Southern California Uber drivers belonging to the California App-Based Drivers’ Association have aligned themselves with Teamsters Local 986 in hopes of organizing. The drivers perceive many of the business practices mandated by Uber as “unsafe, deceptive, and unfair.”
The temporary staffing business has been one of the fastest growing industries since the recession. It now employs a record 2.9 million people in the U.S. But the growth in blue-collar staffing has led to high injury rates and complaints about exploitation. Temps face a significantly greater risk of getting injured on the job than permanent employees. In Florida, for example, temps were about twice as likely as regular workers to suffer crushing injuries, dislocations, lacerations, fractures and punctures. Then there's the sugar plant in Pennsylvania.
Two people were killed and 19 others injured when a logging truck barreled out of control after its brakes failed, overturning and then dumping its cargo onto a crew of more than two dozen construction workers on a bridge, authorities said. "They were like sitting ducks on the bridge," Van Buren County Sheriff Scott Bradle said. "There was nowhere for them to run to get away from the logs."
Residents in the heart of this oil-and-gas boom town for years have watched drilling operations advance toward their homes, moving in from the high-plains grasslands, then farm fields, then strip-mall suburbs. At public commission meetings and town-hall gatherings residents have raised concerns about air quality, water contamination, noise and traffic. In recent weeks, city authorities have given them something else to worry about: toxic explosions and spills local safety officials admit they are unprepared to handle.
After a blast caused much of an Omaha manufacturing plant to collapse, some workers found themselves buried in debris and others scrambled for their lives. Two of the 38 workers who were at the International Nutrition plant on Monday morning died and 10 were hospitalized with significant injuries, authorities said.
A government-appointed panel in Bangladesh voted Monday to raise the minimum wage for millions of garment workers to about $66 a month — still the lowest in the world and well below what workers have been seeking.
A new report delivers a dire warning to employees in the oil and gas industries: Your job could be the death of you. According to recently released statistics from 2012, on-the-job deaths in the oil and gas industries spiked by a staggering 23 percent last year, a larger increase than any other employment sector in the United States.
A clothing factory fire in Bangladesh has killed over 100 people. The factory has ties to Walmart and the retailer is doing everything in it's power to distance itself from taking any responsibility.
