A newspaper has investigated reports about working conditions at an Amazon.com warehouse that serves one-third of the country. Employee claims point to extreme indoor heat, closed doors when it was hot, work rates that couldn’t be sustained and firing threats when workers couldn’t keep up in the heat.

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Tags: Amazon, closed doors, extreme heat, firing threats, heat index, heat stress, Integrity Staffing Solutions, OSHA inspection, paramedics, The Morning Call

The final, and most comprehensive, report on the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico points to seven company practices that contributed to the incident. They’re the types of mistakes that could be made by any company, not just an oil giant.

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Tags: BP oil disaster, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, cost saving, Deepwater Horizon, risk management, time saving, Transocean

Pressure to resume production was a key factor in an explosion at the Bayer CropScience pesticide manufacturing plant that killed two workers, according to a government report.

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Tags: Bayer CropScience, Chemical Safety Board, explosion, maintenance, production pressure

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

A company removed guards from a shredder, assigned an underage employee to use it and didn’t train him. The teen was crushed to death in the shredder. Does the teen’s family have a case for wrongful death, or are they limited to workers’ comp death benefits?

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Tags: killed in shredder, machine guards, underage employee, Workers' comp, wrongful death

Earlier this week, BP released its report on the causes of the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and spilled an estimated 206 million gallons of oil into the ocean. In some quarters, the reaction to BP’s report has been anything but positive.

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Tags: BP report, Deepwater Horizon, Halliburton, rig explosion, Transocean

China is on the verge of overtaking the U.S. as the world’s top manufacturer. Some use Chinese competition as a reason why OSHA’s regulations shouldn’t be stricter. However, a recent newspaper article paints a picture of workplace safety in China that no one would want.

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Tags: China, ignore deaths, mine owners, productivity tops safety, safety regulations

No contrast between the Bush administration and the Obama administration is more stark than the dramatically different signals they’ve sent in selecting nominees to head federal safety and labor agencies.

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Tags: Joseph Main, MSHA, nominee, OSHA

American manufacturers are increasing their international market shares due, in part, to workplace safety programs, according to one safety expert.

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Tags: ASSE Professional Development Conference and expo, international market share, workplace safety programs

“How do I get all my employees to wear their safety gear all the time?” It’s one of the top challenges safety pros face year after year. So we asked 290 of your peers about their experiences to find out the top reasons workers give for not wearing PPE.

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Tags: excuses, PPE, workplace injury

If you post signs at your workplace that say “Safety First,” how can employees still get the impression that production is more important?

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Tags: communication, safety first, Safety vs. production