TITLE: The Killer-Sunshine State
https://www.levernews.com/the-killer-sunshine-state/
EXCERPT: On the first day of 2023, a 28-year old vegetable harvester reported for his first shift on a farm in southeastern Florida’s Broward County. Later that day, having complained of fatigue and leg pain amid the 90-degree heat, the unnamed man’s body was discovered by coworkers in a drainage ditch. Several months later, as the state’s temperatures reached the highest levels ever recorded, fellow farmworker Efraín López García, age 30, met a similar fate and was found lifeless under a tree.
Republican lawmakers are trying to make these jobs even more dangerous. Rather than viewing these deaths as cause for new workplace protections amid rising temperatures, business groups and their GOP allies are pushing legislation that would prevent communities from establishing workplace heat-exposure standards or compelling employers to abide by them.
It’s just the latest example of Republicans trampling on local government at the behest of their corporate benefactors. But in an era of worsening extreme heat, this particular attack on workers — connected to a coordinated and well-financed effort by big business and right-wing dark money — could be more deadly than ever before.
On Friday, Florida lawmakers passed a bill that would make it illegal for cities or counties to enforce the likes of mandated shade breaks or access to water on companies whose workers operate predominantly outside. If Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signs it, the law — whose backers include the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Homebuilders Association, and the National Utility Contractors Association — would also bar local governments from even asking companies with whom they contract about their heat-exposure standards.
The effort comes on the heels of a similar business-backed push in Texas, where both Austin and Dallas enacted guaranteed water breaks for construction workers every four hours, only to have the rules steamrolled by the state’s GOP-controlled government. Evidently hoping to stave off initiatives like a proposal for mandated shade and rest periods on farms and construction sites being considered by Miami-Dade, Florida’s most densely-populated county, business interests seem hellbent on making sure such protections never even see the light of day in the Sunshine State.
Such moves are in contrast to those in states like Washington and California, which have passed statewide workplace standards around heat exposure. And with heat-related fatalities in Florida already surging by almost 90 percent in the past several years alone, and the number of scorching days almost certain to increase, Republican lawmakers are effectively guaranteeing that more workers will be at risk in the years ahead.
TITLE: What’s Missing From Railroad Safety Data? Dead Workers and Severed Limbs.
https://www.propublica.org/article/railroad-safety-data-missing-dead-workers-severed-limbs
EXCERPT: On a hot July afternoon in 2018, Gregory West found himself trudging through the mountains of northern Tennessee on what would be the last walk of his life.
The engineer and his conductor had been stuck behind a stalled train that had not budged by the end of their shift, and rail company officials told them to walk out to a road where a vehicle could meet them. It would be an hour’s journey up and down steep hills in 88-degree heat. And West, 57, had to lug two large bags of his belongings the entire way. Just as he reached the rendezvous point, he collapsed. The Campbell County medical examiner said West had pneumonia and hypertension, which decreased his oxygen supply before he died. His sister sued the railroad company, CSX, which settled with her for an undisclosed amount.
But none of that is reflected in CSX’s worker injury statistics. ProPublica only found out about it while reviewing lawsuits levied against the nation’s largest freight carriers in the past 15 years. West’s was one of at least 130 worker deaths and other injuries that were alleged to have happened on the job but that railroad companies never reported to regulators.
Among the others, according to the lawsuits, were a CSX conductor who suffered a fatal heart attack after doing physical labor on a subfreezing overnight shift and a contractor who lost three fingers rigging equipment in a Norfolk Southern rail yard.
The Federal Railroad Administration requires companies to report such incidents because knowing about them allows officials to spot broader lapses and hazardous working conditions. The agency’s statistics are the main way the public can view the businesses’ safety records, for which they must answer to their employees’ unions and their shareholders.
But, as ProPublica has previously reported, railroad companies go to extreme lengths to portray themselves as safer than they really are — retaliating against workers who report defects and silencing those who get injured. Officials with the FRA have said there is not much they can do about the forces — like the financial implications of appearing to admit liability and a culture that faults managers when employees get hurt on their watch — that can drive companies to quash injury reporting.
This tranche of missing injuries and deaths, however, exposes the clearest failure by regulators to hold companies accountable.
Much of the problem stems from the FRA’s porous reporting policies, which ProPublica found provide opportunities for companies to hide work-related injuries and deaths. Officials say they have spent the past five years working on revisions, which they plan to unveil this year. They said disclosing the details now would be a breach of the rulemaking process, but they mentioned that their changes could address issues raised by ProPublica’s reporting.
ProPublica's findings show the powerful rail companies have long benefitted from loopholes.
Though agency officials say they are aware of conflicts of interest that steer railroad companies toward keeping worker injuries quiet, FRA policies give the businesses broad latitude to determine whether injuries and even on-the-job deaths are work-related — and, thus, whether they need to be reported.
One reason companies give for opting out of reporting: Rail company officials believe a worker is lying, an argument the companies have made in court, and one juries and judges have sometimes rejected.
The agency also doesn’t require railroad companies to report certain injuries and deaths of contractors who are crushed or maimed by trains. Those incidents are supposed to be reported to a different agency by the contractor’s employer, which doesn’t tie them to the railroad’s record or allow them to be easily studied for possible safety reforms.
Empowered to levy fines up to $10,000 against companies that willfully fail to report injuries, and even to disqualify managers who do so, FRA officials say they will not be investigating the scores of unreported cases ProPublica provided them in a database — cases they confirmed were nowhere to be found in their records.
TITLE: Family of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett blames ‘hostile work environment’ for his death
https://nypost.com/2024/03/12/us-news/family-of-boeing-whistleblower-john-barnett-blames-hostile-work-environment-for-his-death/
EXCERPT: The family of the Boeing whistleblower found dead on the day he was scheduled to testify against the jetplane manufacturer blamed the company’s “hostile work environment” for his apparent suicide.
“He was suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks as a result of being subjected to the hostile work environment at Boeing which we believe led to his death,” relatives of John Barnett said in the first remarks since his death.
Barnett — who worked for the jetliner giant for more than three decades as a quality inspector and manager before retiring in 2017 — was found dead from what the Charleston County coroner ruled a “self-inflicted” gunshot wound in his truck in the parking lot of his South Carolina hotel on Saturday.
The engineer was due in court to provide further testimony in his whistleblower lawsuit against the company but never showed.
A welfare check was requested and his body was discovered in his orange pickup with a silver handgun still in his hand.
Barnett, 62, loved working for Boeing until 2010 when he was transferred to Boeing’s 787 plant in Charleston, his family said Tuesday.
“Things greatly changed for him when he learned that upper management was pressuring the quality inspectors and managers to cut corners and to not follow processes and procedures which they were required by law to follow,” the family said.
They said Boeing pressured workers to look past defects to avoid slowing down the assembly line and those who refused “were labeled as trouble makers, retaliated against, and subjected to a hostile work environment.”
Barnett — who was known as “Mitch” to family and “Swampy” to friends — told his family it was an every-day battle to get management to do the right thing.