The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
recently proposed a long-overdue change in silica dust regulations. The permissible exposure limit for silica dust has not been changed since 1971; if the proposed rule is adopted, it would drop to 50 micrograms of respirable crystalline silica per cubic meter of air from current PELs of up to 250 micrograms, among other changes.
The usual suspects whine that this will stifle business, blah blah blah,
But extensive peer-reviewed risk assessments show that workers are at risk for silicosis and lung cancer from exposure to silica even at levels under the 100 microgram exposure limit, OSHA chief David Michaels said in an Aug. 23 conference call with reporters.
“It's absolutely necessary to go below the current PEL,” Michaels said.
OSHA has estimated that the proposed rule would save nearly 700 lives per year and prevent 1,600 new cases of silicosis per year.
There's a 90-day window for the public to submit written comments on the rule, to be followed by hearings, and of course the Associated Builders and Contractors, among other industry lobby groups, are
gearing up to oppose it. Profit before human life, always, with those guys.
Continue reading below the fold for more labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- Hey, it's me! I talked to Sarah Jaffe and Josh Eidelson at their Belabored podcast. Also they talk about fast food and port trucker strikes, Walmart, and the proposed silica dust rule discussed in this post.
- American Crystal Sugar (remember, the company that locked out its workers to get rid of the "tumor" of a union contract) has been hit with 26 OSHA violations, 22 of them serious. Naturally, the company is contesting some of them. I mean, rules shouldn't apply to big evil companies, right?
- Unpaid internships must be destroyed.
- Andrew Elrod has a great piece about how workers at a New York City Victoria's Secret store won a wage increase—and what they didn't win.
- Sarah Jaffe thinks tipping is bad, but 'no tips' might be worse:
Many questions remain. Will restaurants that voluntarily forego tipping still manage to dodge minimum wage laws? What are these restaurants that don't accept tips actually paying servers, and how are they calculating whether those wages are consistent with what servers made before? What happens to servers at less fancy restaurants, where diners, as Wells mentions, are less likely to accept service charges or price increases, and where, as Jayaraman has pointed out, servers barely scrape by anyway?
- If you saw Hanna Rosin's piece arguing that the wage gap is much smaller than the frequently quoted "women make 77 cents for every dollar men make" if you ignore various kinds of discrimination more subtle than two people in the exact same job being paid different amounts, well, YOU SHOULDN'T IGNORE THAT STUFF. Duh.
- Baltimore elected officials are pressing state elected officials to raise Maryland's minimum wage.
- Workers are getting $8 million in back wages because of prevailing wage violations on the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel.
- Yep, this is definitely a way to quit that's going to draw some attention.
- Life expectancy for white women who don't graduate high school:
... has declined dramatically over the past 18 years. These women can now expect to die five years earlier than the generation before them. It is an unheard-of drop for a wealthy country in the age of modern medicine. Throughout history, technological and scientific innovation have put death off longer and longer, but the benefits of those advances have not been shared equally, especially across the race and class divides that characterize 21st--century America. Lack of access to education, medical care, good wages, and healthy food isn’t just leaving the worst-off Americans behind. It’s killing them.
- When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tweeted about Labor Day, let's say he got a few responses.
Education
- Princeton University sociology professor Mitch Duneier is one of the big names in MOOCs—massive open online courses. (Also, incidentally, a member of my PhD committee.) But while he still loves MOOCs, he's developed some concerns:
Mr. Duneier has now ceased teaching his sociology MOOC. The change of heart happened, he says, after Coursera approached him about licensing his course so other colleges could use the content in a blended format, meaning a mix of online and face-to-face instruction. That could save the colleges money.
"I've said no, because I think that it's an excuse for state legislatures to cut funding to state universities," Mr. Duneier says. "And I guess that I'm really uncomfortable being part of a movement that's going to get its revenue in that way. And I also have serious doubts about whether or not using a course like mine in that way would be pedagogically effective."
- Balloon Juice's mistermix looks at a few of the mysteries of teacher evaluation in Rochester.