Louisiana roofing company faces fines
- A roofing contractor in Baton Rouge, La., that previously received citations from OSHA is facing more fines after an investigation into a 22-year-old worker’s deadly fall.
- Inspectors with OSHA determined that Premier South Roofing LLC exposed six employees to fall hazards by failing to ensure required fall protection.
- Workers were repairing and replacing a roof in Baton Rouge when one of the roofers lost their footing, stepped on, and fell about 30 feet through a skylight.
- The worker succumbed to their injuries later at a hospital and the company faces nearly $250,000 in penalties.
OSHA continues probe of Amazon
- OSHA investigators visited Amazon sites near Albany, New York, Denver and Boise, Idaho as a probe into workplace safety at those sites continues to expand
- The inspections are part of an ongoing probe launched last month by OSHA and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
- The investigation revolves around potential workplace safety hazards at Amazon warehouses nationwide and possible fraudulent conduct designed to hide injuries from OSHA and other regulators.
- OSHA inspectors have focused on Amazon’s injury and illness recordkeeping, ergonomics program and Power Industrial Truck operations.
Compensation costs for private industry workers increased
- Compensation costs for private industry workers increased 5.5% from June 2021 to June 2022.
- Wages and salaries rose 5.7% over this period, while the costs of benefits increased 5.3%. For state and local government workers, compensation costs increased 3.4% from June 2021 to June 2022.
- For the year ended June 2022, increases occurred in wages and salaries for trade, transportation, and utilities (6.6 percent), professional and business services (5.4 percent), and education and health services (5.7 percent).
- From June 2021 to June 2022, wages and salaries for private industry workers rose 8.2 percent in leisure and hospitality, down from 9.0 percent for the year ended in March 2022.
Job openings fall
- American employers posted fewer job openings in June as the economy contends with raging inflation and rising interest rates.
- Job openings fell to a still-high 10.7 million in June from 11.3 million in May, the Labor Department.
- Job openings, which never exceeded 8 million in a month before last year, had topped 11 million every month from December through May before dipping in June.
- The Labor Department said that the number of Americans quitting their jobs fell slightly but remained high at 4.2 million in June while layoffs fell to 1.3 million from 1.4 million in May.