Private businesses and vaccination requirements
- A man was offered a job but the offer came with a COVID vaccine requirement he doesn’t want the inoculation and questioned the legality of the stipulation.
- Attorney Daniel A. Gwinn said an OSHA rule that would have required all businesses with at least 100 employees to mandate COVID vaccinations for their workers never went into effect after a Supreme Court ruling.
- That Supreme Court ruling, however, only applied to the federal government to force workers to get the vaccine and it had no effect on private businesses to require employees to get vaccinated.
- Private businesses can pretty much create any work requirement they want within legal limits
Worker killed in an industrial accident
- A Providence, R.I., man was killed in an industrial accident at Tiverton Materials after he fell into the machine and was pulled out by his co-workers.
- The man was identified as 29-year-old Selvin Martin Ovanda Gamez of Providence.
- Police said he fell into the machine while attempting to loosen material that got stuck.
- When Tiverton police and fire personnel arrived, Gamez was out of the machine, but he was unresponsive and OSHA is investigating the incident.
Identifying hazards with nanomaterials
- The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health identified the potential for exposure to engineered nanomaterials in the workplace.
- To combat exposure, NIOSH recommended collecting basic workplace information for materials used, and other indicators of potential exposure.
- The agency also said firms should design and implement a sampling plan with direct reading instruments, and engineering controls evaluation;
- There should also be a risk assessment to evaluate background and engineering controls data; use the hierarchy of controls to develop mitigation strategies for exposure potential.
OSHA employee pleads guilty to extortion
- A New Jersey man who worked as a federal labor inspector has admitted to plotting with his brother to scam three construction companies out of about $14,000 in cash.
- Alvaro Idrovo, 46, of Bloomfield, N.J. pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. and extortion while employed by OSHA.
- He and his brother, Paul Idrovo, were both arrested and charged in September 2020, stemming from incidents in Essex, Bergen, Hudson, and Morris Counties.
- Alvaro Idrovo was an OSHA compliance safety and health officer when he lied to contractors about missing some type of safety certification, such as ladder and fall protection safety training, in one instance.