The Washington-based office which was set up to listen BP worker’s safety concerns after investigations into the Texas City refinery explosion raised issues about whether workers feared reprisal for speaking up. Till Now, 112 workers have filed grievances, and 35 of them have dealt with system integrity or safety issues.
BP has been trying to shut down an internal safety watchdog agency it set up under congressional pressure four years ago, according to sources close to the office and a leading congressman.
Stronger enforcement tools, tougher penalties and broader workers’ rights are at the center of soon-to-be introduced workplace safety legislation.
Congress on Wednesday took major steps to rein in Big Oil’s offshore drilling practices, as one Senate panel voted to lift all caps on liability in oil spills and another moved to deny offshore leases to companies with poor track records.
The U.S. Department of Labor this week announced an award of $27 million in National Emergency Grants to four key Gulf Coast states to assist workers displaced by BP’s ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
In the movies, police chases are expensive stunts that mangle cars, flatten newsstands, shatter plate-glass windows. But in real life, the cost is much greater, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reporting at least 279 crashes and 320 deaths in 2008.
The company that installed the exterior wall panel that fell from the state courthouse under construction on Federal Street, seriously injuring a worker, has had more than 20 safety violations over the past few years, according to a federal agency.
The state auditor this week released yet another edition of what could be titled “California Employees Gone Wild” — part of a recurring series exposing the folks you pay to work on your behalf cheating, robbing, and gouging the state.
The Yakama Nation’s sawmill has been hit with $59,850 in fines after a federal probe into the death of a Fort Simcoe Job Corps student turned up a slew of safety violations.
State officials say they’re proposing $115,000 in fines against a Hastings-based auto parts maker after inspections found that it failed to adequately protect employees from serious hazards.
