The temperature outside is starting to rise as we head into spring and summer. As a reminder, especially when your employees are working outdoors, there must be a heat illness prevention plan in place. This has been a focus of OSHA over the last couple of years. TPM received a grant that focuses on Heat…More
Frontline: Handling Employee Leave Requests
An employer’s failure to appropriately administer an employee’s request for time off can create risk under federal, state, and local leave laws. Time off can include benefits such as unpaid job protection, wage replacement payments, and maintenance of group health insurance. This checklist helps human resource managers consider all of the factors that pertain to…More
Accommodations: Low Cost, High Impact
A report recently published by the ODEP-funded Job Accommodation Network reveals that the benefits of providing accommodations for workers with disabilities significantly outweigh the costs. Key findings, based on a survey of employers over the past four years, are that nearly half (49.4%) of accommodations cost nothing to implement, and 43.3% incur a one-time median…More
Employment Situation Report
U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Public Affairs, Julie McClain Downey issued the following statement on the “April 2023 Employment Situation Report.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the American economy added 253,000 jobs in the month of April, and the unemployment rate ticked down to a historic low mark of 3.4 percent –…More
Announcing TPM Grand Prize Raffle 2023
The TPM Annual Golf Tournament, which supports the TPM Scholarship Fund, will be raffling a Henry’s Golden Boy Engraved Rifle for the Grand Prize. Engraving will showcase the logging industry. This prize is worth nearly $1500. Be sure to sign up for the tournament. Henry’s Golden Boy model H004 is a fine-crafted .22 rifle. The…More
DOL Launches New Mental Health Website
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month in May, the U.S. Department of Labor launched Mental Health at Work—a new initiative that connects work being done across DOL agencies to improve worker wellbeing, reduce stigma, and promote equitable access to mental health resources and treatment, especially for historically marginalized populations. As part of this, DOL…More
TPM Member Companies Receive Grant
Congratulations to TPM members, F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Company and Marks-Miller Post and Pole, Inc., who have been awarded grants as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have also secured part of the grant. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was passed in November 2021. The funding…More
Fire Salvage Logs Transit Project
The U.S. Forest Services has approved a plan to allow surplus fire salvage logs to be transported from the devastating fires in California and the western United States to be processed by Neiman Enterprises, in Hulett, Wyoming and Spearfish, South Dakota.The timber transit pilot project is part of a 20-year Forest Stewardship Partnership Agreement between…More
FLSA – Child Labor
An Ohio lathe mill has paid an enhanced child labor enforcement penalty of $22,093 after federal investigators found the company employed a 15-year-old worker illegally in a hazardous occupation –the operation of a sawmill – which led the worker to suffer injury when he became entangled in the gears of a powered wood processing machine.…More
Biden Budget Proposal
In early March, the Biden Administration released their FY 2024 budget proposal that includes a nearly 10 percent increase in funding for the U.S. Forest Service, with much of the increased spending dedicated to hazardous fuels reduction and pay increases for firefighters. The Administration proposes spending $60 million for the “hiring and purchase” of zero-emission…More
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