Morte por calor de trabalhador dos correios da Carolina do Norte, link técnico do Triângulo de JD Vance #ÚltimasNotícias

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I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

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The day U.S. Postal Office Service worker Wednesday “Wendy” Johnson died, June 6, the temperature in Fayetteville approached 95 degrees. Working in the back of a truck without air conditioning made it feel even hotter; before she passed out, Johnson had voiced complaints to relatives.

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“My mother would tell you the truth no matter how hard it hurts,” said her son DeAndre Johnson, a 33-year-old long haul truck driver in Brooklyn.

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The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is still investigating Johnson’s death, and while it would not comment further, the agency is treating what occurred as a heat-related incident. Only recently did the government begin labeling heat as the explicit cause for federal workplace inspections. In April 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor formed a National Emphasis Program to better track, analyze and preemptively identify heat-related risks.

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“The danger of extreme heat increases each year due to continuing effects of climate change,” the Labor Department stated at the time, noting these conditions disproportionately hurt lower-wage workers and workers of color.

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According to data analyzed by the N&O, OSHA has emphasized “heat” in eight North Carolina inspections thus far: three planned inspections, three inspections based on complaints and two inspections conducted after worker deaths. Two of the complaint-based inspections, each conducted shortly after the program launched, were at the U.S. Postal Service.

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Last year, the Postal Service told a Central Texas news station that only 34% of its nationwide fleet had air conditioning.

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“Come on now, it’s 2024,” DeAndre Johnson said. “I know how God works, and everything’s for a reason. So if my mother can be a catalyst for change to the Postal Service, that can be the reason.”

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The second federal heat fatality in North Carolina occurred in July 2022, when an 18-year-old newly hired landscaper named Juan José Antonio Morales Franco “stumbled” during a shift near the Marine Corp.’s Camp Lejeune. According to inspectors, the heat index hit 103.3 degrees that day, while Franco’s body core temperature was measured at 110.7 degrees.

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Non-federal employees in North Carolina have also dealt with heat-related illnesses or death. In September 2023, a Nash County sweet potato farm worker named José Alberto Gonzalez Mendoza died of apparent heat exhaustion. Following an investigation, the N.C. Department of Labor fined his employer, Barnes Farming Corporation, $187,000 for violations that included not having an established rest area, not giving a five-minute break in a six-hour work day, and not providing an “adequate supply of drinking water for workers.”

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This summer, federal OSHA proposed inaugural worker protection standards for elevated temperatures. Under one of the rules, employers would have to set a certain heat index threshold beyond which employees must take “rest breaks of 15 minutes at least every two hours.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed this rule, citing inherent ambiguity employers would face when accessing what qualifies as heat risks.

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What will become of these standards isn’t yet clear. The future of the National Emphasis Program is also uncertain as it will expire in April unless the government extends the policy. What is guaranteed is that the heat isn’t going away.

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Vance’s Triangle tech tie

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Much has been reported on J.D. Vance’s Silicon Valley connections since the Ohio senator became former President Donald Trump’s running mate. Well, at least one of his past endeavors links to the Triangle. From 2019 to 2021, Vance served as a board member of the Raleigh artificial intelligence startup Pryon.

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“He was very engaged in the vision,” Pryon founder and CEO Igor Jablokov said in a text. “Remember that AI didn’t have as crystal clear demand signal back then as it has today.”

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Vance got involved with Pryon through his role as a managing partner at the investment firm Revolution, which led Pryon’s Series A funding round. “He was instrumental in getting our first major round done, making a myriad of intros, and then served in the earliest days of our work on product market fit,” Jablokov said.

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Vance left the board to run for the Senate.

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Clearing my cache

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• Boom Supersonic, which plans to build supersonic passenger jets in Greensboro, aims to test an aircraft at supersonic speeds by the end of this year.
• Bad week overall for stocks (see below), but IBM’s share price jumped Wednesday after the company beat market expectations. The owner of Raleigh’s Red Hat credited its strong performance to AI.
• Combined, more than 500 jobs could be coming to Wilson and Fayetteville as North Carolina approved incentives for a titanium recycling plant and a pet health care facility.

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National Tech Happenings

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• Brat. Coconut trees. Kamala Harris has enjoyed a social media boost as memes of the presumptive Democratic nominee for president dominate certain corners of the internet. Trump has benefited from memes too, though his running mate probably wishes the furniture ones would go away. This week, The Atlantic asked if memes could decide the election. It feels like a fair question.
• Large tech companies took a battering on Wall Street this week. Tesla (which is part tech company, part automaker) and Google’s parent Alphabet each reported disappointing earnings while Nvidia shares are down 6.5% this week as investors scaled back on AI-heavy companies.
• Good news for Southwest Airlines: It avoided last Friday’s global IT outages. Bad news for Southwest Airlines: The company may have done so because it is operating Windows software from the 1990s, which subjected Southwest to online ridicule. Furthermore, the airline is ditching its open seating policy.

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Thanks for reading!

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Esta história foi publicada originalmente 26 de julho de 2024, 9h10.