Unions

Washington — A companion bill to the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act (H.R. 1195), passed by the House in April 2021, has been introduced in the Senate.

Washington — “The nation must renew its commitment to protecting workers from job injury, disease and death, and make this a high priority,” the AFL-CIO says in its annual report on the state of safety and health protections for U.S. workers.

Washington — The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on April 4 heard oral arguments on why it should order OSHA to issue a permanent standard on COVID-19 for the health care industry.

Silver Spring, MD — Claiming the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is “once again responding to political pressures from those desperate to remove any safety protocols during this deadly pandemic that is still causing unacceptable numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths every day,” the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses is calling on the agency to reverse its most recent COVID-19 guidance.

Washington — The AFL-CIO and National Nurses United are part of a coalition of labor unions and organizations that has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Labor and OSHA, petitioning a federal court to direct the agency to issue a permanent standard on COVID-19 focused on health care workers.

Silver Spring, MD — The nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses is urging Congress to pass pending legislation that would “end the industry-created nurse staffing crisis” by setting mandated staffing levels in hospitals, as well as take other actions that would improve working conditions for nurses.

La Grange, IL — Unionized construction worksites may be nearly a fifth less likely to incur OSHA health and safety violations than their nonunionized counterparts, with positive effects on safety even more prevalent in the Midwest, a recent report shows.

Washington — Longtime AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka died from a reported heart attack Aug. 5. He was 72.

Silver Spring, MD — The nation’s largest union and professional association of direct care registered nurses is urging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to update agency guidance and reinstate the “recommendation to everyone to wear masks in public or in physical proximity to others outside their own household.”

Washington — The full extent of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on the nation’s workforce will likely remain unclear because of the lack of a comprehensive national system to gather such information, according to the AFL-CIO’s annual report on the state of safety and health protections for U.S. workers.