Customer Reviews

A Job To Die For

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Lisa Cullen provides an eye-opening look at the dark side of occupational health and safety in the United States. It integrates the seperate worlds of Workers Compensation and OSHA compliance into a compelling, human tale of workers and the governemt agencies tasked with protecting them. As a Safety Professional in private industry, I recommend this book to my peers as a counterpoint to the rosy projections from OSHA and BLS about how safety and health in the workplace is improving. Cullen's research unearths the political aspects of the safety and industrial health world that few practitioners are aware of. My only caveat is that the book is becoming dated and should be revised and expanded. However, it remains a thoughtful and insightful description of the interplay of government/private forces that shape safety and health regulations in the United States.

A Job To Die For: Why So Many Americans Are Killed, Injured Or Made Ill At Work And What To Do About It by Lisa Cullen is a candid, honest, hard look at the phenomena of work-related injuries and fatalities in America, and just what can be done to reduce the unnecessary trauma, suffering, and economic impact of workplace accidents. Individual chapters denounce the myth of widespread worker compensation fraud, review practical-minded and cost-effective measures to increase safety, the issue ergonomics, and a great deal more. Touting a combination of information and exposure as the means to combat a very real problem, A Job To Die For is strongly recommended reading as a book that just might avoid an illness, prevent an injury, or even save a worker's life.

In my opinion Lisa Cullen has hit it right on the nail head. The one missing reference I have yet found is the part that holds disablity programs of state and country accountable for their lack of ferreting out and making answerable employers, insurance companies and other contributor's of fraudulent denial of proven work related claims. I do take a little exception at the fact that all work related injuries/infirmities are hard to prove. What are medical records for? How can a lay person who is not medically qualified be allowed to disallow proven medically accurate details of a physician or medical caregiver's assessment of a once healthy whole human being? Is this not a crutch so over used by the insurance company's and employer's as to be relevant or credible anymore?

The bottom line is that each state allows for employer's via worker's compensation boards and the insurance carrier investigator to sunder the credibility of the employee who has fallen into the quaqmire of a work related injury/infirmity or death itself. The burden then falls to the American taxpayer who funds disability programs at the state and federal levels and the employers and their insurance carriers walk away scot free from their responsiblities.

I reference the contents of Lisa Cullen's book many times during discussions and presentation of these concerns, but no remedy appears to be forthcoming from the powers that be. Try as one might, they do not hear or see the illegalities that have been going on for a very long time and the victimization of a human being's rights and life.

But I am grateful for Lisa Cullen's tome. It helps reinforce my personal experiences as one of the denied and the illegalities imposed on my rights after being injured and infirmed in a passive work place. A law office of all places. 18 years later I am still under the care of medical doctor's and still have received no recognition or justice from my query's into these illegal misdeeds.

Respectfully,
Ginger Ferrer aka (Julia-Estelle Ferrer)

Lisa Cullen's meticulous research and easy-to-read style shines a bright light on the scandal in America's work places. She describes how OSHA, handcuffed by conservative politicians and their corporate donors, fails to fulfill their mandate. She tells of a government so callous that it doesn't even bother to fully count worker deaths--despite estimates of 60,000+ dead every year. As she says, "in business, what gets counted counts."

She also gives a good, concise description of a Workers' Compensation insurance system that makes insurance companies rich, but much too often isn't there to help workers.

This ought to be required reading for anyone who wants to know how America really works for the underclass.