Bookstore Workers Focus on Safety Factors

Workers at three New York Barnes & Noble bookstores have negotiated safety provisions into their recently approved contract.
Workers now will have access to back braces, wrist guards, and anti-slip mats for the café area.
There will also be stools at every bookstore information desk and cash register for workers to be seated if they choose.
Workers will now have a safety committee, de-escalation trainings, and “a clear process of banning customers who harass or behave inappropriately towards workers.”
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The City of Baltimore was charged last week with a single safety violation, with no financial penalty, in the Maryland Occupational Safety & Health (MOSH) agency’s probe of a sanitation worker’s death following a shift in last August’s sweltering heat.
“The employer did not furnish employment and a place of employment which were free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees in that employees were exposed to excessive heat,” said the citation notice, issued March 7 by the state agency.
Maryland’s workplace heat standard, which mandates specific protections at certain temperatures among other provisions, didn’t go into effect until eight weeks after the incident.
“Baltimore could have been cited for every part of the standard that the city was in violation of,” explained Jordan Barab, who served as a deputy assistant secretary at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) between 2009 and 2017.
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Benchmark Gensuite has been granted a new patent for its Potentially Serious Incident AI Advisor.
The technology utilizes advanced natural language processing and AI to automatically extract, elevate, and summarize key details from incident reports and safety observations, to enable health and safety teams to mitigate risks and prevent serious injuries and fatalities, according to the announcement.
“The identification and classification of SIFs can be a slow, manual process requiring extensive precursor tracing,” said lead inventor and Chief Customer Officer Natasha Porter. “It realizes the AI promise of breaking down large, complex EHS data streams and delivering critical, actionable insights.”
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