fabolousstylez

July�s been a bit busy � lots of traveling for work � but I wanted to post about the settlement agreement between the United States Postal Service (USPS) and OSHA in July . Thanks to Fierce Government for the initial information and link to the settlement document. USPS received seven willful violations for a facility in Providence, RI, but the remainder of the violations from inspections over the last few years at 42 facilities were re-classified as part of the settlement agreement from �willful� to �serious.� USPS has entered into an �enterprise-wide� compliance agreement with OSHA regarding its electrical safety work practices and written programs. As part of the settlement agreement, USPS was provided with a Training Implementation Plan and required to develop a new and improved Electrical Work Plan (EWP). According to the settlement document, published on the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) webpage , �No employee shall be permitted to perform unsupervised electrical work u...

Dear Aflac � I stumbled upon this advertisement on Thursday in a business magazine, and it caused me to become confused. My first thought was � Aflac doesn�t do worker�s compensation! � and my second thought was � I need to fix this advertisement. � I immediately went to your Aflac.com/business website as the advertisement instructed me to. There I learned that no, you don�t provide worker�s compensation, but yes, you do provide voluntary insurance to cover accidental injury that happens off-the-job. Reads: "When your star employee gets hurt, Aflac will see him through." Okay, also, why do you assume that the "star employee" is a male? Grrrr. Hear my inner feminist roar.  Then I decided to learn more about your services (out of curiosity) and discovered your �AFLAC WorkForces Report � Executive Summary� from March 2012. I liked what you had to say about the state of the U.S. workforce and am paraphrasing or quoting pieces below. Businesses need to recognize �the re...

I'm a sucker for cartoons, that's no secret, so I liked the presentation of this video from the Mental Health Commission of Canada about workplace health and safety. At the end of the video, they challenge you to "Lead the Way. Start Today." Be a champion for workplace mental health and safety - Mental Health Commission of Canada. My key take-aways from the video are: People *usually* spend more waking hours at work than anywhere else. Positive mental health benefits everyone. Canada has a voluntary standard on " Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace ." Here's what workplaces can do to improve the overall psychological health and safety of their workers (therefore making work a more pleasant place to be), adapted from the video above and from the voluntary standard. Review the standard and commit to it as an organization. Identify a CHAMPION for your workplace, who will take charge of your company's commitment (in the video, this person ...

There's so much media attention on this story, but it's close to my home, so I feel the need to post about it. Please do what you can to help. A fire started in Yarnell Hill this weekend (south of Prescott). ABC15 did a great job of distilling the facts , which I have copy/pasted below from their article with minor edits. FIRE START DATE:  June 28, 2013 at 4:30 p.m.  LOCATION:  West of State Route 89 between Yarnell and Peeples Valley. SIZE:  Approximately 8,400 acres (as of 15 minutes ago) CAUSE:  Lightning NUMBER OF RESOURCES:  400 RESOURCES:  18 engines, 18 fire crews, 8 support water tenders, 2 crash/rescue vehicles, 2 structure protection vehicles, and 4 bull-dozers. On order are more 20-person hotshot crews, type 2 hand crews and other firefighting personnel and equipment. LOSS:  An estimated 200 homes and other structures have burned in Yarnell. CONTAINMENT:  0% INJURIES:   1 FATALITIES:  19 - A fire crew had to deploy t...