All posts by Kit Case

Port of Seattle

2016 Seattle Maritime 101 Events – Celebrating our Five-star Working Waterfront

Don’t miss the boat at Seattle’s largest maritime industry celebration presented by Vigor Industrial and sponsored by the Seattle Propeller Club and the Port of Seattle.

Join the fun activities at the 2016 Vigor Seattle Maritime Festival event series. These free, family-oriented events are designed to showcase and celebrate the maritime industry and the men and women who make everything on the waterfront happen. Shipping, fishing, boatbuilding and repair are all happening in our backyard. Come participate and learn.

Special events, public tours and other activities are planned during April and May with the highlight being the Vigor Seattle Maritime Festival from May 12-14, with the Harbor Open House on the Downtown Waterfront on Saturday, May 14. The full schedule can be found here.

April 16
Duwamish Alive! Restoration and Cleanup, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Join us as we celebrate Seattle’s only river by working to restore the Duwamish! Volunteers can sign up: www.duwamishalive.org

April 22-26
Clipper Round the World Yacht Race Comes to Seattle

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, which benefits Unicef, is the world’s longest ocean adventure, spanning 40,000 nautical miles. The race consists of 12 teams competing against each other. Don’t miss the free open-boat tours at Bell Harbor Marina. Sponsored by Visit Seattle and the Seattle Sports Commission, in partnership with the Port of Seattle and the Seattle Historic Waterfront Association. Details at www.clipperraceseattle2016.org

May 6
Fishermen’s Terminal Walking Tour, 10 -11 a.m.

The Port of Seattle offers a free walking tour of Fishermen’s Terminal. Limited to 40 people. Reservations required. RSVP: portregistration@portseattle.org.

May 9
18th Annual Maritime Career Day, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. Georgetown Campus of South Seattle Community College, 6737 Corson Avenue South

Come meet with representatives from more than 35 businesses, maritime organizations and training schools! Enjoy cool demonstrations and industry displays. Career day is primarily targeted toward middle school and older students, as well as adults interested in a new job or career. Maritime Career Day is sponsored by Harley Marine Service with Compass Courses. For further information: info@seattlemaritime101.com.

May 12
Stories of the Sea, 7 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Highliner Public House, Fishermen’s Terminal, 3909 18th Avenue West

Maritime Poetry and Music Slam!!! Share your story of the sea, be it true or imagined. Event limited to 15 performers. To register: info@SeattleMartime101.com. Register to perform or just come and enjoy the fun!

May 13
Shilshole Bay Marina Walking Tour, 10 – 11 a.m.

Take an insider’s walking tour of Shilshole Bay Marina. Limited to 40 people. Registration required. Specify Shilshole Bay Marina Tour. RSVP: portregistration@portseattle.org

May 14
Vigor Seattle Maritime Festival Harbor Open House, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Pier 66 and Downtown Waterfront

Three free harbor tours, Waterfront Chowder Cook-Off, vessel open house at Bell Street Pier, Vigor Welding Booth, government and military displays, face painting, survival suit demonstrations, Center for Wooden Boats kids’ boat building, and other activities.

The free harbor tours are presented by the Port of Seattle. Learn about the Working Waterfront as we cruise Elliott Bay. Board the vessel at Pier 66 one-half hour prior to each departure for a 1 hour tour. Departures are 11:30am, 1pm and 2:30pm. There is a limit of 200 guests for each tour. Limit of four tickets per adult. Details here.

 Photo credit: …-Wink-… via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Worker Safety

Space Needle Construction Photos Released

Seattle Times staff reporter  Erik Lacitis writes that a previously undisplayed collection of 2,400 photos documenting the building of the Space Needle is now available to the public. Just go to the Seattle Public Library’sGeorge Gulacsik Space Needle Photograph Collection to view them.  An exhibit at the Space Needle itself includes photos from the collection and other material about building the structure. It’s included in tickets to the observation deck. The collection includes the early drawings of the Space Needle as it went through various artistic renditions.

Despite the danger, there were no bad mishaps during the building of the Space Needle and it received a state award for no days lost to injury.

Gulacsik, who died in 2010, was a graphic artist and industrial photographer contracted by John Graham & Co., architects for the project. Week in and week out, Gulacsik would take the legendary Leica DRP 35-mm camera he owned and drive to where the Space Needle was being built.

He began taking his historic pictures in April 1961 as the giant 30-foot-deep hole for the foundation was being dug. He ended in January 1962 as the workers spray-painted “Galaxy Gold” on the roof, getting it ready for the Seattle World’s Fair that would open three months later.

Read Lacitis’s full article for a close look at the working conditions and workers’ stories of the building of the Space Needle.

Worker Safety

Port of Bellingham Ordered to Pay Injured Ferry Worker

Seattle Times staff reporter Mike Carter writes that the Port of Bellingham has been ordered to pay $16M in damages to an Alaska Ferries employee injured in 2012.

The verdict was returned Friday, April 1st, after a nine-day trial before U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman. Jim Jacobsen, one of the attorneys representing the employee, Shannon Adamson, and her husband, Nicholas, of Juneau, said the eight-member jury deliberated about five hours before deciding the case.

The jury found the port negligent for failing to fix a control panel that operated the passenger gangway ramp at the Bellingham Cruise Terminal, even though evidence at the trial showed the port knew the panel was faulty and officials there knew of a previous, similar accident in 2008.

The Bellingham Herald’s Samantha Wohlfeil reported in September of 2014 that the Port of Bellingham Commission had settled a dispute over insurance coverage and was then able to go forward with repairs to the passenger ramp – two years after the accident that injured Ms. Adamson.


Photo Credit: THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

Workers' Compensation

Comment Period: New Surgical Knee Guideline for WA State

A new Surgical Knee Guideline for WA State Workers’ Compensation claims has been proposed.  It is an in-depth, step-by-step, breakdown of the criteria for authorization of treatment.  The proposed guidelines are subject to public comment.  The window for comment is now open through 5:00pm on Monday, April 11, 2016.  The public may comment by mail, fax, or email.  Details for comment. 

The Department’s Industrial Insurance Medical Advisory Committee and its Surgical Knee Guideline Subcommittee developed this treatment guideline as a best practice standard for surgical treatment of certain knee conditions. Providers who are in the department’s Medical Provider Network are required to follow this guideline as it applies to the treatment they provide to injured workers.  

A draft of the Surgical Knee Guideline will be presented to the Industrial Insurance Medical Advisory Committee in an open public meeting on April 28, 2016 (see the L&I website for meeting details). The department’s response to all public comments will be available, and there will be time on the agenda for public testimony.

Safety

Back Injuries in Nursing – One Nifty Idea to Avoid Them

The American Nursing Association’s Handle with Care campaign seeks to educate, advocate, and facilitate change from traditional practices of manual patient handling to emerging, technology-oriented methods. The campaign seeks to highlight how safe patient handling produces benefits to patients and the nursing workforce.  The ANA’s Handle with Care Fact Sheet provides the following thought-provoking data:

A Profession at Risk

  • Compared to other occupations, nursing personnel are among the highest at risk for musculoskeletal disorders. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists RNs sixth in a list of at-risk occupations for strains and sprains that included nursing personnel, with nurses aides, orderlies and attendants (first); truck drivers (second); laborers (third); stock handlers and baggers (seventh); and construction workers (eighth).
  • Additional estimates for the year 2000 show that the incidence rate for back injuries involving lost work days was 181.6 per 10,000 full-time workers in nursing homes and 90.1 per 10,000 full-time workers in hospitals, whereas incidence rates were 98.4 for truck drivers, 70.0 for construction workers, 56.3 for miners, and 47.1 for agriculture workers.
  • Lower back injuries are also the most costly musculoskeletal disorder affecting workers. Studies of back-related workers compensation claims reveal that nursing personnel have the highest claim rates of any occupation or industry.
  • Research on the impact of musculoskeletal injuries among nurses:
    • 52 percent complain of chronic back pain;
    • 12 percent of nurses “leaving for good” because of back pain as main contributory factor;
    • 20% transferred to a different unit, position, or employment because of lower back pain, 12 percent considering leaving profession;
    • 38 percent suffered occupational-related back pain severe enough to require leave from work; and
    • 6 percent, 8 percent, and 11 percent of RNs reported even changing jobs for neck, shoulder and back problems, respectively.

One Possible Tool

The website idées créatives posted this elegant video of an automatic bed that could allow for patient repositioning and assist with moving into and out of the bed, shown in a nursing home or hospital setting:

 

Medicine

New York Times: C.D.C. Painkiller Guidelines Aim to Reduce Addiction Risk

The following is an exerpt from a New York Times article by Sabrina Tavernise publised on March 15, 2016.

New C.D.C. guidelines on opioids like Percocet are likely to have sweeping effects on the practice of medicine.

In an effort to curb what many consider the worst public health drug crisis in decades, the federal government on Tuesday published the first national standards for prescription painkillers, recommending that doctors try pain relievers like ibuprofen before prescribing the highly addictive pills, and that they give most patients only a few days’ supply.

The release of the new guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ends months of arguments with pain doctors and drug industry groups, which had bitterly opposed the recommendations on the grounds that they would create unfair hurdles for patients who legitimately have long-term pain.

In the end, the agency softened the recommendations slightly but basically held its ground, a testament to how alarmed policy makers have become over the mounting overdoses and deaths from opioid addiction. Opioid deaths — including from heroin, which some people turn to after starting with prescription painkillers — reached a record28,647 in 2014, according to the most recent federal statistics.

“These will become the definition of the standard of care, because of the clout of the Centers for Disease Control.” – Myra Christopher, the director of the Pain Action Alliance to Implement a National Strategy, a coalition of medical and patient advocacy groups focused on chronic pain care that had opposed the guidelines.

READ the full article and VIEW the graphic map depicting the rise in drug-related deaths across the country since 2005 HERE.

Photo credit: Nathan Griffith/Corbis via New York Times

Uncategorized

Spinal surgery drop leads to fewer workers comp hospitalizations

Today’s post was shared by Workers Compensation and comes from www.businessinsurance.com.

As headlines like this one appear across the country we are simultaneously noting a significant increase in surgery denials from claims managers. Coincidence? – kc

Spinal Surgery

The number of inpatient hospitalizations among injured workers in California has declined, in part because of a reduction in the number of implant-eligible spinal surgeries in recent years, according the California Workers’ Compensation Institute.

From 2008 to 2014, workers comp inpatient hospitalizations declined 22.8%, according to an updated report, “Inpatient Hospital Utilization in California Workers’ Compensation,” released by CWCI on Thursday.

Payers of workers comp claims saw fewer hospital stays than Medicare, Medi-Cal and private coverage between 2013 and 2014, with the number of inpatient discharges for comp dropping 8.6%, the report states.

It also found that the number of workers comp implant-eligible spinal surgeries declined 8.4% in 2013 and 13.6% in 2014.

The decline “coincided with continued development of evidence-based medicine, utilization review, and independent medical review, fee schedule changes, and the phase out and ultimate repeal of duplicate ‘pass-through’ payments for hardware used in workers compensation spinal surgeries,” CWCI said in a statement.

However, since 2008, implant-eligible spinal surgeries have ranged between 21% and 23.2% of all workers comp inpatient discharges, according to the report. They accounted for 21.2% in 2014, the most recent year included.

The report notes that spinal fusions and back/neck procedures are the highest-volume inpatient hospital discharges among injured workers…

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Uncategorized

Smartphone App Created for Day Laborers to Anonymously Report Employers

Today’s post was shared by WC CompNewsNetwork and comes from www.workerscompensation.com

Sacramento, CA – The New York Times reports that after three years of planning, an immigrant rights group is set to start a smartphone app for day laborers, a new digital tool with many uses: Workers will be able to rate employers (think Yelp or Uber), log their hours and wages, take pictures of job sites and help identify, down to the color and make of a car, employers with a history of withholding wages. They will also be able to send instant alerts to other workers. The advocacy group will safeguard the information and work with lawyers to negotiate payment. Not mentioned in the story is the opportunity for workers’ compensation carriers to recover lost premium.

"It will change my life and my colleagues’ lives a good deal," Omar Trinidad, a Mexican immigrant, said in Spanish through an interpreter. Mr. Trinidad is the lead organizer who helped develop the app. "Presently, there is a lot of wage theft," he said. "There has always been wage theft, and the truth is we’re going to put a stop to that." Mr. Trinidad, suggested the name for the app – Jornalero, which means day laborer in Spanish.

The app had its soft launch on Tuesday night, with beta testing to be held later this month at the Jackson Heights section of New York City day laborer stop that stretches for a mile along 69th Street. Day laborer centers in Brooklyn and on Staten Island will also be testing the product, which is available in Spanish and English.

The plan is for…

[Click here to see the rest of this post]

Safety

CBS’s 60 Minutes: The King of Coal and the Massey Mine Disaster

The following is an exerpt from the online version of the program “King of Coal” which aired on March 6, 2016. 

In December, for the first time in U.S. history, a CEO of a major company was convicted of a workplace safety crime. His name is Don Blankenship and he was once known as the “King of Coal.” The company he ran, Massey Energy, owned more than 40 mines in central Appalachia, including the Upper Big Branch mine, located in Montcoal, West Virginia, a state where coal is the dominant industry.

In 2010, the Upper Big Branch Mine was the site of the worst mining disaster in the U.S. in 40 years — the kind of accident that isn’t supposed to happen anymore. It was just after 3 o’clock on April 5, when a massive explosion tore through miles of underground tunnels, killing 29 miners. Prosecutors accused Don Blankenship of ignoring mine safety laws and fostering a corporate mentality that allowed the disaster to occur.

It was an early 1900s type of explosion. Conditions should never have existed for that to take place. – Stanley Stewart

READ the full script of the interview by Anderson Cooper, the correspondent, and WATCH the full episode and associated video clips HERE.

 

Photo credit: SMU Central University Librariesvia Foter.com / No known copyright restrictions

Uncategorized

OSHA Orders Reinstatement, Back Wages and Damages for Alaska Pilot Fired for Raising Safety Concerns

Today’s post was shared by WC CompNewsNetwork and comes from www.workerscompensation.com.

Seattle, WA (WorkersCompensation.com) – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ordered an Alaska aviation company to pay years of back wages, $100,000 in compensatory damages, and to reinstate a pilot who had been suspended, then fired and ostracized among the close-knit industry for reporting safety concerns at work.

Bald Mountain Air Services violated federal whistleblower laws with its actions against the employee in 2012. With 35-years of aviation experience, the pilot for the Homer-based company raised repeated safety concerns at work ranging from missed drug tests for pilots to poor recordkeeping.

“Voicing safety concerns at work should never cost someone their job,” said OSHA Acting Regional Administrator Galen Blanton. “This employee should be hired back, compensated and treated fairly from here on out.”

OSHA’s order requires Bald Mountain Air Services to:

  • Pay the employee back wages at the rate of $350 per day from November 2012 until he receives a bona fide offer of reinstatement.
  • Pay the employee $100,000 in compensatory damages for pain, suffering and mental distress.
  • Expunge his employment records of any reference to the exercise of his rights under federal whistleblower law, and any reference to the adverse actions taken against him.
  • Not retaliate or discriminate against him in any manner, nor convey to a third party any mention of the employee’s protected activity.
  • Respondent…

[Click here to see the rest of this post]