August 8, 2011 by Fred Hosier
July 13, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A contractor with a history of violating workplace safety standards faces a total of $354,000 in new fines from OSHA in connection with trenching hazards at two work sites.
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Tags: contractor, ladder, repeat violation, Severe Violator Enforcement Program, shoring, trench collapse, trenching hazards, willful violation
May 17, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Safety inspectors say a lack of training and safety leadership on a job site contributed to the death of a worker.
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Tags: construction project, safety leadership, Safety training, struck-by
May 4, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Imagine this: You’ve bought a new piece of equipment for your company that is hazardous and will require safety training for employees. Where do you get the necessary safety info for the equipment?
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Tags: Duke University, equipment manufacturers, equipment vendors, nail guns, Safety training
March 29, 2011 by Fred Hosier
An administrative law judge with the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has upheld fines against an Ohio company. An inspection revealed several employees had symptoms of a potentially fatal respiratory disease after sweeping up pigeon droppings.
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Tags: fatal respiratory disease, histoplasmosis, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, pigeon droppings, worker struck in head
March 25, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A contracting company faces $159,600 in OSHA fines following the death of one employee and the hospitalization of another.
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Tags: excavation, personal protective equipment, trench collapse
March 1, 2011 by Fred Hosier
Workers’ compensation is supposed to be the exclusive remedy for an employee injured at work — it protects employers from lawsuits. But that doesn’t stop some workers from trying to find the situations when comp isn’t the exclusive remedy.
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Tags: exclusive remedy, general contractor, Workers' comp
January 10, 2011 by Fred Hosier
A government investigation into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill looks at specific factors such as how deep a cement plug was set and whether additional barriers should have been installed. But the root causes of the incident that killed 11 workers focus on common subjects for workplace safety: management, communication, previous near-misses, safety culture and government regulation.
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Tags: BP well blowout, government investigation, government regulation, Halliburton, near misses, safety culture, safety management, Transocean
December 8, 2010 by Fred Hosier
An electrical contract worker was killed and another employee was critically injured after they fell 30 feet from a scissor lift.
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Tags: contract worker, forklift, scissor lift
November 16, 2010 by Fred Hosier
OSHA is trying to determine what went wrong after a construction worker was killed when a 60-pound bag of rocks fell off a four-story building.
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Tags: construction worker, struck by falling object
September 30, 2010 by Fred Hosier
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: In light of the disaster earlier this year, BP says safety and risk management are the company’s “most urgent priority.”
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Tags: BP disaster, BP new safety division, BP Texas City plant, Robert Dudley
June 10, 2010 by Fred Hosier
In the wake of the April 20 oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers, an article by ProPublica, an investigative journalism website, quotes former BP employees as saying management pressured or harassed them not to report safety problems.
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Tags: BP, David Michaels, injury logs, pressured not to report safety problems
April 20, 2010 by Fred Hosier
A jury in Alabama awarded $10 million to a woman whose husband died in a workplace incident in 2008.
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Tags: Fatality, fell 150 feet, jury verdict
March 22, 2010 by Fred Hosier
As more and more companies use independent contractors to do work formerly handled by employees, these questions come up more often: Employee or contractor? Eligible for workers’ comp or not?
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Tags: contractor or employee, taxi cab drivers, Workers' comp
December 28, 2009 by Fred Hosier
You’re probably aware of the campaigns to get drivers to slow down in road construction zones. But while governments have been focusing on that, they’ve paid less attention to the role of contractors in construction zone crashes.
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Tags: contractors, stimulus funds, work-zone crashes
December 7, 2009 by Fred Hosier
At least 10 companies with prior records of workplace safety violations have received millions in federal stimulus contracts in one state.
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Tags: cave-in, OSHA violations, stimulus contracts, trenches
September 29, 2009 by Fred Hosier
A jury in Illinois has awarded the family of a worker $6.74 million after he died at an Archer Daniels Midland plant in 2007.
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Tags: Archer Daniels Midland, record jury verdict, third degree burns
August 28, 2009 by Fred Hosier
Ever want to give your point of view to attorneys who represent workplace accident victims and always seem to blame the employer? Well, now’s your chance, especially after one New York injury attorney released a statement that expresses his bewilderment over continuing construction accidents.
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Tags: construction deaths, David Perecman, scaffold
August 17, 2009 by Fred Hosier
The head of Oregon OSHA has suggested raising fines for serious workplace safety violations. But some large companies say higher fines won’t make them any safer.
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Tags: ConAgra, higher OSHA fines, Oregon OSHA
August 4, 2009 by Fred Hosier
A construction fatality in Texas has spurred criticism of OSHA’s recent inspection increase. But not all of the criticism is the same.
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Tags: OSHA crackdown, Texas construction, worker fatality
May 15, 2009 by Fred Hosier
OSHA is investigating the death of a worker in West Palm Beach, FL, who was crushed to death by an elevator.
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Tags: crushed by falling elevator, death of worker, OSHA investigating
April 9, 2009 by Fred Hosier
Yesterday Safety News Alert told you how a court ruling expanded a state’s workers’ comp law to give companies immunity from being sued by contract employees. Today we have an example of what can happen when a state’s comp law doesn’t include that exemption.
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Tags: Clark Oil, worker killed in an explosion, workers' compensation
April 8, 2009 by Fred Hosier
A premises owner can’t be sued by an injured employee of a contractor, according to the Texas Supreme Court.
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Tags: Entergy, sued by injured employee, workers' compensation
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