OSHA
cmonforton | April 12, 2011The practice of posting a notice about meetings between regulated parties and OMB staff began during the GW Bush Administration, not a group known for transparency. Even that very secretive Administration saw the value in informing the public promptly of such meetings. The Obama Administration's OIRA is now 0-2 when it comes to disclosure of meetings about OSHA rules. (Their performance may actually be even worse. For all I know they've had other meetings. We just don't know to look for them on OIRA's website.)
Serious health effects related to overexposure to respirable crystalline…
lborkowski | April 1, 2011On Black Friday 2008 at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, Long Island, 34-year-old worker Jdimytai Damour was killed by a stampede of shoppers. In a New Yorker article on crowd disasters, Jon Seabrook reports that the official cause of death was asphyxiation, as it often the case in crowd-related deaths. The crowd's force pushed the store's sliding glass doors from their frames; one of them apparently fell on top of Damour, and his co-workers didn't see what happened after that. Damour had been working at the store for about a week, and none of his training addressed security or crowd…
cmonforton | March 30, 2011If you want to keep all your digits and limbs, you probably want to avoid working at Anheuser-Busch's Metal Container Corp., in Arnold, Missouri. That worksite was recently cited by OSHA for hazards related to incidents last fall in which one worker lost fingers in machinery, and another worker had a foot amputated because of a forklift incident. The 13 serious and one willful violation come with a proposed $107,200 penalty. Those two work-related amputations are just two of the estimated 3.9 million cases of injuries and illness that occur each year in U.S. workplaces. About a third of…
cmonforton | March 21, 2011Monique Harper, 41, had a beautiful smile that family and friends will never forget. "Monique was the most hilarious and free-spirited person you will ever meet," said one of her sisters. "She was a mother that loved her children, family and friends." Monique Harper's contagious smile and free spirit are now only memories. She was one of the 26 U.S. workers killed in 2010 after being engulfed in grain at storage facilities that hold billions of bushels of harvested corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, and rice. Another 25 workers in 2010 were trapped in grain, but were rescued.
Entrapments and…
cmonforton | March 18, 2011Imagine testifying before a congressional committee as the head of the FDIC and you're asked "do the vast majority of banks care deeply and passionately about their customers?" Or as the head of the FAA and you're asked "do you think the vast majority of airlines care deeply and passionately about their passengers?" Or the head of a State Insurance Bureau and you're asked "do you think the vast majority of HMO's care deeply and passionately about their policy holders?" That's one of the odd questions posed to OSHA chief David Michaels,PhD, MPH at a hearing on March 16 before a subcommittee…
cmonforton | March 16, 2011Les Skramstad was a good, decent man who died in January 2007 from mesothelioma at 70 years young. Mesothelioma is a rare cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Mr. Skramstad was a miner and laborer at the infamous vermiculite mine at Zonolite Mountain in Libby, Montana. Mr. Skramstad's death was clearly work-related, but when the Labor Department's annual census of work-related deaths was published the following year, reporting 5,488 fatal work injuries, his death was not included. As noted in Part 1 of this series, our nation's official count of work-related deaths is a census of fatal…
cmonforton | March 9, 2011"Death takes no holidays in industry and commerce," is how Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz described the toll of on-the-job death and disability for U.S. workers. The Secretary's remarks in 1968 were part of congressional hearings on legislation that ultimately established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He suggested that because most work-related fatalities and injuries happen one or two at a time, day in and day out, the carnage continues"because people don't realize its magnitude, and can't see the blood on the things they buy, on the food they eat, and the…
cmonforton | February 28, 2011Roxanne Moyer wondered why managers at her husband's worksite would allow an obvious dangerous condition to exist. Workers could be so "close to molten steel [that it] just poured over on them." Her husband, Samuel Moyer, 32 died earlier this month at Arcelor Mittal's LaPlace, Lousiania steel mill in exactly that way. He was fatally burned with molten steel.
Mrs. Moyer sounds like a generous and forgiving soul, saying:"I don't want it to happen to anybody else. And they've already changed things there. We've talked to fellow workers, and they've already put up a shield there and you can't…
lborkowski | February 25, 2011For its 40th anniversary, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has compiled a timeline of key milestones during its history. The big picture is a positive one:
Although accurate statistics were not kept at the time, it is estimated that in 1970 around 14,000 workers were killed on the job. That number fell to approximately 4,340 in 2009. At the same time, U.S. employment has almost doubled and now includes over 130 million workers at more than 7.2 million worksites. Since the passage of the OSH Act, the rate of reported serious workplace injuries and illnesses has declined from…
egrossman | February 22, 2011By Elizabeth Grossman
As I've watched the hearings House Republicans have been holding over the past couple of weeks on the economic impact of environmental and occupational health and safety regulations, I've been thinking about what I've learned about and seen of the working and environmental conditions in places that are now the hub of world manufacturing. I've been picturing the smog that hangs over Chinese cities. I've been thinking about the fatal despair of young high-tech workers at Foxconn and Samsung factories in China and South Korea, about the depressed wages and severe working…
cmonforton | February 8, 2011I was already tired of President Obama repeating the Republican's rhetoric about big, bad regulations, how they stifle job creation, put an unnecessary burden on businesses, and make our economy less competitive. He did so last month in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and in his State of the Union address. But yesterday, the White House went too far.
In advance of the President's speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the chief of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) threw two OSHA initiatives under the bus. Right after mentioning President Obama's January 18…
cmonforton | February 3, 2011The contrast is striking. Look at the screenshot of the outcome of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs' (OIRA) review of two Labor Department rules to address flaws in our worker health and safety system. One is a proposal by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to crack down on mine operators who habitually violate mine safety regulations. No more warning letters or slaps on the wrist. Once a mine operator is notified he has a "pattern of violations," a single serious violation of the law observed by an inspector at any time in the next 90 days will result in…
cmonforton | February 1, 2011The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (LCSP) is known for challenging the status quo. Its scientists and policy analysts refuse to accept we have to live in a world where parents are worried about toxic toys, or companies feel forced to choose between earning profits and protecting the environment. Leave it to LCSP researchers to describe six cases of systemic worker health and safety failures, yet manage to identify small successes or opportunities to create them. That's the Lowell way:"...infuse hope and opportunity into a system that may appear severely broken."
In "Lessons…
cmonforton | January 25, 2011OSHA proposed penalties totaling nearly $1.4 million against two Illinois companies for violations of safety standards that led to the deaths of three workers last summer in grain elevators. Haasbach LLC received 24 violations, including 12 classified as willful, for failing to take steps to workers from engulfed 30 feet deep in corn. Alex Pacas, 19, and Wyatt Whitebread, 14, died at Haasbach's Mt. Carroll site on July 28. Two other young workers escaped, but one of them suffered serious injuries. In addition to the OSHA proposed penalty of $550,000, Haasbach was also fined $68,125 from…
cmonforton | January 20, 2011The construction trade association Associated Building Contractors (ABC) was one of 150 business groups that received a letter from Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) in December, asking for their ideas about federal regulations "that have negatively impacted job growth." ABC responded with a list heavy on opposition to labor protections, such as requirements for prevailing wage and labor-management agreements on federal construction projects.
The trade association's hit list also includes three OSHA initiatives, one of which was withdrawn just yesterday by the agency.
I'm particularly…
lborkowski | January 18, 2011by Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPR Blog
Sixteen months ago, President Obama stood in the well of Congress and issued a ringing call for a progressive vision of government. Working to persuade Members of Congress to adopt health care reform, he said that"large-heartedness...is part of the American character." Our ability to stand in other people's shoes. A recognition that we are all in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand."
Many took comfort from that vision, the first avowedly affirmative one we had heard from a President…
cmonforton | January 14, 2011Hedilberto Sanchez, 26, was killed on Monday (Jan 11, 2010) at a construction site in Elmhurst, NY when an 18-foot high cinder block wall collapsed on him. He leaves behind his wife, and two sons, Luis, 6 and Edison, 3. Three other workers were injured in the incident, including Mr. Sanchez's brother. The men worked for a subcontractor (who I've been unable to identify) who was hired by the property developer Thomas J. Huang. Mr. Huang has been described in some circles as a one-man wrecking crew for his disregard for building codes, zoning rules and other laws. The New York Times'…
lborkowski | January 13, 2011by Eileen Senn, MS
The multiple options that OSHA is considering to address their badly outdated rules for chemical hazards were described in my November 17 post. They include updating OSHA Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs) which are erroneously considered to be safe levels for chemicals in workplace air. In reality, it's wrong to call them "safe" levels. Most PELs are based on toxic ignorance, that is, our lack of sound and complete toxicology data on most chemicals. It is the rare chemical that has been tested for all disease endpoints including cancer and effects on reproductive,…
lborkowski | January 3, 2011Liz and Celeste are on vacation, so we're re-posting some content from our old site.
By Celeste Monforton, originally posted 3/11/10
I think the ghost of Tony Mazzocchi is haunting me. Every day for the last 10 days, I've been presented with narratives, videos, testimony and phone calls about the workers who are compelled or forced to become whistleblowers. It started with a student asking me about Karen Silkwood which opened the door for me to explain the OCAW/Mazzocchi-Silkwood connection and the vital contribution of whistleblowers in exposing deadly health and safety problems in work…
cmonforton | December 21, 2010By the end of 2011, the Labor Department's worker safety agencies expect to issue six new rules to better protect workers from on-the-job hazards. In the Department's regulatory plan issued yesterday, OSHA projects it will finalize four rules while MSHA expects to complete two new standards. As I've written before, these plans quickly become stale because target dates are missed, new issues emerge and political winds shift, but they still give us a snapshot inside the agencies and the Administration's regulatory strategies at a moment in time.
Of the four rules OSHA expects to finish in…