As more and more employers duck paying workers decent wages, health care and training costs by hiring contingent/temporary workers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) must step up its protection efforts for those workers, a new report urges. Martha McLuskey, one of the authors of the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) report, At the Company’s Mercy: Protecting Contingent Workers from Unsafe Working Conditions, says:

Increasingly, employers are treating them as expendable, accepting high injury rates because the company is largely insulated from the economic consequences.

The AFL-CIO and America’s union movement, along with a broad coalition of other groups, is mounting a new campaign to build a common-sense immigration process that includes a road map to citizenship and one that guarantees immigrant workers the same workplace rights and protections all workers deserve.

We know that immigration reform can be a controversial issue among our union members and all workers. But immigration reform with a path to citizenship and workplace rights doesn’t just benefit aspiring citizens and their families, it's good for all workers. Here are 10 reasons why. 

Check out the heartbreaking story of some of the many workplace deaths where companies are found liable and penalties are issued but never collected as corporations game the bankruptcy system, lawyers aggressively fight and, sometimes, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fails to follow through. Peg Seminario, director of safety and health at the AFL-CIO, is quoted in the article. 

Read Even After Workplace Deaths, Companies Avoid OSHA Penalties.

It’s a double whammy for low-wage workers when they get hurt or fall ill on the job.

A new policy brief, “Mom’s Off Work ’Cause She Got Hurt: The Economic Impact of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses in the U.S.’s Growing Low-Wage Workforce,” examines the growing problem. 

For the past several years, the Southern California CLEAN Carwash Campaign has raised awareness of the serious exploitation faced by thousands of carwash workers—known as carwasheros—including violations of health and safety laws, wage and hour laws and anti-discrimination laws.

The nation’s flight attendants will gain workplace health and safety protection from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under a proposed new policy announced by OSHA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

While OSHA safety and health standards apply to most of America's workers, airline crews have been under the jurisdiction of the FAA since 1975, when the agency claimed exclusive jurisdiction over workplace safety and health for all crew members when they are on board the aircraft.

Take a good look at that Thanksgiving turkey you pull from the oven, smoker or deep fryer Thursday. If a proposed new rule from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is approved, it may be the last Thanksgiving bird you’ll be sure is free of—if you’re squeamish skip to the next paragraph—tumors, feces, scabs, salmonella and other defects.

The proposed rule would not only allow plant management to increase the speed of poultry processing lines by five times the current limit, it could eliminate the jobs of more than 800 trained federal food safety inspectors and turn many inspection duties over to plant employees.

The school bus drivers and monitors in Burleson and Weatherford, Texas, take their jobs of transporting “precious cargo” seriously—especially when it comes to safety. After recently voting (see video) to join the Transport Workers (TWU), they say their voice about safety can’t be ignored any longer. Says driver Amy Lytle:

We want safe buses to transport these children in. If you’re driving a bus with a bungee-corded door, they‘re OK with that. I’m not OK with that.

In 2011, musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) that forced workers to miss at least one day on the job, accounted for one-third of all workplace injuries that required time off from work. That’s up from 29% in 2010, according to recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

In October, American Crystal Sugar Co.—which has locked out its highly trained 1,300 member workforce since August 2011—has been assessed nearly $50,000 in fines by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for widespread, “high gravity” and “serious” safety violations, including accumulation of combustible dust and failure to lock out equipment during maintenance and repair.

High levels of dangerous and combustible sugar dust was cited in the 2008 Imperial Sugar explosion that killed 14 workers at its Port Wentworth, Ga., refinery.