BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 X-WR-CALNAME:www.indybay.org PRODID:-//indybay/ical// v1.0//EN BEGIN:VEVENT UID:Indybay-18885653 SEQUENCE:19062870 CREATED:20260420T070100Z DESCRIPTION:Commemorate Workers Memorial Day 2026\n Remember The Dead-Fight For The Living!\nStop The Injuries and Deaths On The Job & Defend The Whistleblowers\n\nTuesday April 28, 2026 4PM PST/6PM CST/7PM EST\nJoin Zoom Meeting\nhttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/81053330631\nMeeting ID: 810 5333 0631\n\n\nThe continuing injuries and deaths on the job are growing in the US. The destruction of OSHA is ongoing as workers are being murdered on the job from Amazon to UPS and one company after another.\nThere are only 1,720 federal and state OSHA inspectors responsible for the safety of 144 million workers in the US and bosses fire thousands of workers who make health and safety complaints. Even OSHA workers like the OSHA Whistleblower Protection Program investigator Darrell Whitman was terminated as well as others in his OSHA 9 regional office for standing up for workers who had been retaliated for speaking out about health and safety problems. These agencies which are supposed to protect workers' health and safety have been captured by the companies they are supposed to regulate under both political parties.\nIn California, Governor Newsom and the Democratic Party controlled legislature have cut Cal-OSHA by $16 million and there are less than 200 OSHA inspectors for 33 million workers.\nIt is time for our unions and for working people to organize to protect their health and safety as these union busting corporations put working people to death for more profits with pats on the wrists instead of being sent to prison.\nInjured workers also face terrorism from insurance companies who try to limit their liability for healthcare by targeting injured workers for workers fraud while insurance companies and bosses are serial fraudsters to prevent workers from getting healthcare. This is supported by the massive corruption in the workers comp industry and the insurance companies control of Departments of Workers Compensation. Many injured workers are permanently disabled because they cannot get prompt care, lose their jobs, their homes and end up bankrupt and homeless. This is a crime.\n\nAI is also now being used to escalate the exploitation in trucking, healthcare, education and all industries. Workers' lives and communities are under threat and the fight for health and safety is a fight for all.\n\nSpeakers:\n\nAshley Gjovik, An Apple tech worker who exposed an environmental dumpsite that was poisoning her and other workers at Apple and the community.\nashleygjovik.com\n\nVina Colley, A former OCAW worker at the Piketon Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio who fought for safety and healthcare for decades as she and thousands of other workers and residents were being contaminated and sickened.\nPiketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security (PRESS\n\n\nEric Johnson, IBT 190 UPS line driver who has been investigating the dangers of forward facing infrared AI cameras in truck cabins that are creating tumors and cataracs on hundreds of thousands of drivers throughout the United States.\nCameras At UPS, AI &mInfrared Torture With IBT 190 UPS Driver Eric Johnson\nhttps://youtu.be/xkQuUrN4g2E\n\nBecky McClain, A Pfizer molecular biologist who was fired for blowing the whistle on the company which allowed biological contaminants to sicken her and other workers as well as being released into the community in Gratton, CT\nbiotechwhistleblower.com\n\nVincent Ward, ILWU Local 10 Injured Worker\n\nMike Razaino, IBT 952 has fought for health and safety in the food transportation industry.\n\nSponsored By California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day, Whistleblowers United, WorkWeek, Biotech Whistleblowers, United Front Committee For A Labor Party, \nwww.workersmemorialday.org\nlabormedia1@gmail.com\n\nDemocratic Governor Newsom Killing Cal OSHA & Harming Worker Safety\nCalifornia OSHA inspectors don’t visit worksites even when workers are injured\nhttps://calmatters.org/politics/2025/07/california-osha-inspections-state-audit/?_gl=1*1g6valp*_ga*MTUxMDkyNDE5LjE3NTMxNDAxMDU.*_ga_5TKXNLE5NK*czE3NTMxNDAxMDQkbzEkZzAkdDE3NTMxNDAxMDQkajYwJGwwJGgw*_ga_DX0K9PCWYH*czE3NTMxNDAxMDQkbzEkZzAkdDE3NTMxNDAxMDQkajYwJGwwJGgw\n\nAvatar photo\nBY JEANNE KUANG\nJULY 19, 2025\n\nA person carries a large plastic bucket filled with produce on their shoulder while working in a field of green crops during harvest. Surrounded by others bending over the plants, the individual wears a long-sleeve shirt, hat, and face covering for sun protection. A tractor and trailer are visible in the background under the warm early morning or late afternoon light.\nFarmworkers harvest banana peppers at a farm near the town of Helm on July 1, 2025. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, \nIN SUMMARY\n\nNearly a third of Cal/OSHA positions were vacant last year. A new state audit found that caused the agency to skip in-person inspections, even when workers were injured.\nWelcome to CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom devoted solely to covering issues that affect all Californians. Sign up for WhatMatters to receive the latest news and commentary on the most important issues in the Golden State.\nCalifornia’s worker safety agency is under-inspecting workplaces after accidents and worker injuries, failing to enforce labor regulations in a way that “may undermine” them because it does not have enough employees to do the inspections, a state audit found. \n\nIn a review of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health published Thursday, state auditors found understaffing was a primary factor leading inspectors to skip in-person inspections of worksites even in cases where auditors found — and division managers agreed — it was likely warranted. \n\nNearly one-third of the division’s 800-plus positions were vacant last year, a rate that is even worse in some district offices and among some of the staff responsible for inspections and enforcement. \n\n“When it does perform inspections, Cal/OSHA’s process has critical weaknesses,” state auditor Grant Parks wrote. \n\nThe weaknesses, he wrote, included inspectors failing to review employers’ required injury prevention plans, document notes from interviews with workers, initiate inspections quickly and ensure employers had addressed alleged hazards before closing a case file.\n\nState law allows Cal/OSHA to inspect workplaces in-person proactively, after accidents or in response to a complaint. But it only mandates inspections for workplace deaths or “serious” accidents, generally defined as those requiring inpatient hospital care or resulting in “serious permanent disfiguration.”\n\nEnforcement staff first determine if the complaints are valid, and then often choose to inspect “by letter” instead, which involves writing to employers asking them to investigate the complaints themselves and document how they’ve addressed hazards. \n\nLast year out of more than 12,000 complaints, the agency found 87% valid; staff inspected just 17% of those workplaces in person rather than investigating “by letter.” Out of 5,800 workplace accidents, the agency deemed 42% serious enough to send an inspector. \n\nAuditors found staff didn’t always investigate a complaint or inspect a worksite when they should have.\n\nIn one case, a union representative filed a complaint saying that construction workers were riding on heavy machinery on the road with no seat belts, and another worker was hanging off the side of the vehicle, in danger of falling and being hit in oncoming traffic. Cal/OSHA declined to investigate because the incident was on a public road and therefore outside the agency’s jurisdiction. But the audit found the agency should have opened the complaint because workers were riding in a company vehicle — activity covered by workplace safety regulations.\n\nAuditors reviewed another complaint from a kitchen worker who was taken to the ER by ambulance, possibly from heat illness. The worker reported poor ventilation, broken air conditioning and temperatures that reached 90 degrees indoors. Despite agency policies requiring on-site inspections for serious hazards involving current employees, and for any heat-related complaints, Cal/OSHA sent the employer a letter. Auditors reviewing the case records found the employer had not responded. \n\nSerious injuries investigated by letter\n\nThe audit also highlighted two injuries that Cal/OSHA said weren’t “serious” enough to inspect in person; in one, a worker was cut by a chainsaw, requiring surgery and an overnight hospital stay, and in another a worker was knocked out when hit in the head and suffered a skull fracture, but was not formally admitted to the hospital. \n\nIn the chainsaw case, managers told auditors the worker was wearing protective equipment so there was less reason to suspect workplace violations. In general, the audit found that managers overwhelmingly reported understaffing as the reason for not inspecting.\n\nThe agency, the audit noted, doesn’t have a complaint form on its website. To file a complaint, workers must call or email a Cal/OSHA district office, or fill out a complaint form on the federal OSHA website. \n\nThe audit places further pressure on Cal/OSHA and its beleaguered parent agency, the Department of Industrial Relations, to deal with a trenchant staffing problem that advocates and lawmakers say renders some of the strictest worker protections in the nation toothless. \n\nIt comes a year after a similar audit of the Labor Commissioner’s Office, also a part of that department, which found workers complaining to the agency about wage theft were waiting more than two years on average to get their claims resolved — six times longer than the time required by law. \n\nBoth audits were ordered by state lawmakers, who are by now familiar with the understaffing complaints. One bill this year would require the department to study how to make more appealing career paths for the inspector positions, some of which require engineering degrees.\n\nStephen Knight, director of the advocacy group Worksafe, called the audit’s findings “really disappointing.”\n\n“It confirms that California’s promise to hold employers accountable remains unfulfilled,” Knight said. “There’s a lot of good solid detail and suggestions in the audit, nothing they couldn’t have figured out beforehand. Certainly what it would require is resources and political leadership that sides with workers over corner-cutting employers.”\n\nThe problem is urgent, he said, noting workplace accidents have killed three teenagers in California just the past two weeks: one who fell into a meat grinder at a burrito factory in Los Angeles County and two who died in a fireworks warehouse explosion in rural Yolo County.\n\nThe workplace agency has been the subject of several investigations in recent years. Last year the Sacramento Bee found the division of Cal/OSHA that recommends cases for criminal prosecution was so understaffed it couldn’t even consider cases in which workers suffered severe but nonfatal accidents, such as ones that caused paralysis. CalMatters last year reported that the agency’s inspections and citations of heat-related hazards had plummeted since the pandemic, despite the rising risks of extreme heat for outdoor workers. \n\nIn a letter dated June 27 responding to the audit, Department of Industrial Relations director Katrina Hagen wrote that the department “has been working to address structural and process issues, as well as recruitment and retention issues,” including studying the agency’s pay and job responsibility levels. Hagen wrote that Cal/OSHA’s vacancy rate had dropped to 12% this year; the auditor responded they hadn’t seen up-to-date data showing that. \n\nHagen also wrote that Cal/OSHA is working on making an online complaint form, and said the agency is getting a new case management system that will flag cases that should have gotten an in-person inspection, but didn’t. Both upgrades, she wrote, are expected in 2027.\n\n‘What’s the point?’\n\nThe audit also questioned Cal/OSHA’s practice of reducing the fines it issued to employers after citing them for safety violations. Employers often appeal citations, a process that can take years to resolve, and the fines or violations can be reduced during settlement conferences, but the auditors wrote that the reasons aren’t always documented. In a four-year period reviewed by auditors, the average reduction was more than half the original fine. \n\nAssembly Labor Committee Chair Liz Ortega, a Hayward Democrat who requested the audit last year, slammed the practice. \n\n“This Cal/OSHA standard operating procedure can stop TODAY,” she wrote in response to a query from CalMatters. “Injuries won’t abate until there are consequences. If Cal/OSHA won’t do it, we should get someone who will.”\n\nShe said she wanted to see the agency increase its referrals for criminal prosecution to 5% of serious cases this year, and called the investigations that don’t include in-person inspections “fake.”\n\n“Sending a letter!!!” Ortega wrote. “What’s the point?”\n\nWorker safety agency NIOSH lays off most remaining staff healthwatch \nhttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/worker-safety-agency-niosh-lays-off-most-remaining-staff/?linkId=810633593\n\nBy Alexander Tin Edited By Faris Tanyos \n\nUpdated on: May 3, 2025 / 12:27 PM EDT / CBS News \n\nNearly all of the remaining staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health were laid off Friday, multiple officials and laid-off employees told CBS News, gutting programs ranging from approvals of new safety equipment to firefighter health.\n\nMuch of the work at NIOSH, an arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had already stalled after an initial round of layoffs on April 1 at the agency ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. \n\nNew requests for investigations of firefighter injuries and workplace health hazards had already stopped being accepted. A CDC plan to help Texas schools curb the spread of measles infections was also scrapped due to the layoffs. \n\nNIOSH was started in 1970 as part of the same law that created another federal agency called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. In addition to its own voluntary recommendations for employers, NIOSH produces research to inform OSHA's regulations and enforcement.\n\nNIOSH employees receiving layoff notices late Friday included some workers for the World Trade Center Health Program, miner safety, and firefighter health programs. Some workers for those programs had been asked to temporarily return to work for another month or two, after pleas from members of Congress.\n\n\nAmong the layoffs to NIOSH's World Trade Center Health Program were nurses and scientists, two CDC officials said. Staff dealing with enrollment, member services and other administrative duties were also cut.\n\nAn organizational chart annotated by a group of NIOSH staff showing the divisions that were eliminated by the layoffs. \n\nLayoff notices received by workers Friday were almost identical to those received in the initial round of Kennedy's cuts, which said that their duties "have been identified as either unnecessary or virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere in the agency." \n\nThe main difference with Friday's layoff notices was the date they take effect: workers are being put on leave until an official separation from service on July 2, instead of in June.\n\nThe layoffs also stopped work at the agency's National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory. This NIOSH division had been the government body tasked with vetting safety equipment like N95 masks and breathing devices used by emergency workers.\n\n\nThe laboratory's respirator approval program had been in the middle of processing around 100 applications for personal protective equipment, one laid-off official said.\n\nStalled work includes changes needed to meet new standards issued by the National Fire Protection Association for this year. No equipment is currently certified to meet those standards, nor has the agency been able to issue refunds to application fees paid for by manufacturers.\n\nEfforts to spot and warn of counterfeit personal protective equipment was also halted due to the layoffs, officials said.\n\n"Millions of workers across various sectors - including healthcare, construction, and emergency services - depend on NIOSH-approved respirators. Without these approvals, their safety is compromised, leading to potential illness, injury, or even death," laid-off employees wrote in a letter shared with CBS News.\n\nHHS responds to NIOSH layoffs\n\nHHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday, asking what would happen to the agency's work now that most of its teams had been eliminated. The department had previously said that NIOSH would be absorbed into a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America.\n\nIn a post Saturday on X, the department said that firefighter programs were still a top priority and that as "the agency continues to streamline operations, the essential services provided by NIOSH will remain fully intact and uninterrupted."\n\nThe department also claimed no CDC employees had been terminated on Friday and only a "required notice was sent to NIOSH employees, following the agreed-upon standard process with the union."\n\n\nLaid-off NIOSH workers told CBS News that the department's post was misleading, since workers represented by unions were still on the job until Friday, when they received letters from HHS informing them of the layoffs and that they would be locked out of the agency's buildings.\n\nThat capped a process which started in late March, after unions received a notice saying that most NIOSH employees could be cut by the end of June. In the past, unions could use that time to negotiate with the department, allowing employees to continue to work during talks that might mitigate or avoid a "reduction in force" of their members.\n\nHowever, unions were unable to initiate negotiations with Kennedy's department to head off the layoff notices Friday. An executive order issued by President Trump ended collective bargaining with unions representing the CDC and some other agencies, which is now being challenged in court.\n\n https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2026/04/20/18885653.php SUMMARY:Commemorate Workers Memorial Day 2026 Remember The Dead-Fight For The Living! LOCATION:https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81053330631\nMeeting ID: 810 5333 0631 URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2026/04/20/18885653.php DTSTART:20260428T230000Z DTEND:20260429T003000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR