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Safety and Health
US Department of Labor's OSHA proposes $354,000 in fines against recidivist Massachusetts contractor
07/21/2011 - 4:16pm
GSMLC
A Hyde Park contractor with a long history of violating workplace safety standards faces a total of $354,000 in new proposed fines from the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, chiefly for exposing its employees to cave-in hazards at work sites in Cambridge and Framingham. Since 2000, P. Gioioso & Sons Inc., which is primarily engaged in the construction of underground water and sewer mains, had been cited seven times for repeat violations of OSHA's trenching and excavation safety standards prior to the citations resulting from these most recent inspections.
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07/18/2011 - 4:59pm
Commonwealth Magazine
Paul Toner, President of the Massachusetts Teachers Asscoation, writes, "Stephen Eide's argument for switching public employees in Massachusetts from a defined benefit pension system to a defined contribution system (“Time for Real Pension Reform,” July 5, 2011) ignores one major impediment: Doing so would cost the taxpayers of Massachusetts hundreds of millions of dollars a year without improving the benefits provided to retirees."
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06/21/2011 - 4:04pm
Boston Globe
"Our members have suffered broken backs, broken noses, concussions, spinal injuries, post-traumatic stress disorders and much more," said Jim Durkin, legislative agent for a union representing employees of the Department of Youth Services. "I don't want to wake up one day, turn on the morning news and find out one of them was murdered," Durkin told a legislative committee.
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06/20/2011 - 2:08pm
Boston Herald
This week, Massachusetts lawmakers are poised to consider a bill that would make it mandatory for DYS to report serious assaults to local district attorneys for possible prosecution. A public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
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06/07/2011 - 5:58am
The Patriot Ledger
A 41-year-old steelworker was flown to a Boston hospital after falling 30 feet at the site of the Rockland High School expansion project Monday afternoon. As he awaited the arrival of personnel from the federal Occupational Safety Health Administration, Rockland Fire Chief Scott Duffey said firefighters went to the site after receiving a 911 call.
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05/20/2011 - 3:24am
MassLive.com
Advanced Tree Service of Springfield did not protect its employees from failing off the nearly 30-foot high roof through such systems as guard rails or personal fall arrest devices or implement any kind of safety training for workers on how to protect themselves from falls.
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05/18/2011 - 9:23am
IBEW Local 96 News
A steelworker plunged about 20 feet on the site of the new Grafton High School this morning and was sent to UMass Memorial Medical Center with serious injuries.
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05/18/2011 - 8:45am
GSMLC
A 73-year-old Winthrop shipyard worker was killed Monday morning when a 3,500-pound winch broke free of its concrete footings and collapsed onto the man, authorities said yesterday.
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05/17/2011 - 11:52am
Taunton Daily Gazette
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Monday it found nine “serious” violations of workplace safety by Folan Waterproofing and Construction that could have caused “death or serious physical harm” to workers at the Lowell site.
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05/02/2011 - 6:56pm
MassLive.com
The men appeared to have suffered broken bones, but their conditions did not appear to be life-threatening.
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04/30/2011 - 6:22pm
CBS 3 Springfield
"How could this happen with a young man strapped into a fork lift 30 feet up in the air?" says Ronald Tyson. Tyson's 24-year old son Rick died in August while operating a fork lift at the Yankee Candle Factory in Deerfield. Months later Tyson says he's still searching for answers into why his son died and just wants to make sure this accident never happens again.
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04/30/2011 - 6:17pm
MassLive.com
Lisa Ziegert, 24, was kidnapped from her job at an Agawam gift shop in April 1992 and murdered. The crime was never solved. "That's a fact I must face anew every day," Dee Ziegert said Friday at a Workers Memorial Day observance sponsored by the Western Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health.
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04/30/2011 - 12:22am
Open Media Boston
Over 200 union members, allies, and family members representing the 47 Massachusetts workers who died on the job over the last year gathered in front of the Mass. State House yesterday to commemorate Workers' Memorial Day. Many attendees carried placards that read “Mourn for the Dead, Fight for the Living” - paraphrasing the early 20th century labor leader Mother Jones.
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04/29/2011 - 12:08am
Milford Daily News
About 100 family members, workers and other supporters attended the rally, which was organized by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health. The agencies recently released a report documenting on-the-job deaths in the state in the past year and unsafe working conditions.
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04/29/2011 - 12:02am
Boston Herald
Kimberly Flynn stood on the steps of the State House with other families who lost loved ones on the job last year asking the Legislature to protect workers from needless deaths.
“I made a promise at my daughter’s wake to make sure another mother doesn’t get a call from the State Police saying their child has been murdered at work,” said Flynn, whose daughter Stephanie Moulton was killed in January at a Revere mental health residential facility where her accused killer was a client.
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04/28/2011 - 8:26am
Boston Globe
Hispanic workers, a growing population in Massachusetts and the nation, experience workplace deaths at a much higher rate then that of white, non-Hispanic workers. In 2010, 3.5 Hispanic workers died on the job per 100,000 versus 1.2 deaths per 100,000 for white, non-Hispanic workers, the two organizations said.
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04/27/2011 - 5:08pm
Massachusetts AFL-CIO | Feed
September 14, 2010 would be Gregory Vilidnitsky’s last day on the job. That evening, a red pickup truck struck the civil engineer as he inspected a roadway repaving project on Rt. 9 in Framingham, killing him almost instantly. The truck was traveling at such a high rate of speed that the impact knocked Vilidnitsky out of his work boots – a grizzly discovery when he was found a short time later by his co-workers. He would have turned 58 the next day.
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04/27/2011 - 12:04am
MetroWest Daily News
Gregory Vilidnitsky will be memorialized at the Worker Memorial Day commemoration and rally from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in front of the State House. Tomorrow's event is sponsored by the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Greater Boston Labor Council.
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04/22/2011 - 9:12am
While teen workplace injuries in Massachusetts have declined somewhat over the past decade, they still remain a major problem, according to a report released yesterday by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
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04/14/2011 - 2:00am
Boston Globe
In light of a recent assault on an MBTA worker, John Lee writes, ",The priority of Local 589 is to protect the safety of our members. Any assault whether it be physical or verbal against an MBTA employee, while in the performance of their duties, not only threatens the safety of the worker, but that of the riding public as well. To that end it is our intention to file legislation that will strengthen the laws as they relate to assaults on our members and MBTA employees.”
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