Heading into the final weekend of getting out the vote before the mid-terms, advocates of workplace safety are raising alarms about the prospect of even more deaths and injuries on the job if the Republicans gain control of either the House or Senate. That’s because OSHA and other, still-underfunded workplace protections will become Republican and corporate targets. Ironically, though, amid all the misery spawned by the recession, there is one silver lining that has emerged, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics: a sharp drop in workplace injuries and deaths due to accidents. As the BLS dryly noted when it first reported this phenomenon in August, Economic factors played a major role in the fatal work injury decrease in
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by T.J. Ortenzi on April 2, 2010
Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.
Excerpt from:
Unpaid Internships Investigated: ‘Mostly Drudgery’ Means Employers Must Usually Pay, Say Regulators
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