Tesla also is believed to be underreporting the number of injuries. OSHA investigators in California determined that the electric car company had left at least 36 injuries off of its government filings in 2018.
TITLE: New Year Ushers in Work Safety Disclosures for 52,000 Employers
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/safety/new-year-ushers-in-work-safety-disclosures-for-52-000-employers
EXCERPT: More than 52,000 employers must start complying with a new OSHA rule in 2024 that mandates workplaces in industries with high injury and illness rates and 100 or more workers provide the agency the details annually of every significant incident at the work site.
Much of the information provided will be posted on the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s public website, a move that’s been criticized by employers that have said the rule exposes them to unfair allegations of having dangerous workplaces.
For its part, OSHA sees the new requirements as a gateway to learning what safety problems lead to bigger mishaps and enabling the agency to better focus inspections on employers with truly problematic practices.
“We’ve been really sensitive to placing additional burdens on businesses and made a concerted effort to make it as easy as possible for employers,” said Lee Anne Jillings, chief of OSHA’s Directorate of Technical Support, which is overseeing implementation of data collection.
The agency anticipates employers will file about 766,000 injury and illness reports in total covering 2023.
“The fact of a recordable injury—standing alone—says absolutely nothing about the employer’s safety culture or OSHA citation history,” said Susan Wiltsie, a partner with Hunton Andrews Kurth in Washington, who often represents employers.
Before the rule was issued in July, OSHA generally mandated employers record—but not always report—any work-related injury or illness that required more than first aid treatment or resulted in a worker missing a day or more of their job.
Since 2016, OSHA has required hundreds or thousands of establishments to annually provide one-page summaries of all injuries and illnesses through Form 300A. Following several federal court orders declaring that the forms are a public record, OSHA began posting the data.
The data from the 300A summaries didn’t provide information on each case, a gap OSHA expects the new rule to partially fill.
Safety researchers, news organizations, and unions delved into the disclosed numbers, with results that included numerous critical reports about high-profile employers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Tesla Inc.