space shuttle, space: 2005_06_01_spewingforth

PERMALINK Posted 11:19 PM by Jordan

Water, Water Everywhere, And Don't You Dare Drink A Drop!

It's not like there aren't real hazards in hospitals: cancer-causing

sterilents like ethylene oxide and formaldehyde, cancer-causing

anticancer drugs, communicable diseases, contaminated syringes and

sharps. And then, of course, there are the back injuries from lifting

patients and violence from patients and their families. And it's not

like hospitals have been particularly cooperative in advocating for

prevention: fighting the bloodborne pathogens standard, the ergonomics

standard, the tuberculosis standard, and currently fighting annual fit

testing for health care workers who have to wear respirators to

prevent exposure to tuberculosis.

But put a bottle of drinking water on your desk, and suddenly they're

very concerned about their employees' safety.

Water, water, everywhere - except on the desks of the city's

biggest employer.

Supervisors at UMass Memorial Medical Center are being deluged with

the fallout of a newly enforced policy that bans food or beverages,

including bottled water, from the work areas of employees who have

any contact with patients. Coupled with a recent crackdown on

personal pictures and drawings in workstations, the policy has

drawn the ire of everyone from dietitians to doctors.

"Please provide me with a rationale for this policy, which I find

inhumane, unnecessary and terrible for morale," wrote Dr. Michael

J. Thompson, associate professor of medicine and director of the

diabetes clinic, in an e-mail last week to administrators.

The hospital says its because of Joint Commission for the

Accreditation of Hospitals standards, but JCAHO says they don't have

such a standard. Well, it's not really a JCAHO rule, but JCAHO has a

rule that says that hospitals have to follow their own policies and

the hospital has a policy that employees can't have water on their

desks, so they'd be in violation of a JCAHO rule if they didn't

enforce their own stupid policy. Then they say it's because of an OSHA

regulation that's "designed to protect the staff from contracting an

illness or infection from patients". But the bloodborne pathogens

standard is the only communicable disease regulation that OSHA has and

the last I heard you can't get AIDS or hepatitis B from the water

bottle on your desk. Then there's OSHA's laboratory standard that

prohibits eating around lab specimens and toxic chemicals, but doesn't

say anything about workers' cubicles.

Curiouser and curiouser.

PERMALINK Posted 11:16 PM by Jordan

Florida Farmworkers Continue To Suffer Behind Window Dressing Regulations

Last May, Florida Governor Jeb Bush passed the Alfredo Bahena law

designed to clamp down on abuses of Florida farmworkers. Passage of

the law followed a 2003 Miami Herald series called Fields of Dispair.

But things don't seem to have gotten much better. In fact, Lisa

Butler, a Florida Rural Legal Services lawyer has had to file a

lawsuit aginst Hastings' Byrnes Farms and its Crescent City

contractor, Sinclair T. Smith, who provided laborers to pack and grade

the farmer's cabbage and potatoes.

Among the allegations: Smith unlawfully charged workers 100 percent

interest on wage advances, housed them in a camp with broken

toilets and a defective fire exit, lacked proper licenses to house

and transport them, understated their hours worked, forced an

injured laborer to continue working, and battered and threatened

others into staying.

The problem with the law, advocates claim is that it "puts the focus

on contractors who hire the laborers, not the growers who own the

land."

"The truth of the matter is that the state law is flawed very

badly,'' said Gregory Schell, a lawyer with Florida Legal Services

in Lake Worth who has tangled with the industry for decades.

"What happens when they take their license? The wife, brother,

father, whatever takes the license and the job goes on without any

real change."

He and other advocates say the state law should mirror federal law,

which can hold both the grower and the labor contractor liable for

abuses.

"It's like arresting all the street-level drug dealers doesn't end

the drug problem. You have to arrest the kingpin," Schell said.

"The grower has to tell the crew leader to stop."

Kristen Ploska [the Department of Business and Professional

Regulation] said her state agency "doesn't have any statutory

authority over the growers," but added: "When a farm labor

contractor is fined thousands and thousands of dollars, which the

law allows us to do, I think it hurts the grower as well."

Farmworker advocates aren't so sure:

"From where we're sitting, I have not seen any change in behavior

because of that law," said Lisa Butler.... driving through North

Florida farm country this month to visit housing camps and inform

workers of their rights. "Whatever sweeps they did had little or no

impact, long-term."

So why is the law so weak?

Laborers who toil in North Florida's camps are one sliver of the

state's second biggest industry, after tourism. More than 200,000

do the seasonal work, with about 4,000 licensed farm contractors.

The state's crops carry a $60 billion economic impact, and the

companies behind it are big political players.

Worker advocates say the connection between growers and politicians

is one reason that reforms have only begun to tame the abuses.

Meanwhile, farm laborers continue to suffer through third world

working conditions.

And the struggle continues.

space shuttle, space

Sunday, 10 February 2008

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