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Worker Injuries And Deaths From Heat Far Worse

Worker Injuries And Deaths From Heat Far Worse Than Estimates, Study Shows

Heat deaths in the U.S. peak in July and August, and as that period kicks off, a new report from Public Citizen highlights heat as a major workplace safety issue. With basically every year breaking heat records thanks to climate change, this is only going to get worse without significant action to protect workers from injury and death.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration admits that government data on heat-related injury, illness, and death on the job are “likely vast underestimates.” Those vast underestimates are “about 3,400 workplace heat-related injuries and illnesses requiring days away from work per year from 2011 to 2020” and an average of 40 fatalities a year. Looking deeper, Public Citizen found, “An analysis of more than 11 million workers’ compensation injury reports in California from 2001 through 2018 found that working on days with hotter temperatures likely caused about 20,000 injuries and illnesses per year in that state, alone—an extraordinary 300 times the annual number injuries and illnesses that California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) attributes to heat.”


Extrapolating from that would suggest more like 170,000 heat-related workplace injuries and illnesses every year. Similarly, looking past the official fatality data, Public Citizen estimates as many as 2,000 workplace heat deaths each year. And heat can contribute invisibly to injury rates, as workers whose bodies are stressed are more likely to have falls and other causes of injury.

The workers most at risk are the most vulnerable workers—low-income workers, people of color, immigrants, and especially undocumented immigrants. The lowest-paid 20% of workers account for five times as many heat-related injuries as the highest-paid 20%, and “A recent review by Columbia Journalism Investigations of records relating to workplace heat injuries—including workplace inspection reports, death investigation files, depositions, court records, and police reports—found that since 2010, Hispanics/Latinos have accounted for a third of all heat-related fatalities, despite representing only 18% of the U.S. workforce.”

This is in part because the industries in which heat-related problems are most common are disproportionately Black and brown: farming, warehouse work, certain kinds of construction, food preparation, and more. These workers are also less likely to have health insurance or worker's compensation to help them when they do get sick or injured.

Public Citizen is calling on OSHA to issue an emergency temporary heat safety standard while it works through the long process of getting to a final rule on heat. Such a standard should include temperature thresholds, lower workloads during dangerous heat, indoor and outdoor cooling, hydration, training, record-keeping, non-retaliation requirements, and an emergency action plan in affected workplaces.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Gender Equality At Work More Than 80 Years Off

Gender Equality At Work More Than 80 Years Off

Geneva — If you’re waiting for gender equality in the workplace, be prepared to wait a long time.

While women are rapidly closing the gender gap with men in areas like health and education, inequality at work is not expected to be erased until 2095, according to a report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) Tuesday.

The organisation, which each year gathers the global elite in the plush Swiss ski resort of Davos, said that the worldwide gender gap in the workplace had barely narrowed in the past nine years.

Since 2006, when the WEF first began issuing its annual Global Gender Gap Reports, women have seen their access to economic participation and opportunity inch up to 60 percent of that of men’s, from 56 percent.

“Based on this trajectory, with all else remaining equal, it will take 81 years for the world to close this gap completely,” the WEF said in a statement.

The world would be better served to speed up the process, according to WEF founder and chief Klaus Schwab.

“Achieving gender equality is obviously necessary for economic reasons. Only those economies who have full access to all their talent will remain competitive and will prosper,” he said.

– Some ‘far-reaching’ progress –

The report, which covered 142 countries, looked at how nations distribute access to healthcare, education, political participation and resources and opportunities between women and men.

Almost all the countries had made progress towards closing the gap in access to healthcare, with 35 nations filling it completely, while 25 countries had shut the education access gap, the report showed.

Even more than in the workplace, political participation lagged stubbornly behind, with women still accounting for just 21 percent of the world’s decision makers, according to the report.

Yet this was the area where most progress had been made in recent years.

“In the case of politics, globally, there are now 26 percent more female parliamentarians and 50 percent more female ministers than nine years ago,” said the report’s lead author, Saadia Zahidi.

“These are far-reaching changes,” she said, stressing though that much remained to be done and that the “pace of change must in some areas be accelerated.”

– More equality in Nordic countries –

The five Nordic countries, led by Iceland, clearly remained the most gender-equal.

They were joined by Nicaragua, Rwanda Ireland, the Philippines and Belgium in the top 10, while Yemen remained at the bottom of the chart for the ninth year in a row.

The United States meanwhile climbed three spots from last year to 20th, after narrowing its wage gap and hiking the number of women in parliamentary and ministerial level positions.

France catapulted from 45th to 16th place, also due to a narrowing wage gap but mainly thanks to increasing numbers of women in politics, including near-parity in the number of government ministers.

With 49 percent women ministers, France now has one of the highest ratios in the world.

Britain meanwhile dropped eight spots to 26th place, amid changes in income estimates.

Among other large economies, Brazil stood at 71st place, Russia at 75th, China at 87th and India at 114, the report showed.

AFP Photo/Johannes Eisele

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Standing On The Job Gains Favor In U.S. Workplaces

Standing On The Job Gains Favor In U.S. Workplaces

Washington (AFP) – Three centuries after Thomas Jefferson found standing up a superior way to work, a growing number of Americans are mulling the dangers of sitting down on the job — and opting to get on their feet.

Backaches. Muscular degeneration. Heart disease. Diabetes. Colon cancer. Even premature death is on the list of the potential consequences of a sedentary working life, according to a raft of studies on the topic.

“We’re sitting ourselves to an early death,” said Rob Danoff, a family physician in Pennsylvania and member of the American Osteopathic Association with a special interest in preventative medicine.

“We are a ‘potato’ society,” he told AFP in a telephone interview.

“We sit most of the day, so we are work potatoes — and then we go home and we are couch potatoes. That combination can be deadly.”

Adult Americans spend on average 7.7 hours a day engaged in “sedentary behavior,” the National Institutes of Health has reported.

And the American Osteopathic Association estimates that 70 percent of office workers spend more than five hours a day seated at their desks.

The longer people are sitting, the more difficult it is for their blood to circulate, explained Danoff, who cautioned that going to the gym after work affords no compensation.

According to a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the risk of premature death grows 15 percent for those who sit eight hours a day, and 40 percent for those who sit 11 hours a day, compared with those who sit just four hours.

Last year, the American Medical Association formally recognized the “potential risks of prolonged sitting” as it urged employers and employees alike to seek out alternatives to sitting, such as standing working stations — some even equipped with a treadmill — or isometric balls instead of desk chairs.

The message is starting to get around, with more Americans choosing standing desks — like Jefferson, one of the U.S. founding fathers and third president, prolific architect and well-known tinkerer, who favored standing when doing his tasks.

“Standing desks have been popular probably for 20 years in Europe, but not in the United States,” said Jeffrey Meltzer, president of Applied Ergonomics, an Illinois firm that specializes in workspaces.

“In the States, they were seen as silly,” said Meltzer, adding that he noticed a significant shift in 2013 when sales of standing desks leaped 50 percent.

In trend-setting California, with its youthful and cutting-edge technology sector, standing desks have become increasingly commonplace.

In Washington, Kathleen Hale, the 34-year-old co-founder of Rebel Desk, has found a market among lawyers, university professors and health professionals for standing desks with slow-paced treadmills attached.

“People have been working for healthier working environments since it’s the place where many of us are spending more time than we do with our families,” Hale said.

Bilaal Ahmed, 34, founder of the startup Linktank, has embraced the concept of an adjustable office, even if he is in excellent health.

“It’s more proactive,” he said. “It’s a desire to be healthy, to stay active even when I’m working. This is one of the best ways to do that.”

He added: “It’s not only to be standing, but also to have the computer at a certain level, so your arms are perpendicular to the body.”

If he gets tired, Ahmed simply flops down into a nearby chair. Overall, he said he feels more alert, more aware and more productive.

Hale recommends mixing up positions throughout the day.

“Sometimes you stand. Sometimes you walk. And when you need to, you sit, to take a break,” she said. “That’s how we encourage people to think about sitting — it’s a time to take a break.”

Danoff said staying in motion is key.

“We weren’t made to sit all day,” he said. “We were not made to stand all day. We were made to move. It’s all about balance.”

He said it is “unrealistic” to install standing desks in most places, as doing so could result in going from one extreme to another.

Just getting up for a moment every half-hour, going for a walk in the hallway, taking the stairs instead of the elevator and seeing a colleague instead of sending an email are all useful options.

“There are a lot of things that people can do which they don’t do,” he said. “You don’t need all this fancy equipment. There are common things to do.”

©afp.com / Fabienne Faur