St. Gelais said he himself had a very similar accident about ten years ago, and it hasn’t slowed him down. He can serve as a morale booster for the employee, he said.

Editor - I guess this worker should be glad to have a boss like this

There’s something wrong when workers have to choose between keeping a job and taking care of themselves or their families when someone gets sick. There’s something wrong when going to a routine medical appointment or other preventative care could result in a pink slip. There’s something wrong when a domestic-violence survivor seeking help or services is punished with the loss of her job.

The California Senate approved creating a government-run health care system for the nation's most populous state on Thursday, ignoring a veto threat from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Supporters said it is time for state legislatures to take up the debate as the Obama Administration's national health care proposal falters in Congress.

Thus, Massachusetts was the worst state in which to test the wider public’s feelings about national health-care reform. Polls showed people in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, unhappy with the legislation in Washington. But those numbers include many who thought the reforms too weak or were simply disgusted by the legislative sausage-making. And whether these proposals were better than nothing is a meaningless question to people who already have something.

AS A cancer patient, I have been watching the debate in Washington around health care reform with great interest. I am dismayed at the threat of 41 senators holding the nation hostage and blocking needed reform. But I am even more dismayed at the willingness of the Democratic leadership to bow to this small group.

In a significant victory for unions, the 40 percent excise tax would not apply to policies covering workers in collective bargaining agreements, state and local workers, and members of voluntary employee benefit associations through Dec. 31, 2017.

Labor leaders are pushing hard on President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats to drop a proposed new tax on high-value health insurance plans, warning of political consequences.

Safety doesn’t come cheap.  It costs money to establish and maintain a safe workplace, which is why union shops have better safety records than non-union shops (e.g., approximately 90% of mining accidents occur in non-union mines).

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined a Pembroke construction company $55,200 for allowing a worker into a trench that was at risk of caving in.

President Barack Obama signaled to House Democratic leaders Wednesday that they'll have to drop their opposition to taxing high-end health insurance plans to pay for health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.

LINCOLN, R.I. -- Police on Tuesday said that a worker was injured in an industrial accident at a construction site on the property of the Calise & Sons Bakery, Quality Drive.

The victim, 50, suffered an apparently serious leg injury around 8 a.m., police said. He was taken to Rhode Island Hospital. Police did not immediately identify him.

Police said that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration would investigate.

Two construction workers were hurt Wednesday morning in a wall collapse at a new housing development in Rehoboth.

 

OSHA has agreed to interview workers directly when auditing employer-provided injury data, and to minimize any delay between when employers report injuries and audits occur. Improvements in workplace safety would be greater if both companies and their employees would come forward with injury information more reliably - and not wait for OSHA to correct unsafe conditions. 

An employee of a local trucking company was killed in an apparent accident when he was pinned between a forklift and cement pole.

The unions have few illusions that the public option will be restored in the House-Senate conference committee, but they are working to promote the chief funding mechanism in the House bill (a tax hike on individuals with incomes over $500,000 and couples with incomes over $1 million) over that in the Senate bill (a tax that, to start, will fall on health insurance policies that cost more than $23,000 for a family of four). With medical costs unchecked by a public option and drug reimportation, they fear that the value of their members' policies will rise above the threshold by the middle of the next decade.

This week the sincere effort of millions of people across the nation once
again proved effective in the face of determined opposition from the White
House and Congress, as single payer health reform reached another
milestone in its historic journey.

The nation's largest union group said Thursday that it will not support the Democratic health-care bill unless "substantial changes" are made to the current Senate version.

Celia Wcislo, who works for a union that includes most of the employees at Cape Cod and Falmouth hospitals, fears that Congress will pay for health reform with a tax on insurance plans that will hurt individuals already financially stressed by rising premiums.

Indeed, by early Monday evening, the AP reports, Senate Democrats appeared to be moving away from the Medicare compromise, which may  be the last vestige of reform left for progressive activists to hold on to. Yet Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) declared Monday on MSNBC, "We're going to keep fighting to make it better." He added, "It's a good bill, but not a great bill."

The bill "is a fiscally responsible bill that will cover 96 percent of Americans, end insurance company discrimination and denials of care and equip health care providers with the tools they need to lower costs for families and the country as a whole,"  AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. "The bill...does not attempt to finance reform on the backs of the working middle class... But we still have a long way to go."

Question: How do you get away with murder?

Answer: Hire your victim.

Sixteen workers are killed a day in the United States because of reckless negligence on the part of their employers. Under existing laws, these employers get a slap on the wrist, or walk away scot-free. Meanwhile, workers who blow the whistle face threats and retaliation at the workplace.

Sign the Petition

Hospital executives and the state’s biggest nurses union resumed their ongoing battle over legislation that would require the state to set minimum nurse-patient staffing ratios.

Workers at many retailers and restaurants say their employers’ policies discourage them from calling in sick. At Wal-Mart, when employees miss one or more days because of illness or other reasons, they generally get a demerit point. Once employees obtain four points over a six-month period, they begin receiving warnings that can lead to dismissal.

Debora Spano, director of public relations for UnitedHealthcare, told Darling that they couldn't find his file. She also said that the company officers the protesters wanted to speak with were not available.

The public option lives.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Monday that the bill he will bring to the Senate floor will include a public health insurance option that individual states could decline to participate in.

Associated Press

Al Franken, like many Americans, is sick and tired of listening to conservatives throw up strawman arguments about health care reform intended to scare Americans into accepting 47 million uninsured fellow citizens, increasing out-of-pocket costs and skyrocketing personal bankruptcies due to health care costs--all the while decrying "socialized" medicine.

Below, he schools Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute--which until recently employed disgraced health care "analyst" and serial liar Betsy McCaughey--on how people in other "socialized" countries don't go bankrupt trying to stay alive.

 

In 2001, Evelyn Coke was in a car accident. When a lawyer she consulted looked at her pay stubs, he discovered that she had never been paid overtime, despite working back-to-back shifts, and he urged her to sue. The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, but in 2007 the court ruled that it was up to the Department of Labor how broadly to apply protections of the law.

It is certainly reasonable — if also cruel and selfish — for true conservatives to oppose health reform if they do not believe that access to health care is a fundamental right and that people who cannot afford to pay their own way should be left untreated.

But Zeese said that the politicians won’t make the difference.

“The truth is — they are not the ones who count,” Zeese said. “It wasn’t LBJ who brought civil rights to the United States. It was organized people being persistent in their demands. It was not Woodrow Wilson who gave women the right to vote. It was women demanding the right to vote that gave them the right to vote. And it will not be President Obama that gives us single payer health care. It will be us that gives us single payer health care.”

In every other advanced industrial nation, the contentious issue of who pays for medical care was taken off the bargaining table long ago. And no worker would ever lose his or her life defending job-based private health insurance.