Labor Dept.: Bush Targeting Of Worst Job Safety And Health Violators Flopped

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

WASHINGTON (PAI)--The now-departed anti-worker GOP Bush government’s plan to have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration target only the worst job safety and health violators was a flop, a new Labor Department report says.  And workers may have been injured or died as a result of that failure, it adds.
   “Proper enforcement might have deterred and abated workplace hazards at the worksites of 45 employers where 58 subsequent fatalities occurred,” the scathing report from DOL’s Inspector General said.  But that enforcement did not occur, it noted.
   The agency’s findings dismayed -- but did not surprise -- either the AFL-CIO or Change To Win.  Both have been highly critical of the Bush OSHA’s inaction.
   When Bush came into office, he had OSHA and other regulatory agencies shift to being more business-friendly.  OSHA emphasized “consultation” with companies on job safety, advisory brochures about hazards, waivers of enforcement for cooperating companies and no new safety standards.  It wrote only two in eight years -- and one of those was forced on it by a Steel Workers lawsuit.
   Instead, OSHA established what it called its Enhanced Enforcement Program (EEP), pursuing the “worst of the worst”: Those firms with the worst safety records in those industries, such as construction and hospitals and nursing homes, with the worst overall safety records.  But the IG’s report said the EEP program failed.
   In 97% of cases the inspector general studied, OSHA’s follow-up with the firms was deficient, the report said.  Agency officials did not gather needed data, had uneven inspections, did not notice when two company subsidiaries were both on the “worst of the worst” list, and sometimes did not discover repeated job safety deaths at the same company because its name was misspelled.
  And then, last year, OSHA changed the rules for which firms made the “worst of the worst” list, cutting the number from 719 in fiscal 2007 to 475 in fiscal 2008, which ended last Sept. 30.
  AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said the findings confirmed what the federation said all along about Bush’s OSHA: The report was “an indictment of” the Bush government’s “unwillingness to protect and safeguard working men and women.”
 Sweeney added: “There is simply no excuse for OSHA’s failure to properly designate and inspect dangerous worksites, conduct follow-up inspections and enforce enhanced settlement provisions.”
  Change To Win Health and Safety Director Eric Frumin agreed, but also pointed out the Inspector General cited companies’ failure to protect their own workers, with or without OSHA enforcement.  Frumin called on Congress to give the agency more money, more inspectors -- and more power against violators. 
  “The report identifies huge corporations like Wal-Mart and Waste Management, Inc., which should have been designated” for the EEP.  “These companies – and others whose workers have died, like Cintas Corp. and McWane Corp. – must be finally held accountable for their coldhearted disregard of their workers’ safety and health,” he said.
 While Frumin termed the employers’ disregard for worker safety “outrageous,” he added that “If anything can be worse, it is that OSHA, under Bush, failed to designate these employers for strict action under the EEP that was supposed to prevent further fatalities and serious injuries.”
  With Bush’s “longstanding record of failing to enforce laws related to workers’ rights or protections, we are not surprised by the Inspector General’s horrific findings. We know President Obama and (Labor) Secretary (Hilda) Solis share our dismay with this latest account of the Bush/Cheney/Chao years,” Frumin concluded.
- Press Associates