Or maybe two or three. PERMALINK Posted 9:17 PM by Jordan Here is an article by NYCOSH Chair Bill Henning in the about NY City Councilman and worker advocate James Davis. Here in New York State, violence is the No.
2 cause of workplace fatalities. This is an epidemic that Councilmember Davis was well aware of before becoming a victim of it himself. Ironically, on the day he was murdered, Davis was scheduled to introduce a City Council resolution urging the New York State Labor Department to adopt a set of regulations to protect workers from violence in the workplace.
PERMALINK Posted 12:56 AM by Jordan Vacation!? We don't need no stinkin vacations!
If you're reading this, you're probably not on vacation. And you aren't alone. That's because, according to an article in the Washington Post, "Americans manage to live with the stingiest vacation allotment in the industrialized world -- 8.
1 days after a year on the job, 10.2 days after three years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." And it's getting worse: "We're now logging more hours on the job than we have since the 1920s.
Almost 40 percent of us work more than 50 hours a week." Why is it getting worse? Just a couple of weeks ago, before members of the House of Representatives took off on their month-plus vacations, they opted to pile more work onto American employees by approving the White House's rewrite of wage and hour regulations, which would turn anyone who holds a "position of responsibility" into a salaried employee who can be required to work unlimited overtime for no extra pay.
Vacations are being downsized by the same forces that brought us soaring work weeks: labor cutbacks, a sense of false urgency created by tech tools, fear and, most of all, guilt. Managers use the climate of job insecurity to stall, cancel and abbreviate paid leave, while piling on guilt. The message, overt or implied, is that it would be a burden on the company to take all your vacation days -- or any.
Employees get the hint: One out of five employees say they feel guilty taking their vacation, reports Expedia's survey. In a new poll of 700 companies by ComPsych Corp., a Chicago-based employee assistance provider, 56 percent of workers would be postponing vacations until business improved.
But it doesn't have to be this way: Europe chose the route of legal, protected vacations, while we went the other -- no statutory protection and voluntary paid leave. Now we are the only industrialized nation with no minimum paid-leave law. Europeans get four or five weeks by law and can get another couple of weeks by agreement with employers.
The Japanese have two legally mandated weeks, and even the Chinese get three. Our vacations are solely at the discretion of employers. The lack of legal standing is what makes vacations here feel so illegitimate -- and us so guilty when we try to take one.
And not only have studies found that short vactions are bad for productivity, but they're also bad for your health: The tab paid by business for job stress is $150 billion a year, according to one study. Yet vacations can cure even the worst form of stress -- burnout -- by re-gathering crashed emotional resources, say researchers. But it takes two weeks for this process to occur, says one study, which is why long weekends aren't vacations.
An annual vacation can also cut the risk of heart attack by 30 percent in men and 50 percent in women. You also may have noticed that I'm not on vacation -- and won't be. That's because when you change jobs, you go back to go and start over again.
I left 5 weeks a year of vacation at AFSCME and started over again with two at OSHA. Haven't come close to catching up. So what is to be done?
This is why we need a law that will put an end to the bait and switch of vacation time, as well as leave that's being yanked completely. Legalized paid leave also would end the loss of accrued vacation time for downsized workers in their thirties, forties and fifties, who have to start their paid leave banks over again, as if they were at their very first job. PERMALINK Posted 11:08 PM by Jordan State of the States Susan Madrak at Suburban Guerrilla was probably the kid you always wanted on your team in a treasure hunt because she always finds the good stuff.
Check out this hilarious rant by Bill Maher from the L.A. Times about the Grey Davis recall.
What's going on here in California, if you're lucky enough to not have been following this, is that the economy turned, so we're getting rid of the governor. But what if we drive him out of office and the economy still doesn't get better? I guess we'll have to burn him.
And if that doesn't work, we'll kill his dog. Yes, in baseball when the team stinks, you fire the manager. But you don't fire him because it rains.
And you don't let the opposing team choose a new manager for you. And you don't fire him between innings. And replace him with a Viennese weightlifter.
The Viennese weighlifter, for those of who aren't Terminator fans, is, of course, Arnold Schwarznegger. Which brings me to my favorite line: "Finally, a candidate who can explain the Bush administration's positions on civil liberties in the original German." And then she found this article about Bush's "Let Them Eat Cake" economics by Jonathan Alter: When Al Gore exaggerated the details of his dog’s prescriptions, it helped cost him the presidency.
The very same people who eviscerated him for it are now saying, hey, cut President Bush some slack—he wasn’t lying about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, only exaggerating. This flap won’t hurt Bush in 2004, except to undermine his credibility on other issues. SO WHEN, FOR instance, he says “this nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war,” people might begin to wonder whether he is telling the truth.
They might wonder if the 13 percent state-college tuition hike in Maryland or the $1 billion state-tax increase in Ohio or the state Medicaid crisis now raging from coast to coast might have something to do with priorities in Washington. If Bush loses, it won’t be on yellowcake uranium but on “let them eat cake” economics. A couple of weeks ago, I read an article somewhere about the impact the states' budget problems are having on normal people, but how they haven't connected the dots back to Washington yet.
So in case you're wondering why the states have fallen into such a deep whole and what this has to do with what's going on in D.C., It’s a hole that the states—required by law to balance their budgets—are now being forced to fill.
The tobacco-settlement money is gone; the “rainy day” funds exhausted. Under intense pressure from the governors, Washington ponied up $20 billion in emergency aid, but added tax breaks for corporations that will cost the states billions. The House just passed a plan for health savings accounts that will set the states back another $33 billion if enacted.
And that’s not even counting the monster haunting every governor, every night—”unfunded mandates.” To take just one example that is relevant in school districts across the country: special education. Congress pledged it would pay for 40 percent of the cost; it actually covers 17 percent.
In California alone, where nearly half the budget goes to K-12 education, that’s more than a billion dollars the state has been stiffed on. I’m no Gray Davis fan, but let’s be honest about the facts. While some states have been mismanaged, most are simply contending with rapidly growing numbers of hurting people who need their services.
Those services are now being slashed almost everywhere. Nineteen states—all of them facing sharply increasing demand—will have smaller budgets than last year, not just smaller budget increases. But telling a laid-off mother with three kids that she can’t see a doctor will not be enough.
Governors and state legislatures are taxing everything that moves. Even the most conservative states are doing so. Bob Riley of Alabama, a devout Christian, says raising taxes on the wealthy to help the poor is what the Bible compels.
He’s had enough of so-called religious politicians who turn Christ’s commandments on their head. PERMALINK Posted 12:06 AM by Jordan Lee Clarke, Safety and Health Director of AFSCME District Council 37, went down to City Hall Wednesday intending to watch Councilmember James E. Davis introduce a City Council resolution urging the New York State Labor Department to adopt a set of regulations to protect public employees from violence in the workplace.
"We were working with him on the anti-workplace violence resolution and I wanted to be there when he introduced it" Instead, Clarke watched as Davis was shot and killed in the Council chambers, making him the latest victim in a epidemic of workplace violence affecting public-sector workers in New York State. Public-sector workers of the City of New York continue to be the victims of crime in the workplace, including murder, rape, assault, verbal abuse and harassment,” the resolution said. “Because of hazardous working conditions and the absence of any systematic method for removing these dangers, workers and their families continue to suffer as a result of unnecessary and preventable incidents of violence at work.
” According to a statement released by NYCOSH, the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, “Yesterday’s shooting is a tragic example of what we are working to end,” said William F. Henning, Jr., the chair of NYCOSH’s Board of Directors.
“Public-sector workers and unions are calling for a regulation that would require state and local government employers to establish and adhere to policies, procedures and practices for preventing, reporting, and responding to violence in the workplace.” When the shooting started, the Council chamber was filled with people who were at work, all of whom were in danger of being hurt or killed. I can’t imagine a clearer example of exactly the kind of thing we are trying to prevent.
The councilman grasped the right of people to a safe workplace and he was willing to spearhead the City Council’s effort to ask the state for a standard to protect workers. He will be sorely missed. The resolution was supported by an ad hoc anti-workplace violence coalition of public-sector unions in New York City, including the New York State AFL-CIO, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 37, Public Employees Federation, Civil Service Employees Association, United Federation of Teachers, Transport Workers Union Local 100, Communications Workers of American District 1, Professional Staff Congress, New York State United Teachers, and New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH).
According to the New York Times, investigators said the killing appeared to stem from a simmering political dispute between Councilman Davis of Brooklyn, and the gunman, Othniel Askew who had planned to challenge Mr. Davis this fall for his seat representing central Brooklyn in the Council. Askew was apparently able to slip his gun into City Hall by accompanying the councilman, who did not have to pass through metal detectors, officials said.
Most of this article was taken from a NYCOSH Press Statement. Or maybe two or three.
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