State study: Apprenticeship training connected with safer workplaces

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MLT News | Posted: January 14, 2023

Apprenticeship programs result in safer workers. That’s the conclusion of a first-of-its-kind study by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I). As apprenticeship programs continue to grow, they could reduce serious worker injuries and workers’ compensation claims.

“Apprentices are safer because they’re learning all the proper techniques,” said Peter Guzman, manager of L&I’s Apprenticeship Program. “Now the science backs us up.”

…

The results of the study come at a time of expansion for registered apprenticeship programs in Washington. There is record involvement, with 22,000 workers currently participating in apprenticeships across about 200 registered programs in the state. While construction trades such as carpenter, ironworker and electrician have the most active participants, there are growing programs in the technology, aerospace and medical assistant fields.

The study, by L&I’s Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention (SHARP) Program, linked registered apprenticeship data with plumber certification information. Then, it compared worker compensation claims between 2000-2018. The work underwent a rigorous peer review and publication last fall in the Journal of Safety Research.

The findings show workers’ compensation claim rates were 31% lower among journey-level plumbers with apprenticeship training compared to plumbers who did not complete an apprenticeship.

“This study provides support for what many believe: There are fewer injuries among apprentices,” said Dr. Dave Bonauto, SHARP manager.

SHARP epidemiologist Dr. Sara Wuellner, a 13-year agency veteran, led the study.

“While the study focused on plumbers, it indicates apprenticeships not only provide well-trained workers, they also contribute to a safer workplace,” she said. “Other studies could look at specific parts of apprenticeship and show how that occurs.”

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New poll of Maine workers shows strong support for more workforce protections (ME)

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Dan Neuman
December 23, 2019

A new survey of workers in Maine shows that there is significant desire for the state to take a major role in adopting policies that improve job quality and advance economic justice.

The survey, which polled private sector workers in Maine, was released last week by the Maine Center for Economic Policy (MECEP) as a part of the organization’s annual “State of Working Maine,” a comprehensive analysis of the economic and workforce trends in the state.

Workers were asked about several workforce policies introduced earlier this year that will likely see a vote sometime next year after state lawmakers return to Augusta in January.

Policies that have seen inaction on the federal level, such as paid family and medical leave, expanded overtime protections, and prohibitions against wage theft and unfair scheduling practices, have strong support among Maine workers. MECEP’s report concludes that this popular support presents an opportunity in the state legislature – where Democrats hold majorities in the Maine House and Senate, as well as control the governor’s office – to make gains after years of conservative control. …

Eighty-six percent want increased penalties for employers who steal wages
MECEP’s survey also shows a substantial amount of support for combating wage theft and mandating predictable work schedules. Eighty-six percent of the respondents want to require employers to pay wages in a timely manner and increase penalties and enforcement for employers who commit wage theft. ….

Senate President Troy Jackson (D-Allagash) has a bill being vetted by lawmakers that would make it easier for the state Attorney General’s office to swiftly clamp down on businesses that may be engaging in wage theft. Another bill that would have mandated that businesses guarantee a fair workweek to their employees was killed in committee after the sponsor, state Rep. Gina Melaragno (D-Auburn), said she needed more time for consultation. That reworked bill has not been submitted for the upcoming legislative session.

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U.S. Department of Labor Finds Three Chicago Area Companies Violated Child Labor Regulations After Minors Suffer Serious Injuries (IL)

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11/12/19
WorkersCompensation.com

Chicago, IL – After investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), it was determined that three Chicago-area companies – Maria V. Contracting, Prate Roofing & Installations LLC, and Red Line Management – violated the Child Labor Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). WHD has also assessed a total of $127,262 in civil money penalties against the companies under the Child Labor Enhanced Penalty Program (CLEPP) because three minors suffered substantial impairment during their unlawful employment.

WHD opened the investigations after receiving referrals from the Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regarding injuries suffered by minors employed in positions that violate “Hazardous Occupation Orders,” which prohibit specific jobs for workers under 18.

“The Child Labor Standards specifically prohibit minors from working with equipment and in jobs that expose them to hazards. In each of these cases, minor employees suffered serious injuries because they were assigned tasks – such as working on roofs, and operating forklifts or other dangerous machinery – that violate employment rules for minors,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Tom Gauza in Chicago, Illinois. “The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is committed to ensuring minors and their parents are aware of the child labor rules and that employers comply. We encourage employment opportunities for minors, but they must be safe.”

WHD assessed civil money penalties of $63,814 to Maria V. Contracting after investigators found a minor employed by the company suffered electrical shock and serious burns when he fell 25 feet from an excavator bucket while cutting power lines. He also sustained fractures to his right femur and patella bone. Investigators found the company violated Child Labor standards by allowing a minor to drive a company pick-up, work on roofs, conduct demolition tasks and work around power-driven hoisting apparatus.

WHD assessed Prate Roofing & Installations LLC with $16,742 in civil money penalties after the Wauconda, Illinois, employer allowed a 16-year-old worker to engage in roofing activities. Investigators found that, while working on a roof, he fell approximately 25 feet through a skylight onto a concrete floor. OSHA investigators determined the minor was not attached to safety cord or wearing a helmet. He suffered a burst fracture in his spine and a fracture dislocation of the ankle requiring emergency surgeries and several months of rehabilitation.

WHD assessed Red Line Management with $46,706 in civil money penalties after a 17-year-old employee suffered multiple injuries when he fell more than 6 feet while riding on top of a forklift to steady the load. The fall resulted in a chest contusion, fractured left arm, torn left rotator cuff and torn ligaments in both knees that required multiple surgeries and months of rehabilitation. Investigators found the minor was operating forklifts, a prohibited occupation for minors, about 75 percent of his time on the job.

The CLEPP provides for civil money assessments of $11,000 to $50,000 for each employee who was the subject of a violation of the child labor regulations and suffered permanent loss, permanent paralysis, or substantial impairment because of their employment.

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Case study links inexperience to injuries in Tennessee construction industry (TN)

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Safety & Health Magazine
May 29, 2019

Knoxville, TN – Nearly half of the construction workers in Tennessee who were injured over a recent two-year period had been on the job less than a year, according to a recent case study report from the Center for Construction Research and Training – as known as CPWR.

Analyzing more than 9,000 statewide workers’ compensation claims for injuries that occurred in 2014 and 2015, researchers at the Construction Industry Research and Policy Center at the University of Tennessee found that 44.5% of the claims were from workers who had less than a year of experience in construction, while 30.1% were from workers who had less than six months of experience.

The biggest takeaway is “the persistence of this injury-tenure relationship across time,” Edward Taylor, study author and CIRPC executive director, told Safety & Health. “We saw in the literature that 100 years ago, a steel company reported that their employees with less than 30 days tenure had an injury rate of 12 times the rest of their employees. Here we are in 2019 and the results of our study show, in construction, 44.5% of injuries occur to employees in their first year.”

According to 2016 national data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 24% of construction workers are injured during their first year on the job. Likewise, the report notes that the findings are comparable to data in states with similar populations. In Washington, over the same two years, 47.5% of injuries occurred among construction workers who had less than a year on the job, while 37.1% of the injured had been on a job six months or less. In Ohio, those percentages were 45.6 and 33.6, respectively.

Injuries to the lower back, finger, shoulder and hand were most common – accounting for 55.8% of the top 10 body parts injured.

Taylor and his colleagues recommend that employers put additional emphasis on the onboarding of new employees, along with pairing up new workers with an experienced, trusted mentor. “It’s especially important that [workers] learn to recognize hazards as part of that educational process,” he said.

In addition, wearing personal protective equipment can help reduce the number of eye and hand injuries, along with cuts. “Those might be easily preventable,” Taylor said.

(See Article)

San Francisco to expand background checks on contractors after deadly tunnel accident (CA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Kim Slowey
Aug. 22, 2018

Dive Brief:

  • San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency officials have promised, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, that they will make background checks into contractors that want to do business with the city more robust following the death of a signal technician employed by Shimmick Construction who had been working on the $40.9 million Twin Peaks Tunnel Improvement project. The agency awarded the contract for the project to the Shimmick/Con-Quest Joint Venture in February.
  • As part of the agency bidding and contracting process, construction companies are required to complete a pre-bid questionnaire that asks if they have been cited by Cal-OSHA for any serious and willful citations in the previous 10 years. Shimmick allegedly responded “no” to that question, and a Shimmick representative told the Chronicle that its answers on the city’s questionnaire were accurate. An analysis of Cal-OSHA records by the Chronicle, however, revealed that the company had received multiple safety violation citations in that period of time, many of which the company is protesting, including one involving a November 2016 death and an excavation-related incident for which the company received a serious/willful citation.
  • The increased scrutiny of contractors and their histories comes at the order of San Francisco Mayor London Breed who called for a “better system of checks and balances” when hiring contractors to perform on large city contracts. Agency spokesman Paul Rose told the Chronicle the SFMTA expected the Twin Peaks project to be completed on time and that it still planned to use Shimmick on future agency projects. The San Francisco Examiner yesterday reported that SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin reportedly defended the agency’s choice of contractor, calling Shimmick reputable.

Dive Insight:

States and municipalities typically require contractors to fill out a mountain of paperwork, but construction companies presenting false information on questionnaires or other qualification statements risk being debarred from doing business with an agency that determines they intentionally gave false answers or misrepresented mandatory qualifications having to do with elements of their businesses like work experience or financial capacity.

(Read More)

OSHA increases excavation and trenching enforcement after wave of fatalities

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Kim Slowey
October 4, 2018

Dive Brief:

  • Effective Oct. 1, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration moved forward with an updated excavation and trenching National Emphasis Program. The safety enhancements represent a renewed effort on the part of the agency to prevent excavation and trenching collapses in the wake of an uptick in trenching fatalities.
  • The program’s goal has always been to make sure onsite trenching and excavation conditions are as safe as possible for workers, but the agency will now increase its education efforts and step up enforcement. In addition, OSHA inspectors will enter records of their trenching and excavation inspections into a national reporting system. Local OSHA offices will develop outreach programs as well.
  • OSHA will wait to increase its enforcement activity until after the first three months of the initiative, during which time the agency will engage in education and prevention outreach. Inspectors will still respond to accidents, complaints, injuries and referrals during the outreach period. The updated program will remain in effect indefinitely. “OSHA will concentrate the full force of enforcement and compliance assistance resources to help ensure that employers are addressing these serious hazards,” said Loren Sweatt, deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health.

Dive Insight:

OSHA rolls out National Emphasis Programs on a temporary basis, although some, like the ones relative to construction cranes and lead, have been active for several years. The agency’s goal is to concentrate its resources on particularly high-hazard safety issues for as long as necessary. The decision as to which areas need the most attention is made after considering inspection, injury and illness data and other relevant information.

In the case of this latest emphasis program, the agency is likely responding to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data that showed a steep rise in trenching fatalities in 2016. In March, the bureau reported that that the number of excavation and trenching fatalities in 2016 was almost twice the average of the previous five years combined. At the time, the Department of Labor committed to reducing excavation and trenching hazards by 10% by Sept. 30, 2018, using 2017 data as a benchmark.

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Trump signs bill that kills Obama-era rule targeting wage theft, unsafe working conditions

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By Kimberly Kindy – Washington Post
Mar 28, 2018, 8:56 am

President Donald Trump signed a bill Monday that killed an Obama-era worker safety rule that required businesses competing for large federal contracts to disclose and correct serious safety and other labor law violations.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted to eliminate the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which applied to contracts valued at $500,000 or more. Votes on the bill in both the House and Senate divided along party lines.
said.

The Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces regulation was finalized in August but most of it was never implemented. Within days of it being finalized, the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) sued, securing a temporary injunction that prohibited the federal government from implementing it.

In a last-minute effort to fight for the rule earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released a staff report that showed that 66 of the federal government’s 100 largest contractors have at some point violated federal wage and hour laws. Since 2015, the report says, more than a third of the 100 largest OSHA penalties have been imposed on federal contractors.

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Construction falls lead OSHA’s top safety violations for 2017

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Kim Slowey
Sep 27, 2017

Dive Brief:

  • Fall protection in the construction industry, specifically, led the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s annual list of the most commonly cited workplace safety violations, according to a preliminary ranking reported by the National Safety Council.
  • Four violations on this year’s list are specific to OSHA’s Part 1926 – Safety and Health Regulations for Construction), including inadequate fall protection, lack of guardrails for scaffolding, improper use of ladders and lack of fall-protection training, according to Business and Legal Resources.
  • The list is preliminary and the final version is due out in December, though it is not expected to change in the meantime. The category of Fall Protection – Training Requirements is new to OSHA’s top 10 this year.

Dive Insight:

Fall protection has been of particular concern to OSHA as falls remain the leading cause of accidental death on construction sites. Of the 937 job site deaths reported in 2015, 350 were fall-related.

In an effort to increase job-site safety, OSHA has taken to levying significant fines in the case of certain violations, such as repeat offenses. In August, OSHA fined a Florida roofing contractor more than $1.5 million after repeated fall-protection violations. To reinforce the citation’s severity, the agency also added the company to its Severe Violator Enforcement Program, under which it will be subject to extra monitoring and inspections.

Trench safety is another OSHA concern. Last month, the agency fined South Dakota contractor First Dakota Enterprises $95,000 for conditions that led to a non-fatal collapse. The worker, who was covered by debris as a result of the collapse, survived, but OSHA said the company did not provide the proper protection systems and inspections that could have prevented such an incident.

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UPDATE: OSHA delays electronic recordkeeping rule deadline

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on
Author Emily Peiffer, Hallie Busta
UPDATE: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Wednesday that it will suspend the electronic recordkeeping rule’s filing deadline in order to give employers more time to comply, according to The Washington Post. Although the filing date was originally scheduled for July 1, the agency has not yet opened the online portal for companies to submit their injury and illness logs. OSHA has not announced how long the extension will last.
Dive Brief:
  • The National Association of Home Builders – along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Oklahoma State Homebuilders Association, the State Chamber of Oklahoma and three poultry associations – filed a lawsuit in January against the U.S. Department of Labor and OSHA in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma relating to OSHA’s final recordkeeping rule.
  • The lawsuit claims that the rule, “Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” overreaches and violates businesses’ rights under the First and Fifth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, effectively asking the court to apply strict scrutiny in determining the rule’s constitutionality.
  • OSHA’s announcement of the final rule in May 2016, which put in place new electronic recordkeeping and reporting requirements among companies with more than 20 employees, was met with pushback from construction industry trade groups concerning the exposure of private data.

 

Dive Insight:

The January lawsuit claimed that OSHA doesn’t have the authority to create what it says will be a public database for employers’ injury and illness records, and it argues that the information’s publication won’t impact workplace safety or health. Instead, the lawsuit calls the rule “an imposition on businesses” and says that the publication of “confidential and proprietary information” could be misused, exposing the business “to significant reputational harm.”

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The Dotted Line: How employers can protect construction workers from external threats

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This feature is a part of “The Dotted Line” series, which takes an in-depth look at the complex legal landscape of the construction industry. To view the entire series, click here.

 

AUTHOR Kim Slowey
PUBLISHED March 14, 2017

Construction sites are inherently dangerous places. Every year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration release data on injuries and deaths of construction workers, with many attributable to falls, excavation collapses, struck-by incidents – all the things one might expect to occur on a job site.

However, there are other threats facing construction workers that have nothing to do with the industry but everything to do with where construction sites happen are located. The potential danger of third-party violence and theft, drunk drivers and even terrorism all threaten today’s trade workers, more so if they are in what becomes the wrong place at the wrong time.

Employers must know their legal responsibilities when it comes to worker safety, from situations ranging from job site robbery to terrorism risks.

(Read More)