OSHA

From Harvest Public Media:

On the worst day of Greta Horner’s life, she was dressed in a burlap robe, waiting by the window for her husband to come home from work.

The couple was down to one car. The other one was in the shop. She donned the costume for a play, set in Old Jerusalem, later that morning, part of Vacation Bible School at the church. She just needed the car to get there. 

From Harvest Public Media:

The nights were often worse for Gabriel, even after long days working on the production line at a pork slaughterhouse in Nebraska.

He had nightmares that the line – what the workers call “the chain” – was moving so fast, that instead of gutted hogs flying by, there were people.

“You’ve been working there for three hours, four hours, and you’re working so fast and you see the pigs going faster, faster,” he says. 

From Harvest Public Media:

In the first nine months of 2015, workers in meat-packing plants owned by Tyson Foods averaged at least one amputation a month. 

That report was gleaned from a Freedom of Information Act request by Celeste Monforton, a George Washington University occupational health professor.

A Kansas grain cooperative has been fined by the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration for failing safety standards.

The nation’s top safety watchdog lacks the resources or ability to set and enforce rules in a timely manner reports The Washington Post.  In 2012, the Government Accountability office found it takes nearly eight years on average to issue a new rule.  That’s because of the heavy burden of documentation needed to withstand industry lawsuits and a budget that’s declined significantly since 2010.

Case in point is one of the most dangerous jobs in America- meatpacking.  There were over 28,000 reported injuries in 2013, but OSHA says it doesn’t have the resources or ability to set or enforce rules.