Worker's Getting Screwed...So What Else is New? In Houston, Someone Seems to Care

A collegue recently pointed me toward a continuing series in the Houston Chronicle about the conditions workers face today. The author of these articles, including the workers compensation article posted below, is written by Houston Chronicle reporter L.M. Sixel.

One of the best deals with safety incentive programs:

True path to safety is likely not lined with big prizes

For the past few months, employees heading into work at the Lyondell-Citgo refinery would walk past a shiny new four-door Ford pickup and Chevrolet Silverado parked at the front gate.

The trucks, loaded with accessories, were a delicious reminder that if the plant hit 1 million man-hours without a recordable injury, one lucky employee would win either the Ford or the Chevy or another $30,000 vehicle of his choice in a drawing.

Plant officials hoped that by giving away an expensive vehicle, like the Ford F150 pickup it awarded last year, the company could reinforce the importance of workplace safety. It was a way of staying focused, a refinery spokesman said.

But to some employees, the display of the fancy trucks was a subtle reminder not to report any injuries. Otherwise they'd face the wrath of their peers, who'd like to park one of those trucks in their own driveway.

"Unless you're bleeding or a bone is sticking out," most employees preferred to keep quiet and see their personal physicians, said process operator David Taylor, who is also a member of the Paperworkers, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Local 4-227 workers committee.

Others include

Efficiency's up but morale's down at Lyondell-Citgo

From all appearances, life looks normal at the Lyondell-Citgo Refinery on the Houston Ship Channel.

The PACE union flag flies in front of the sprawling refinery off Texas 225, and union members sit alongside management representatives on key safety committees.

But union representatives and rank-and-file employees say the atmosphere between labor and management has turned poisonous.

The workers say many of their colleagues have been unfairly terminated, a sizable portion of the plant has been disciplined and an atmosphere of fear has pervaded the refinery.


Hispanics still face more deaths, injuries on the job

It's a story I have written year after year. But for Hispanics, the dangers at work don't seem to decline.

Hispanics are more likely to die or get hurt on the job than any other ethnic group, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. And while the fatality rates for blacks and non-Hispanic whites have fallen over the past 10 years, it's barely changed for Hispanics.

To make matters worse, Hispanics are also less likely to have health insurance, so many don't get screened for major health problems such as diabetes and hypertension, according to a new study by Circadian Technologies, a Boston-based consulting firm.


The price for working at night may be your health

ABOUT 20 percent of us toil outside the traditional 9-to-5 routine as more and more companies embrace the concept of working around the clock. And according to a new study, that's causing major health problems.

As more people work evening and overnight shifts at call centers, retailers and bank processing centers, they're suffering from higher rates of gastrointestinal troubles, cardiovascular diseases and sleep disorders than their counterparts who are home in time to watch the 6 p.m. news.


State safety mandate little-know and less enforced

TEXAS has had a law on the books since 1989 requiring cranes to have insulators that prevent deaths from contact with power lines.

But those who should know about the device, which could have prevented some of the state's 30 construction-related electrocutions in the past three years, don't.

Safety consultants, union officials and some operators of the machines contend that few of the cranes working in Texas have the protective device.

And government safety experts and agencies differ on which is responsible for the problem.

And this is one of my favorites:

Law firm sees niche in 'dead peasant' policy defense

A few months ago, only a handful of people had ever heard of "dead peasant" life insurance.

But word has gotten out now that Wal-Mart and a few other companies have been sued for taking out secret life insurance policies on their employees and keeping the proceeds when the workers die.

This is great stuff. Makes you wonder why more newspapers aren't encouraging reporters to do the same thing.

Stop Bleeding and Sign Here

When workers compensation was created early in the last century, the deal was that workers would give up the right to sue and employers would compensate workers for any injuries (or illnesses?) suffered on the job, no questions asked. It hasn't worked out to be quite that clean, but that's basically the deal today. And in 49 states, employers are required to provide workers compensation insurance for their employees.

In the 50th state, Texas, employers can go without workers comp, but workers then have the right to sue. Or do they?

Martha McJimsey was pulling brains out of cow carcasses coming down the line at IBP in Amarillo when she split one of her fingers wide open.

But before a nurse would stop the bleeding and stitch her up, McJimsey had to sign a waiver promising not to sue the company now called Tyson Fresh Meats.

It didn't matter that her right hand -- her writing hand -- was dripping blood. A company representative simply put a pen in her left hand and told her to sign.

"You have to sign a waiver every time you get hurt," said McJimsey, who consented to four post-injury waivers during her 25 years at the plant. "The only excuse is if you're completely unconscious."

McJimsey said her union representative assured her not to worry because she was signing the waiver under duress and that should she decide later to sue, it wouldn't stand up in court. To her surprise, the 59-year-old, who has since left the company, later discovered the waiver was valid and she had no legal right to sue.

"NAM Members Score Another Major Victory on Ergonomics;" Workers Take It In The Teeth Again

From the NAM (National Association of Manufacturers) webpage. Need we say more than we've already said...except that I was too nice last time.

Labels: Ergonomics

WASHINGTON STATE ERGONOMICS REFERENDUM TODAY

Washington state voters will decide today whether or not to repeal the nation's only comprehensive, preventive ergonomics standard. As I've written before, the stakes are extemely high, not just for workering people in Washington state, but ultimately for workers throughtout the entire country.

This Olympian article describes the election as

A costly battle over Initiative 841 on Tuesday's general election ballot pits the state's grocers, home builders and other worried industries against the state's labor unions.

Actually, to be more precise, it pits industry associations and their misinformed members against hundreds of thousands of workers doing jobs every day that may lead to completely preventable disabilities, workers who have no one to speak for them except labor unions.

It's hard to know what will happen, or how big the turnout will be, but this column from The Olympian may describe how most voters are responding to today's election:

Initiative 841, which would repeal a Washington state ergonomics regulation and prevent the adoption of new regulations until a uniform federal standard is required, has some people scratching their heads.

"It's a confusing one for a lot of voters," said [said County Auditor Kim Wyman].

"People are asking simple questions, like what is ergonomics."

Despite the confusion of many voters, the referendum has shaped up into a titanic and expensive battle

I-841 has attracted a coalition of business groups led by the Building Industry Association of Washington, which has provided more than $800,000 of the coalition's $1.4 million campaign financing. The measure is on the ballot thanks to paid signature gatherers.

The Washington State Labor Council and other worker groups have lined up against I-841, raising more than $510,000 for their campaign.

Like the battle against the federal ergonomics compaign, the campaign to pass Initiative 841, as well as the process to encourage voters to sign petitions to put the referendum on the ballot have been supported by a back-breaking stack of lies by the business associations supporting I-841.

In the past week, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has come out against the initiative ("Initiative 841 runs roughshod over the working public's right to safety, the normal processes of government and the state's power, ") and the U.S. Navy has adopted the Washington state standard.

For what it's worth, the small town, conservative Wenatchee World is favoring repeal of the standard. What's interesting about the Wenatchee World's editorial is how the paper has been totally captured by the industry's most effective (il)logic. For example:

You might think, with Washington state's unemployment among nation's worst and its economy barely qualified as stagnant, our government would not volunteer us to pioneer efforts to regulate when, how, and for how long employees may do a particular job.

Two things about this paragraph.

1. Note the traditional job blackmail that industry has used since the dawn of time to oppose workplace safety and environmental regulations: Get rid of this job killer or you'll be out on the street.

2. By killing the federal standard and scaring other states out of passing new ergonomic standards, they are able to argue that Washington is a "pioneer" in a dangerous, unique experiment. Which is exactly why it's so important to defeat this referendum -- to give courage to other states to follow Washington's example.

Whether such a system will do much to reduce worker injuries is debatable.

3. Not really. The National Academy of Sciences has done two major literature review at the request of Congress, and NIOSH has also done a review, all showing the connection between workplace stressors and musculoskeletal injuries, as well as the fact that ergonomics measures prevent these injures.

But there is little doubt that for business the rules and dictates will add to an already considerable regulatory burden, and add considerably to the expense of putting people to work.

4. Au contraire. In fact, there is little doubt that these rules will save businesses far more in workers comp and other savings than they will cost to implement. (See here as well.)

Washington state is not in a position to add to the expense of employing workers. It is not in a position to be the only state in the nation with such workplace rules. Our growing reputation as a poor place to do business will only be enhanced. We will be known as the only state that put in force ergonomic regulations even more strict than those already rejected by the federal government as onerous. Having lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, it is irresponsible to put more at risk unnecessarily.

See Nos. 1 and 2 above.

How great the risks may be is difficult to discern. The business opponents of the ergonomic regulations, the proponents of the initiative, are called liars by their labor union opponents, and the compliment is returned. Estimates of the expense of implementing the regulations vary widely - $80 million, says the Department of Labor and Industries; $700 million say studies for business. Whichever figure is closer to truth seems irrelevant to the question of whether such regulations are wise in the current circumstances.

5. Actually, the supporters of this initiative ARE liars. It's been documented, proven and admitted.

6. True, there is some "controversy" over the true costs of this regulations. But, again, they are liars. And if you don't believe what the Department of Labor and Industries says, check out how even Bush's regulatory Czar, John Graham now confirms the propensity of both industry and government to overestimate the cost of environmental and workplace safety regulations.

7. How can the truth be "irrelevant" when the right decision will not only save employers money, but save workers' backs. What's not "wise" for businesses is to believe the propaganda and ignore the facts.

In fact, the regulations may serve no useful purpose. Businesses have immense incentive to make their workplaces safer and see to it workers are less likely to be injured.

8. Immense incentives? What? Like workers comp? That's a laugh. When you have plenty of low-wage workers, many of whom need a job, any job, and others of whom may be illegal, you have an "immense incentive" to get rid of the ones who are injured or complaining and sign up the next desparate crowd.

It's true that individual employers are learning the value of ergonomics, especially those with more highly skilled workers, but there are still far too many who are either too cheap, or find their low-income employees expendable, or believe the industry line that there is no science behind ergonomics.

The fact is that the Washington Department of Labor and Industries has gone far beyond the call of duty to study and explain the reasoning behind this standard and how to make it work.

And if the Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation for Independent Businesses and Building Industry Association of Washington want to do their members a real service, they would hold up the Washington Department of Labor and Industries as a model of how regulations should be issued and supported.

But these associations make far more money and generate far more dependent members by exploiting the fears of their members than by working out ways to make their businesses profitable while protecting their employees at the same time.

Good jobs, safe jobs, and successful businesses are not incompatible, as many businesses know. But this country is not about protecting only those workers who are lucky enough to work for enlightened employers. The right to a safe workplace belongs to everyone* and it sometimes takes regulations to make it happen.

We should all be thanking the state of Washington for having the courage to make it happen. Other states should use them as a model. And businesses -- large and small -- should wake up and force their associations to honestly represent their interests instead of just stoking their fears.



*except public employees in most states.

Labels: Ergonomics

One Year From Today...

The presidential election is only (only!) one year from today. But for those of you who are sticklers, only 444 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes, 22 seconds until Inauguration Day 2005, according to Smirking Chimp.

UAW Newsletter on Metalworking Fluids

In honor of their lawsuit against OSHA. Here.

Filbustering the Courts or Back to the Past

Nathan Newman has a good post on how the Bushniks want to use the courts to take us (even further) backwards in worker and labor rights and why keeping those right-wing nutcases out of the courts is important.

European Commission REACHES Compromise Agreement on Chemical Policy

As expected, the European Commission issued its proposal to overhaul the way Europe tests and approves potentially hazardous chemicals.

If adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, the REACH policy — Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals — will be the world's most comprehensive regulation governing the use of chemicals. It would have major effects on American industries that sell a variety of products in Europe, from computers to pesticides, and the Bush administration and U.S. chemical industry have joined forces to campaign against it

As I've written before (most recently here and here) this system would overturn the chemical approval system which currently considers chemicals innocent until proven guilty. As in the U.S., current policy requires new chemicals to undergo comprehensive testing, but existing hazardous chemicals are extremely difficult to restrict.

One in every five high-volume chemicals lacks even basic toxicity data, while only 14% have good data, said Finn Bro-Rasmussen, professor emeritus of Technical University of Denmark. He estimated that almost half should be classified as hazardous. The authorization process is the most worrisome part of the proposal for U.S. industries. European Union officials estimate that 300 to 600 compounds would be withdrawn from commerce.

The proposal, already a product of compromise, still has many hurdles to overcome before it is finalized. According to the NY Times,

In a sign of the hurdles still facing the proposed legislation - which now must wend its way through a lengthy approval process in the European Parliament - environmental advocates accused the commission of caving to industry, saying the proposal does not go far enough in eliminating health risks.

Some chemicals companies in the multibillion euro industry, meanwhile, said the proposal would heap red tape and hefty expenses on them without providing any benefit to consumers or the environment.

The plan also met with resistance from Britain, France and Germany, homes to some of union's biggest chemicals companies. These countries have already expressed concern about the proposed legislation on the industry, according to a European diplomat.

The American Chemical Council declared itself "unimpressed" with the compromises made in the final proposal and warned of a trade war:

“Kafka would have been proud of the EU process. The Commissioners have said they want to create an efficient, workable and cost-effective system, but the present proposal is none of these, and they asked stakeholders for their opinion, which they immediately ignored,” said ACC President and CEO Greg Lebedev. “A few tweaks do not change a fundamentally flawed proposal.”

In tones vaguely reminiscent of the 1990's when American industry and Republicans in Congress called for repeated studies in order to slow OSHA's ergonomics and tuberculosis standards, Lebedev as called for a "a legitimate study of the impact of this proposal before the EU plunges headlong into a complicated new regulatory scheme that will confound its global trading partners.”

Lebedev might want to consult his own webpage which links the European Commission's Impact Analysis of the Revised REACH Proposal.

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, on the other hand "voted 10-1 on Oct. 28 to adopt a resolution supporting a proposed European Union law to control hazardous chemicals."

"San Francisco recently became the first city in the nation to adopt the Precautionary Principle as a guidepost for city policy," according to San Francisco Supervisor Jake McGoldrick. "Now by supporting REACH we can take another step forward in protecting our communities from toxics chemicals."

Industry Butchers Perform Back-Alley Late Term Abortion on ANSI Ergonomics Standard

As predicted a couple of weeks ago, after 13 years and over a half million dollars, industry hacks have succeeded in pressuring the National Safety Council (NSC) into surrendering its position as Secretariat to the ANSI Management of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders committee.

A labor spokesperson criticized the NSC for succumbing to industry pressure and stated that if the NSC doesn't care about workes, then labor wouldn't bother participating in its activities.

The committee had been working since 1990 to adopt a "consensus" standard on upper extremity musculoskeletal injuries. Finally, after 13 years, the ANSI “Z365” committee was close to finalizing an ergonomics standard.

The final draft of the late standard can be found here. May it rest in peace.

For the few of you who don't read every word I write, you can read my previous rantings about this subject here.

In respect for the dead, I have nothing else to say. In lieu of flowers, send money to the Washington State No on 841 campaign.

Labels: Ergonomics

Happy Halloween: More Scary Stuff About Evil And The Wicked Rulers Of Our Fair Land

While we're on the subject of ergonomics and Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, here's a review of Bushwacked (as well as Joe Conason's book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth) by another of our heros, Paul Krugman.

Here's one excerpt from the review, in reference to a recent Interior Department ruling in favor of the mining industry:

The point about the mining-waste ruling is that it isn't at all exceptional. Instead, it is typical of the Bush administration—in its callousness toward the general welfare, in the brazenness with which special interests were able to buy a decision to their liking, and in the contempt officials showed toward the public and the press. (Indeed, the ruling received only brief mention in the national press.) We're living in a replay of the Gilded Age, in which robber barons openly bought and sold government officials and their policies. And just as the Gilded Age brought forth a golden age of muckraking, our modern descent into money politics has brought forth a new wave of outraged reporters. Ivins and Dubose are worthy heirs of an honorable tradition.

Ergonomics: From Washington to Belzoni, Mississippi -- The Full Story

This is an excerpt from the complete chapter on the struggle for an ergonomics standard the the role of Eugene Scalia in killing it from BUSHWACKED by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose.

On the same March morning in 2000 when lawyer/lobbyist Eugene Scalia raced to the front of the Department of Labor hearing room to take the lead in the industry fight against ergonomic protection for workers, Durst got up and took her three-year-old son to the neighbor who takes care of him while she works. She then drove twenty miles to the Freshwater Farms catfish processing plant, just east of the Yazoo River in Belzoni. She put on an apron, a hair net, special latex gloves, and a pair of rubber boots. She walked into the refrigerated plant and took her station on the thin black rubber mat next to the conveyor belt. At the start of the conveyor belt, live catfish spilled out of holding tanks and began to move in Durst’s direction.

By the time the judge made his opening remarks and Scalia finished his first twenty minutes of testimony, Sherry Durst had skinned one thousand catfish. For eight to ten hours a day, Durst grabs a catfish off the conveyor belt, presses one of its sides against a set of blades mounted on a high-speed rotor, then flips the fish and repeats the process. Then she grabs another, and another, and another. If the line was running fast on March 13, 2000, Durst would have skinned twelve hundred fish before Scalia completed his brief morning testimony.

By the time Judge Vittone adjourned the ergonomics hearing at noon and the lawyers and lobbyists scrambled for cabs to make their lunches at the Red Sage or Olives, Durst had skinned between thirty-six hundred and four thousand catfish. Moments before each live fish arrives at the skinning station, it is stunned by electric shock, beheaded by one woman, and eviscerated by another, who jams each fish’s intestinal cavity against a stationary vacuum pipe called a "long gun." In order to keep her job at Freshwater Farms, Durst has to skin a minimum of twelve fish a minute. At times, a white supervisor stands behind her with a stopwatch, calculating minutes and catfish. Durst never falls below fifteen, at times hits twenty, and has skinned more than twenty-five catfish a minute.

'nuff said. Read this chapter, then buy the book.

Labels: Ergonomics

Seattle Paper Opposes I-841

Good editorial in the Seattle Post Intelligencer opposing Washington State Initiative 841 which would repeal the state’s ergonomics standard:

Washington voters could strain themselves trying to figure out the debate over the ergonomics initiative.

But let's go to the bottom line: Initiative 841 deserves a no vote. It represents more of the ballot nonsense that has paralyzed the state.

Initiative 841 runs roughshod over the working public's right to safety, the normal processes of government and the state's power. Instead of fine-tuning ergonomics rules adopted by the state Department of Labor and Industries, the initiative asks voters to bulldoze aside protections against repetitive injuries.

We have sympathy with business concerns over the state's ergonomics rules. Common sense, good will and modest adjustments limit most problems.

There may well be a case for eliminating or slowing the rules' implementation. But that should be based on study by Labor and Industries or by the Legislature.

The initiative is so sweeping because its writers couldn't restrain themselves from effectively throwing away the state's right to protect workers. The initiative says that Labor and Industries can't adopt new rules against ergonomic injuries except as required by the federal government. Legislators could still act -- but they don't typically write workplace rules.
Voters should resist I-841's quick fix. It will only buy us more trouble.

Time grows short. Call ALL of your friends in Washington and urge them and their friends to VOTE NO on I-841. I did.

Labels: Ergonomics

Aiming for the Amish?

The United Food and Commerical Workers union is mounting a legislative offensive against legislation, HR 1943 and S 974, that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to allow Amish children as young as 14 to work in sawmills for religious reasons.

This issue was covered a couple of weeks ago in a lengthy article in the New York Times (which you are downloading from the Taipai Times because the @#$@# Times charges for web articles after a week.)

"This is the 21st century," said John R. Fraser, who headed the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division in the Clinton administration and opposed the Amish exemption when it was first proposed in the late 1990s. "We should certainly respect and tolerate religious and cultural beliefs that date from centuries ago, but it would be irresponsible and dangerous to begin to tolerate 17th- and 18th-century practices with respect to child labor."

But while child-labor opponents seek to keep teenagers away from hazardous machinery, the Amish have an additional goal: to keep those teenagers busy with gainful work and so away from hazardous enticements.

In a letter to Congress, UFCW argues that

This legislation would undermine the existing child labor laws in a direct and simple manner. It would create a loophole in the existing law by permitting Amish youth as young as 14 years of age to be employed in Amish owned sawmills.

There are numerous problems with this proposal. It undercuts the existing child labor laws; it opens up what is already one of the most dangerous industries for adults; it has potential constitutional problems regarding the First and Fourteenth Amendments; and it would lead to unequal treatment of Amish-owned sawmills vis-à-vis non-Amish-owned sawmills. In addition, it would lead to the difficult and confusing situation of Department of Labor inspectors trying to verify the religious faith of the owners and the youth involved in potential child labor violations.

If your group would like to sign on to a letter opposing this legislation, please contact Tim Schlittner (pr10001@ufcw.org) or Michael J. Wilson (mwilson@ufcw.org) by this Friday October 31.

If It Ain't Broke, Break It

OSHA Training Grants Can Do Good; Let's Cut Them

"One thing they're teaching is not only training, but how to fight for our rights," Hernandez said. "It was awesome. Really awesome."

That statement is from Juan Carlos Hernandez,

a 22-year-old Mexican immigrant, was working as a line cook at a restaurant a couple of years ago when he sliced his index finger with a knife.

His manager rushed him, bleeding and in pain, to the hospital, sat with him while he waited, and paid for his stitches. And then he took him right back to the restaurant to resume his work.

"I thought he would drive me home to my house," Hernandez, dumbfounded, recalled one day last week. "He drove me back to the restaurant and said, 'Do what you can do.' "....

After the accident, he returned to the restaurant in pain, his hand wrapped in bandages, unable to lift boxes or hold a knife. The battle with his manager continued for days, he said, until he quit.

Hernandez was lucky enough to be part of the Latino Occupational Safety and Health Initiative, a project with New Labor, a New Brunswick worker training group and Rutgers University, funded by a $212,000 OSHA training grant.

The project has had some success helping workers -- most of whom are day-laborers -- who are difficult to reach.

New Labor ... has done what few other groups have been able to: It's become a gathering point for
the Spanish-speaking work force by offering English classes, social functions and, recently, workplace safety training.

Now let's take a moment and put all this in context. OSHA has been attempting, since the beginning of the Bush Administration to replace the $11 million worker training grant program with a $4 million web-based program. In fact, this scaled back training program was somehow justified as a major expansion of their immigrant outreach program. According to Assistant Secretary for Labor, John Henshaw,

Safety and health training grants are another tool OSHA will use to address the unique problems of non-English-speaking workers. In its FY 2003 budget, the Agency proposes to change the focus of its training grant program. Workplaces have changed significantly, and are employing an increasing number of workers from a myriad of cultures with different languages, literacy and educational levels. OSHA will provide grants to non-profit organizations and professional organizations, colleges, universities and community colleges as well as faith-based and community-based organizations. Grants will enable these groups to establish programs to train employees and small business employers in selected occupational safety and health topics; programs that can continue after the grant has ended. Materials posted on the web will have broad applicability and allow for easy access and training at the convenience of both employers and employees.

Now tell me please how that statement corresponds with the reality that immigrant workers face:

"It's the type of employment, the temp agency and day labor scene, where employees may be digging ditches one day or in a chemical warehouse pouring bleach the next," said Michele Ochsner, assistant director of the Rutgers Occupational Training and Education Consortium. "Contract labor or day labor tends to fall through the cracks."

Happily, the Senate has restored the full $11 million every year, realizing that Henshaw's fantasy of immigrant workers coming home from their day jobs and settling down for the evening in front of a their computer for a little web-based training in whatever job they may be doing the next day makes little sense in the real world.

New Labor uses the "small group" method of peer training where "participants not only learn technical information and skills, but also the problem solving, critical thinking, communication and teamwork skills."

As Juan Carlos Hernandez said at the beginning of this artice:"One thing they're teaching is not only training, but how to fight for our rights,"

Try learning that from a web page.

Wal-Martian Chronicles

The combination of the grocery strikes in California and other states, along with the arrest of hundreds of illegal immigrants at Wal-Mart stores last week has inspired a number of good articles about Wal-Mart, how it's abusing its workers, what it's dong to the economy and how it's forcing American citizens to subsidize its profit margin.

The holidays are approaching and lots of us will be heading back to the homestead where the friends and family will be jumping in the SUV to shop at Wal-Mart. Before they jump in the car, ask them if they knew that:

• "Wal-Mart pays its in-house workers only $7 to $8 an hour. The federal poverty line for a family of four is $8.70 an hour. Wal-Mart's health insurance is so costly that fewer than half its workers can afford it. Many aren't even eligible." (1)
  
  
• "Lawsuits pending against the company in 30 states charge that Wal-Mart routinely forces workers to work off the clock without pay, locking them in stores until they finish cleaning up." (1)
  
  But isn't the point to keep prices low for consumers?
  
  
• That's irrelevant. "A recent calculation based on payroll data showed if Wal-Mart gave all of its workers a $1-an-hour raise, the impact on prices would be one half of one cent." (1)
  
  
• "Last year, Wal-Mart had profits of $8 billion. The CEO received $18 million in total compensation." (1)
  
  
• Nearly 50 complaints have been issued against Wal-Mart by the National Labor Relations Board, "showing that Wal-Mart has prevented its employees from distributing union materials, interrogated and threatened employees who are trying to organize, taken unlawful disciplinary action and fired union supporters, and even gone to the extreme of closing entire departments in a community like Jacksonville, Texas, when Wal-Mart meat workers voted for a union." (1)
  
  
• "With no health insurance, low wage workers are forced to go to emergency rooms for routine care. To make ends meet, they must apply for food stamps and rental assistance, use subsidized child care vouchers and draw on other government services. This means we the taxpayers are involuntarily subsidizing low-wage employers." (1)
  
  
• "Wal-Mart's relentless drive to deliver low prices now directly saves American consumers $20 billion a year by one estimate -- and probably several times that sum once the indirect effect on competitors is factored in." (2)
  
  
• But, "to win Wal-Mart's business, suppliers have been forced to close U.S. factories and source overseas, with millions of American jobs lost in the process." (2)
  
  
• "Wal-Mart alone accounts for 10 percent of all imports from China, and its shelves bear little trace of the "Buy America" philosophy of its founder." (2)
  
  
• Wal-Mart "now accounts for 35 percent of food sales, 30 percent of consumer staples, 25 percent of drug store products and 15 percent of magazines, books and apparel. Entire chambers of commerce have been wiped out with the arrival of a new "superstore," while "greeting customers at Wal-Mart" has replaced "hamburger flipping" in the national debate over wages and trade. " (2)

Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post attempts to answer the question how "a wealthy society to assure all workers a minimal standard of living."

I'm talking about a minimum wage that would put a family with two full-time workers above the poverty line in high-cost metropolitan areas -- and no doubt put upward pressure on wages at places like Wal-Mart.

Or how about requiring employers like Wal-Mart to provide all workers with affordable health insurance, including part-timers and recent hires.

And what about labor laws effective enough to prevent companies such as Wal-Mart that instruct managers never to hire anyone who once belonged to a union, that routinely fire any employee seen talking to a union organizer and that fly in special teams whenever a store's employees score too high on a "union probability index."

Yes, such measures would likely force Wal-Mart to raise the price of jeans and chicken wings by a nickel or two, slow its growth, and maybe even shave a fraction of a point off real GDP.

But that's not the issue. The issue we ought to be debating is what is an acceptable price to pay to restore a measure of fairness, equality and economic security to Wal-Mart nation. That is fundamentally a political issue, not an economic one.

My feeling is, if you can't beat 'em, organize 'em.

For more information about Wal-Mart and the grocery strikes, check out You Are Worth More.

Washington Ergo Vote A Week Away

As the final countdown begins in Washington state, the battle rages over the nation's only effective, comprehensive ergonomics ergonomics standard. If Yes on 841 wins, the ergonomics standard will be repealed, and the state would be barred from ever adopting another ergonomics rule unless required to by the federal government.

The vote on Initiative 841 comes a week from today. There has been no recent polling and there are no other major issues on the ballot, so both sides expect turnout to make the difference.

Before I proceed to rant and rave, a review of recent developments:

• The U.S. Navy adopted the Washington State ergonomics rule last week. So much for the argument that the rule is based on junk science. (The Department of Defense, by the way, has also has very good ergonomics policies for some time.)

  "We saw Washington's rule as a great tool to identify risk factors (for ergonomic injuries) so we wanted to adopt it for the Navy," said Cathy Rothwell, a Navy Ergonomics Program Manager based in San Diego. "The feedback we've gotten from people in the field is that they like the checklist. It is widely accepted and widely used as an easy way to identify hazards."

• The bad news is that business lobbying groups financing Initiative 841 have launched a $1 million TV and radio advertising campaign. They are trying to scare Washington voters into repealing an important work safety rule and forbid the state from adopting another rule to prevent debilitating ergonomic-related injuries.
  
  The I-841 campaign's high-priced California political consultants have recommended playing upon people's biggest fears: Loss of their jobs and loss of health care benefits. So I-841 TV and radio ads claim jobs will be lost and children will lose health insurance.
  
  
• The good news is that the "Yes" side is falling short of their fundraising goals, having blown a good part of their wad on getting signatures to put the initiative on the ballot. To the rescue rides the National Coalition on Ergonomics, the D.C. based, Chamber of Commerce sponsored group that brought us the repeal of the federal standard. NCE has been actively fundraising, urging members to send check to "Workers Against Job Killing Rules, Yes on I-841." (Do I sense a whiff of job blackmail here?)
  
  And what are they using to strike fear into the hearts of potential donors? The specter of labor advertisements. "If previous congressional ad-campaigns are anything to go by, you can expect ads with mothers unable to lift their children and other disabled workers who blame the lack of ergonomics rules for their situations." Such ads would not be surprising, considering the number of actual mothers who can't lift their children and other workers who are disabled because of the lack of ergonomics standards.
  
  But even with their money problems, the good guys are still being outspent. Feel free to contribute.
  
  
• You may recall a posting I wrote last month about an article written by confessed serial corporate "expert witness" Steven Moss where Moss admitted to being part of a group of highly paid expert witnesses who are hired and paid by one side in a case, and "get compensated for saying what the lawyers want to hear." And that Moss's firm, M.Cubed, was the consultant that came up with the notorious estimate that the Washington State ergonomics standard would costs the state $750 million.
  
  Turns out the Association of Washington Business (AWB), one of the main backers of Prop 841, is SHOCKED, SHOCKED that a business consultant could possibly ever think that his lucrative contract might depend on his williness to "say what the lawyers want to hear."
  
  As might have been expected, the AWB was not amused by Moss's article because it makes them and their cost figure look like idiots. In fact, they are so displeased that they are threatening to sue Moss to get back the money they paid for the "study." They didn't pay him to give them what they wanted to hear. No, no, they paid him for an accurate study done in good faith.
  
  Accurate. Yeah, that's the ticket.
  
  Moss is now claiming that when he wrote about his slimy profession and his foul deeds, he didn't mean this study. No, no no. This study was, in fact, accurate and done in good faith.
  
  OK, that clears it all up.

Now, it's almost too easy to make fun of these organizations and their stupid arguments. But, as we have learned, stupid sometimes wins, especially when combined with money and organization. So make no mistake. This is deadly serious. As I've written before,

The stakes here are extremely high for a number of reasons. First, the ergo foes have failed so far to repeal the standard in the legislature or in the lower courts. The Washington Supreme Court is still considering an appeal by business to overturn the rule, but the good guys expect to win. The referendum is their last chance. If they lose, they are out of options. A win will have nationwide implications for workplace safety: the already difficult task of getting other states to issue ergonomics standards -- a process that could put pressure on the federal level -- will become very nearly impossible

But there are other reasons that it is imperative to defeat this referendum. Like the California gubernatorial recall, Initiative 841 is another example of big right-wing dollars being used to distort the referendum process and democracy itself. If not for the huge amounts of money used to hire professional canvassers and flood the media with misinformation, the referendum never would have reached the ballot.

Finally, like the repeal of the federal ergonomics standard, right wing ideologues are using lies, distortions and massive amounts of money to subvert the administrative process by which agencies comply with their mandates to do what Congress and the state legislatures intended for worker protection laws to do -- protect workers.

Having been through this fight a number of times before, it never ceases to amaze me how all the same stupid arguments continue to show up:

Businesses do accept that ergonomics standards are a good practice, but they would prefer to voluntarily adopt them. An enterprise could follow guidelines that would be customized to its specific type of business rather than be forced to follow Labor and Industries' strict approach.

In theory, this could work. There are indeed incentives to strong self-imposed standards. These include the avoidance of lawsuits by injured workers, higher workers' compensation rates, sick leave expense and the cost of training and replacing injured workers. No one wants injuries

What planet is this guy from? Sure voluntary is great. It would be great if we could have voluntary speed limits, voluntary securities rules, voluntary assault guidelines. We wouldn't need all of those damn police with their one-size-fits-all laws.

And since when can workers sue their employers for musculoskeletal injuries? And don't even get me started on how well workers comp functions as a safety motivator -- especially for musculoskeletal injuries. But hey, "in theory," voluntary standards could work. It could happen. Anything's possible.

But the people who actually do the work, like nurses, aren't buying it:

The American Nurses Association says every year, 12 percent of the nation's RN's leave their jobs because of back injuries. Maggie Flanagan blew out her back moving a hospital monitor and spent 8 months rehabbing.

"It was so bad, I didn't think I was coming back to work, that's why I'm so passionate, I know people that did not come back," says Maggie Flanagan.

***

"Bottom line, you take care of your workers and make sure they're protected," says Washington State Nurses Association's Barbara Blakeney.

But the nurses worry without ergonomic mandates, companies won't voluntarily comply, leaving no one to watch their backs.

And Judy Middleton isn't buying it either:

The ergonomics rule was intended to help people like Judy Middleton, a 60-year-old grocery checker from Kent. Middleton started working as a checker nearly 40 years ago and still puts in at least 80 hours a month to keep her health insurance.

With all of the bending, lifting and repetitive motions they have to do, grocery workers are among those most vulnerable to ergonomic hazards.

Over the past decade, Middleton said she has undergone surgeries for two hernias and for carpal-tunnel syndrome in both wrists. "My arms were sleeping and I wasn't," she said.

She had to miss six weeks of work for each of the carpal-tunnel operations.

Middleton, who until recently was oblivious to the fight over ergonomics, said she isn't sure whether it's something government should be trying to enforce. But she is convinced there are things grocery stores can do, such as better designs for check stands, to reduce the risk of injury.

At the QFC store where she works, checkers must lift items out of the customer's shopping cart and slide them across the scale or scanner. "All of it," she said. "The pumpkins, the turkeys, the watermelons, the six cases of beer. You ache when you go home."

Bottom line, of course, is that this thing has to be stopped. As most of you faithful readers can't vote in Washington State, you may be wondering what to do. Aside from sending money, call or e-mail any friends or relatives you have in Washington. Direct them to the No on 841 website. Urge them to vote against 841 and to spread the word to their friends as well.

One industry representative described Initiative 841 as their "last, best chance" to kill ergonomics rules in this country once and for all. Let's make sure that this will be the last we'll ever hear from them.

Labels: Ergonomics

Hepatitis C Plagues Inmates and Officers in Michigan Prisons

There was a chilling series in the Lansing State Journal reporting that

Between 12,000 and 18,000 of Michigan's 48,800 prisoners are believed to harbor the hepatitis C virus. Yet the state - citing cost and effectiveness of available drugs - is treating just 55. Prison officials say they don't know how many guards are infected.

Hello? Why don't they know how many guards are affected? How about confidential screening? Seems like important information to have.

Hepatitis C is nothing to scoff at:

Four times more prevalent than HIV, health experts say hepatitis C, a potentially fatal virus that attacks the liver, is now the infection causing the greatest threat to public health in modern times.

A third of all cases are among prisoners.

Consider these facts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

• In the 14 years since its discovery, hepatitis C has become the most chronic blood-borne infection in the United States.
  
  
• It's the No. 1 reason for liver transplants nationwide, accounting for about 1,000 procedures a year - about 50 of those in Michigan.
  
  
• By 2010, hepatitis C will kill 30,000 people a year - twice as many Americans as AIDS.

"This is a huge public health issue that must be addressed, or it will only get worse," said Dr. Robert Griefinger, former chief medical officer for the New York State Department of Correctional Medical Services.

Hepatitis C is the only strain of the virus for which there is no vaccine or cure. But drug therapy can reduce the virus to undetectable levels in up to 80 percent of patients.

All The News That's Fit For Spit

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Buy Them

When I look at the situation that working people find themselves in today -- plant closings and unemployment, lack of health care insurance, weak health and safety protections, attacks on pensions and overtime -- as well as the general state of the economy, the balooning deficit, the war in Iraq, corporate/oil industry influence at the EPA and Department of Interior that is doing irreversable damage to the environment (OK, take a breath), I wonder why that joker in the White House has even a 5% approval rating, much less a 50% approval.

Then I ask myself, "Jordan, where do think most Americans get their news about government the economy? And what kind of news do they get?" The answer is that too many get it from the right-wingernuts (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc) on cable T.V. and radio.

The problem is that even those who actually still read the newspapers and watch "objective" T.V. news are getting a skewed view.

There are two excellent -- but disturbing -- MUST READ articles this week covering this issue. (Must Read means that you must click on the links below, print out these articles (the trees will forgive you), sit down in a quiet room with a highlighter, and study them. Then send them to friends.)

First, read the interview with national treasure Bill Moyers on Buzzflash. (I had been considering starting a Moyers For President campaign, but now I'm thinking that a Moyers for God campaign may be more appropriate.)

Moyers notes that the news (T.V. and print) is covering many fewer stories dealing with government and many more "entertainment" pieces:

Does it matter? Well, governments can send us to war, pick our pockets, slap us in jail, run a highway through our back yard, look the other way as polluters do their dirty work, slip tax breaks and subsidies to the privileged at the expense of those who can't afford lawyers, lobbyists, or time to be vigilant. Right now, as we speak, House Republicans are trying to sneak into the energy bill a plan that would prohibit water pollution lawsuits against oil and chemical companies. Millions of consumers and their water utilities in 25 states will be forced to pay billions of dollars to remove the toxic gasoline additive MTBE from drinking water if the House gives the polluters what they want. I can't find this story in the mainstream press, only on niche websites. You see, it matters who's pulling the strings, and I don't know how we hold governments accountable if journalism doesn't tell us who that is.

You get what James Squires, the long-time editor of the Chicago Tribune, calls "the death of journalism." We're getting so little coverage of the stories that matter to our lives and our democracy: government secrecy, the environment, health care, the state of working America, the hollowing out of the middle class, what it means to be poor in America. It's not that the censorship is overt. It's more that the national agenda is being hijacked. They're deciding what we know and talk about, and it's not often the truth behind the news.

I'm quoting here rather extensively, because it's important for people to understand what's going on this country, and why we need to dig deep than just calling voters "idiots" when they vote against their own interests:

Look, the founders of our government, the fellows who gave us the First Amendment, didn't count on the rise of these megamedia conglomerates. They didn't count on huge private corporations that would own not only the means of journalism but vast swaths of the territory that journalism is supposed to cover. When you get a handful of conglomerates owning more and more of our news outlets, you're not going to find them covering the intersection where their power meets political power.

The fact is that big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are the undisputed overlords of politics and government today. Barry Diller came on my PBS program and talked about what can happen when the media and political elites gang up on the public. Diller says we have a media oligopoly. Kevin Phillips says we have a political oligarchy. Talk about a marriage made in hell! Listen, these guys are reshaping our news environment. They're down in Washington wining and dining the powers-that-be insisting that any restriction on their ability to own media properties is a violation of their corporate First Amendment rights. They want to be the gatekeepers not only over what we see on television and hear on the radio but how we travel online.

Journalists feel squeezed -- those who simply believe we are here to practice our craft as if society needs what we do and expects us to do it as honorably as possible. There's another study around here somewhere done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and The Columbia Journalism Review. More than a quarter of journalists polled said they had avoided pursuing some important stories that might conflict with the financial interests of their news organizations or advertisers

And when you're done with the Moyers, check out Frank Rich in the "Arts" section of the Sunday New York Times. (He was moved off of the Editorial Page recently. The good news is, he is able to write longer articles in the "Arts" section.)

Rich's argues that the Bush Administration's effort to cover up the bad news by "going over the heads" of national journalists is doomed to failure. After describing a rare, but especially agressive interview with an Administration official by Nightline's Ted Koppel, Rich observes that

There will be others, because this administration doesn't realize that trying to control the news is always a loser. Most of the press was as slow to challenge Joe McCarthy, the Robert McNamara Pentagon and the Nixon administration as it has been to challenge the wartime Bush White House. But in America, at least, history always catches up with those who try to falsify it in real time. That's what L.B.J. and Nixon both learned the hard way.

Let's just hope history catches up the current round of bad guys before next November.

U.S. and Europe: Can't We All Just Get Along?

I’ve written now several times about the REACH (most recently here), the European Union's efforts to reform chemical policy, and the opposition to these changes from the American chemical industry and the U.S. government. Now, as involved citizens, I think it’s necessary for all of us to help our European friends understand the American position on all of this.

First, in the way of background, a little good and a little bad news. The most recent bad news is in this October 24, 2003 Wall St. Journal article (for which I have no link):

European Union officials significantly narrowed the scope of a proposal to test tens of thousands of chemicals for health and environmental hazards, lowering the estimated cost of the measure by billions of dollars.

The move by the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, comes amid a lengthy and aggressive campaign against the proposed measure by President Bush's administration and the chemical industry.

The good news is:

Despite the changes, the U.S. government and the chemical industry remain critical of the proposed measure, which shifts responsibility for testing to manufacturers from government and requires registration and authorization for thousands of high-use chemicals. U.S. policy permits the use of about 30,000 chemicals that predate testing requirements under the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976….Commerce Secretary Don Evans called the latest draft a serious blow to the chemical industry.

The changes, according to the Journal:

The final draft, for now, excludes chemical products known as polymers. In addition, if less than 10,000 metric tons of a chemical is produced world-wide, it would be subject to less scrutiny, a change that affects as many as two-thirds of all chemicals. The proposal also relaxes requirements for companies that use intermediaries, or chemicals to make other chemicals, and allows manufacturers some confidentiality surrounding the data that testing may yield.

Environmentalists say the proposed measure still restricts dangerous chemicals and places the onus for safety on industry. But they accuse the commission of creating loopholes to satisfy the Bush administration.

So, as I said, we need to help our Euro-buddies understand why our government and our chemical industry (without whom, life itself would be impossible) think the way they do.

First a speech by U.S. Ambassador to the EU Rockwell A. Schnabel

Many of the conflicts that exist in the economic relationship between the United States and the European Union are rooted in divergent regulatory approaches, says U.S. Ambassador to the EU Rockwell A. Schnabel at a Sept. 15 conference on “Understanding Chemical Control Policies: International Perspectives” in Stockholm, Sweden: “These divergences often arise from different attitudes about risk and safety, and the respective roles of governments and private actors in minimizing the former and maximizing the latter,”.

Let's look at the real meaning of some of this diplomat-speak:

"Different attitudes about risk and safety": Schnabel explained what this means before: “European regulators did not take enough business input into their decisions and that they were concentrating too much on environment and health at the expense of growth and trade.”

"Respective roles of governments and private actors in minimizing the former [risk] and maximizing the latter" [safety]: In the U.S., affected industries spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and advertising to persuade lawmakers that regulation restricts the free market and hurts American businesses, and therefore, jobs. American businesses also give huge sums of money to candidates as campaign contributions. According to a recent conversation I had with a European diplomat, this process would be considered bribery in his country, but in the United States it's considered “being accountable to the public.”

And don’t let the ongoing American corporate scandals scare you off. American businesses really know what’s best for you.

OK, now that that’s clear, let’s move on

The big danger in all of this, of course, is that an economic relationship on the scale of the U.S.-EU relationship simply can’t afford to get bogged down in these regulatory divergences. Even if our regulatory policies are not explicitly designed to disrupt trade, differences in regulatory approach can all too easily result in trade problems. And that’s not good for our relationship, nor for the 8 to 10 million people on both sides of the Atlantic whose jobs depend on transatlantic trade and investment.”

"Differences in regulatory approach can all too easily result in trade problems." This one’s easy. If you all don’t shape up, two words: Trade war

OK, now we’re going to get a bit more sophisticated:

The role of science in the development of regulatory policy is also a major issue. We are particularly concerned over the threat that the EU' s expansive use of "precaution" poses for the principle that risks need to be carefully assessed on the basis of sound science. (emphasis added)

And then there’s this by Charles P. Ries, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Of State For European And Eurasian Affairs:

Earlier this year, the Commission unveiled its first draft proposal that, to put it plainly, was riddled with problems. First of all, it was grounded on their problematic "precautionary principle" instead of science-based risk assessment.

Let's look at some more definitions.

Precaution: (1) Not assuming that chemicals are innocent until proven guilty through sickness, death and environmental degradation (2) Not assuming that chemicals are “safe” just because they were in use before the passage of the Toxic Substances Control Act. (3) Paying up front to prevent health effects and environmental damage, instead of paying much more later to clean up the environment and bring people back to life (oh, never mind.)

Sound Science: There’s more to these two words than I have time to deal with here. Basically, the words “sound science” mean ignoring, changing, or selectively using science to fit industry’s political objective, generally to defeat or reverse environmental and public health and safety rules and protections.(See here and here and here for more). In other words, “sound science” is what the industry can use to undermine regulations, as opposed to “junk science” which is what all current and proposed workplace safety, environmental and public health regulations are based on.

The sound science argument is not just used in the chemical debate. It was also a favorite among the anti-ergonomics wingnuts. This from a National Coalition on Ergonomics fact sheet.

MYTH: "Ergonomic programs in individual companies are working; thus an ergonomic standard will work."

FACT: There is a huge and unbridgeable gap between anecdotal evidence and a sound scientific foundation. Individual companies are well positioned to study and determine what works for their employees. However, anecdotal examples do not support imposition of a regulation across an entire economy. Absent sound scientific evidence, OSHA cannot extrapolate from these isolated examples to a national rule.

And this from a speech by NCE spokesperson Laurie T. Baulig

We are not "the just say no" coalition. What we oppose is an ergonomics standard that is not science-based. After all, any standard that does not have sound science behind it cannot achieve its intended objective of reducing workplace injuries and illnesses...morning. At this time, the science simply does not exist to regulate ergonomics.

What seems to be missing from this analysis is that fact that the science behind ergonomics was not only voluminous, but backed by major literature reviews by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and twice from the National Academy of Sciences.

"Whose jobs depend on transatlantic trade and investment" This can be summed up in two more words – and listen up labor unions: Job Blackmail

Ok, enough seriousness. Now it’s time for a little comic relief, courtesy of “Rocky” Schnable:

And let me emphasize here parenthetically how important it is – as we develop standards which protect consumers at the lowest cost to our producers - that we work in international organizations such as the WTO to ensure that developing countries, especially China, also adhere to these standards, bear the same costs and level the playing field.

One word should do for this one: Bwa ha ha ho heh he snort – wait, let me catch my breath – ho ha ha hee hee, ho! Hee, hee… Oh, Rocky, what a card! You slay me!

One more

We are committed to engaging to share our own experiences with chemical regulation in ways that we hope will be constructive.

Translation: Our experience with chemical regulation is that: (1) We have regulations that are almost completely ineffective and we like it that way, and (2) We have intimidated the Democrats out of even talking about more effective workplace safety or environmental regulations. That’s our experience and we're trying to "share" it with you. Deal with it.

More from Assistant Deputy Secretary Ries

As such, it [REACH]effectively shifted the burden of proof for industry to unworkable levels. Just as importantly, it would have required testing all new and existing chemicals, to even those that have been in everyday use for decades, and it would have imposed these testing requirements even on downstream users of chemicals.

"Even those that have been in everyday use for decades:"OK, students of the Toxic Substance Control Act, what strikes you here? Tick tock. Time's up. Yes, Johnnie, you’re right. You’ve clearly been reading past issues of Confined Space. You knew that when TSCA was passed, it “grandfathered” in chemicals in commerce prior to December 1979, which still make up 99% by volume of all chemicals used in the United States today. These chemicals are considered safe unless the Environmental Protection Agency can demonstrate that they present an “unreasonable risk” to human health and the environment on a chemical by chemical basis.

Finally, to bring all parties together, European Commission Delegate Gerard Depayre stated at a recent Congressional hearing his fervent hope that

A solution to both these problems can only be reached through dialogue and close cooperation between regulators. The ideal result of such a dialogue should be to arrive at harmonised regulations. Failing this, efforts should be made to ensure maximum convergence of regulations on both sides of the Atlantic which makes possible the mutual recognition of equivalence of regulations

To which Gary Littman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce graciously responded

We have no intention to advocate the importation of the European regulatory practice in the U.S. Nor do we wish our problems on our European partners. The business community is not advocating the creation of supranational regulators for the Transatlantic market. Our goal is to rid this market of duplicative or incompatible rules.

It is up to the U.S. Congress and its counterparts in Europe to both compel and enable regulators to cooperate

Yeah, and the horse you rode in on!

Translation: You can take your "convergence" and "harmonization" and shove it up your )*&*(). It's our way or the highway. You've got a problem with your enviro-green-weenies and your corporate concern for society, we've got our own enviros and the plague of trial lawyers. You need to control your own brats. We've managed to control the runaway regulators in this country and you need to do the same if you want good trade relations with us.

So there.

EPA Lies. Lungs Die

So does this kind of stuff really surprise anyone anymore?

The top Environmental Protection Agency official charged with protecting air quality was warned repeatedly by staff that proposed changes to a Clean Air Act rule could undermine efforts to force certain power plants to add anti-pollution equipment, according to a report by the General Accounting Office.

Nonetheless, Jeffrey Holmstead, the assistant EPA administrator for air and radiation, told two congressional committees in July 2002 that the revisions the administration was considering would not hurt those efforts, which involved agency lawsuits against owners of 35 coal-fired power plants.

More here.

We Have Mail!

Sometimes people read this blog and get quite exercised. (Which is the point of this exercise.)

This is in response to the posting I did on OSHA’s cancellation of the nursing home inititiative.

What a farce! If we don't need this how come our Workers' Compensation rates continue to soar in this area? If the money employers spent on controvert claims was put into enough good ergonomic equipment, training and staff we could all become winners. OSHA has sold the workers out. Why put money into equipment and staff when it's a lot cheaper to pay a $1600 penalty and then controvert any injured workers' claim with one your Corporate lawyers?

Diane Moats RN
Health and Safety Director
CWA 1168/Nurses United

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Acts of God, Acts of Man

I have written an article for Working USA which is linked here. Here is the intro provided by Working USA:

In one sense, the tremendous improvements in workplace safety over the past 90 years seem to have made deaths on the job less remarkable. However, Barab points out how we take our cues from the mass media, which highlights the deaths of astronauts, but virtually ignores the deaths of day laborers or construction. Barab also observes that the most expendable Americans— immigrants and the poor— do some of the nation’s dirtiest and most dangerous work, and might be considered less expendable if both media and society treated the dangers they face with greater respect. He calls on the labor movement and the safety and health community to confront this problem head-on and develop an educational strategy to rectify the distorted idea that some lives are more valuable than others.

The Weekly Toll

Two Mine Fatalities: An Alarming Trend

ORANGEBURG, SC --- ...The first metal and non-metal fatality occurred Sept. 22 at Holcim when Antonio Gonzalez, 39, of Ridgeville was using a back-hoe to dig out along the side of a building to replace a retaining wall. The victim and the two co-workers were in a 15-foot-deep hole when the bank caved in, burying the victim. A second employee received minor injuries while a third co-worker escaped injury.

Farmer dies in fall from his tractor

JONESVILLE, Mich. — A man died Thursday while working in the field on his Jonesville farm, the Michigan State Police said.

Troopers from the Jonesville post were dispatched to a N. Cronk Road farm just after 11 a.m. where they found Manual Lavern Peiffer, 68, in a field. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The investigation revealed that a seat malfunctioned on Mr. Peiffer’s standard tractor, causing him to fall backward and strike his head and neck on a hard object, authorities said. Although they are uncertain as to what he hit, investigators believe it was a part of the equipment he was driving.

The fatal accident was the second at the plant in under two years. A worker was killed in February 2002 during the construction of a cement kiln at the site.

No violations of standards were found, and no citations were issued for that incident.

The other state fatality occurred Sept. 26 at the Greenville Hanson Aggregates Southeast Inc. Sandy Flat Quarry when a 17-year veteran road tire technician was injured
while using a truck-mounted tire handling crane.

Construction Workers Killed in Fall

LEOMINSTER,MA (AP) -- A construction worker died Friday when he plunged 170 feet from a communications tower being built off Route 2 in Leominster, Massachusetts. More here.

Tyson's Food Worker Killed by Hydrogen Sulfide

The death of 31-year-old Jason Edward Kelley remains under investigation by the Occupational Hazard Safety Administration, said Miller County Investigator Tom West.

Kelley was working at the Tyson River Valley animal foods plant between Fulton and Texarkana when he reportedly collapsed and died at 1:30 a.m. Oct. 10.

Derrell Reynolds, coordinator for Miller County Emergency Management, said plant officials notified them that they were dealing with a possible hydrogen sulfide leak. Hydrogen sulfide is colorless and has the smell of rotten eggs. It is lethal in small doses.

Auto Worker Crushed in Machinery

NORMAL, IL - A supportive father of his sports-playing sons and excellent parent to all five of his children is how John Foster of Metamora is described by school officials who knew him.

Foster, 42, of 204 N. Prairie St. was killed on the job Thursday at the Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America plant in Normal after becoming trapped on a conveyor system.

Worker Crushed by Forklift

ROCKLEDGE, Fla. -- A worker died in the hospital after he was crushed by a forklift he was driving. Police say the man was working at Wojac's Nursery in Rockledge.

Butcher Shop Worker Killed

Summit, PA . A butcher shop worker was killed yesterday when a deer hunter ran over him as he backed up his vehicle near the Summit facility.

Woman, injured at work, gives birth, dies

A Cloverdale, Ohio, woman who was hurt in a factory accident early yesterday gave birth to a 26-week-old baby by cesarean section before dying of her injuries.

Following the accident, which occurred shortly after midnight at Progressive Stamping, , Inc., a metal-stamping plant in Ottoville, Ohio, Monica Boecker, 23, had her baby at St. Rita’s Medical Center, Lima, Ohio.

The headline of another article cited "worker error" as the cause, although later in the article, OSHA inspector Dick Tracy explained:it is a company’s responsibility to provide a safe working environment for its employees. Included in that requirement is ensuring that devices are in place to shut machines down when employees are put in dangerous situations. Often this involves a device placed on the operating controls that prevents the machine from accidentally being turned on.

This requirement, referred to as "lock out, tag out," means that each employee controls the power to the machine they are working on.

"The purpose of lock out, tag out is to ensure that every employee exposed to danger while working on a machine controls the release of that machine’s energy," he said, adding that each employee should have a control to shut down the machine.

"No other employee should have control of turning the machine on if someone is in a danger zone. If that condition occurs, a violation exists."

Mr. Tracy would not comment on whether this requirement was a factor.


School bus hits, kills workman

A construction worker died Wednesday after he was struck by a school bus on the Near Northside. Indianapolis police said the worker had just stepped out of a truck when he was hit by the passing bus.

Construction Worker Killed

CABAZON, CA - A worker died Monday at the new Casino Morongo construction project when an object struck him on the head, according to authorities.

The Riverside County Sheriff's Department identified the man as Bobby Holmes, 22, of Whittier.


Worker Killed on Skid-Steering Vehicle

MILLERSBURG, OH – A Millersburg man was killed in a work-related accident on Saturday.

Ernesto Solis, 23, was fatally injured apparently while operating a skid-steering vehicle at Holmes Byproducts, 3175 Township Rd. 412, Millersburg, said Nathan Fritz, Holmes County chief deputy. Solis was originally from Honduras.

Solis was working by himself in an area at the company and was found by other employees, Fritz said.


Diver Killed

St Louis, MO -- A diver doing contract services for the Ameren Energy Generating Facility in Coffeen, Illinois when killed in a diving accident Monday.

The facility, about 65 miles northeast of St. Louis, is a subsidiary of Ameren. It uses water from Coffeen Lake in part of the cooling process as electricity is generated.

The diver, Paul Patterson, 29, of Hebron, Indiana,
and two helpers were part of a team hired by
Ameren Energy to provide routine maintenance.

Ameren officials say a miscommunication between Ameren Energy and the dive team was to blame for the accident. They say Patterson may have been placed down the wrong hatch, into an intake for the facility. This apprently made an already dangerous situation deadly.


Long Island Railroad Worker Killed

A deadly accident on the Long Island Railroad: A worker was killed when he was hit by a train. The victim is a 41-year-old flagman for a work crew, it was his job to alert the crew when a train approaches.

The victim is a 41-year-old flagman for a work crew. It was his job to alert the crew when a train approaches.

The train hit him near the Copiague station. The crew was just about to start work on the third rail when the the train ran the over the worker.

Worker Killed at Steel Plant

OTTAWA, Kan. (AP) -- A worker died at an Ottawa steel plant Friday when he was pinned between a steel post and a 4,000-pound steel plate, authorities said.

Ottawa Police Chief Jeff Herrman said Chet M. Fredericks, 20, of Williamsburg, was killed in the accident at about 8 a.m. at the Ottawa Havens Steel plant.

Fredericks was operating a remote-controlled crane to move steel plates from a storage yard to the steel-fabrication plant when one of the plates fell and pinned him against a steel post, Herrman said. Fredericks was working alone in the yard and was found by another employee.


Employee killed in pipe-plant accident

A 36-year-old worker was killed Thursday morning when he was pinned between a cart and catwalk at a Saginaw plant.

Ramiro Gonzalez, whose chest was crushed in the impact, was pronounced dead at the scene at 9:40 a.m. despite efforts by another worker to resuscitate him, said
homicide Sgt. J.D. Thornton.


Worker Killed in Front End Loader Accident

ANDOVER, Mass. -- Police say a construction worker was killed in an accident at a school construction site Wednesday afternoon.

Lt. Kevin Winters said the worker, a 23-year-old male, as killed at about 5 p.m. when the small front-loader he was operating fell through a second floor wall to the ground.

Construction Worker Killed In Backhoe Incident

COLUMBIANA — A construction worker who was injured in an accident on West Railroad Street died Monday.

Rick Repp, 45, Youngstown, died Monday afternoon from internal injuries suffered from a work accident that occurred Monday morning.

A bucket from a track backhoe fell to the ground and then rolled on Repp. The bucket apparently came loose where the quick-connect pins attach it to the arm, according to a worker who witnessed the accident.


Worker Killed in Trench Explosion/Coillapse

PAGE, AZ -- A city of Page employee was killed and another injured Tuesday morning when an explosion collapsed a trench in the city's industrial area.

City Manager Bo Thomas said Ritchie Singer, 49, was pronounced dead at Page Hospital at 9:35 a.m., after being buried for 15 minutes in the water-line trench near the ISG Block Plant on Highway 98 about 8:24 a.m.


Worker Killed in Roof Collapse

An apartment pool-house in Gulfport collapsed Friday afternoon. One man was trapped underneath the crushed roof and died, another man got out alive.

The men worked for M.B. Demolition and Construction of Biloxi. They were trying to tear down the old pool-house at the "Brittany Apartments" on DeBuys Road when the structure suddenly collapsed.

37-year old Donald McClain of Biloxi died. The other worker, 51-year old Frederick Foster, was hurt. He was treated for minor leg injuries and released.

Man Struck and Killed by Garbage Truck

WANDO, SC--State investigators continued Wednesday probing safety issues at B.P. Cooper River Chemical Plant in Wando, where a 50-year-old employee died after being struck by a garbage container truck, the second such incident in the Lowcountry this week.

Edward Coaxum, a 25-year employee of B.P., was outside the plant at 7:20 a.m. Tuesday when he was struck by a Fennell Container Co. truck. He died at Medical University Hospital, said Berkeley County Coroner Glenn Rhoad

Labels: Weekly Toll

America Going Socialist?

Americans Favor Single Payer Health Care System

This is a fascinating conversation between ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings and ABC News' Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson:

Jennings: The conventional wisdom is Americans like to think that we have the best health-care system in the world.

Johnson: And we do, certainly for people that are very rich or who have very good health insurance and who have very good connections into the health-care system. But for too large a number, 43 million, and many who are underinsured, it is not the very best system in the world.

Jennings: So what was notable in that regard in this poll this time?

Johnson: What was notable is that 62 percent of our population said that they would favor a system of universal health insurance financed by the government, paid for by the tax payers, as opposed to the system we now have, the employer based system where many people are uninsured. I was stunned by that figure.

Jennings: I think conventional wisdom has it that in America, land of the free, that the marketplace is where the price is best established.

Johnson: That's true for commodities like a car, where you can go in and make choices and you can even walk out of the showroom if you want. You can't do that when you're sick. You can't do that with health care. So, for health care, you're talking about a service and here I think the private sector has some real shortcomings. They have to spend a lot of overhead on sales and marketing and choosing the patients they're going to serve. They shuffle a lot of paperwork.

Jennings: Now, I think that the conventional wisdom is still the single-payer system, as you and others have described it, is socialized medicine and that isn't for the U.S.

Johnson: Socialized medicine means that the government both finances healthcare and owns and operates the doctors and the hospitals.

Jennings: Like Britain?

Johnson: Like Britain. In Canada, it's a split system. The government indeed does collect the money and disperse it. They run the financial part of health care. But the delivery system is free. People can choose whatever doctor or hospital they want to go to. So, we have a system like that in this country. It's called Medicare. That's exactly what happens with Medicare. So, to call the Canadian system socialized is to call Medicare socialized. I think it's a pejorative word and inaccurate.

Jennings: When I walk past people who know that we're doing this series this week and I mention the single-payer system, they just say, "Never in America."

Johnson: I've talked to elderly people who say they love Medicare but they don't want the government involved. They forget that the government has a role to play in setting standards, maybe in handling the money with lower administrative costs. It would be a tragedy for the government to try to run the health-care system in terms of delivery.

Jennings: On top of which, many Americans hold it to be conventional wisdom that private is better than public. Period.

Johnson: In fact the government does a few things well. And I'll hold up one example in the health-care system: The NIH, the National Institutes of Health, is the shining gem of medical research in this entire world. It's owned and run by the government. They can do some things well, especially when it comes to health care. Not everything, but some things.

OK. So now all we have to do is convince the insurance industry (and those in Congress that they support) to go away.

Chemical Plant Security: More Compromises

Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., have reached an agreement on a compromise chemical plant security bill. I have written before (here and here and here) about the chemical plant security debate and the competing bills sponsored by Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and Senator Inhofe. Chafee, a moderate Republican, has been opposing Inhofe's bill until this agreement was reached.

As you will recall, Senator Jon Corzine's chemical security bill called for regulations that, among other things, would have required chemical facilities to move toward "inherently safer" production -- for example substituting safer chemicals for potentially hazardous ones and reducing the quantity of hazardous chemicals kept in the plant.

But regulations are a major no-no for this Administration, so Senator Inhofe came up with a more voluntary approach that would have required chemical companies to simply submit vulnerability or security-improvement plans to Homeland Security, but not require companies to consider using alternatives to current chemicals and practices.

Corzine's bill was passed unanimously in Committee last, but later dropped by Senate leadership when the American Chemistry Council launched a multi-million dollar campaign against it.

To win votes from holdouts such as Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., Inhofe agreed that chemical plant operators should have to make what he called "a good-faith effort" to at least consider using safer technologies and less toxic chemicals.

The bill would also make chemical plants submit annual status reports on their vulnerability to the Homeland Security Department.

Corzine was not impressed, arguing that the "compromise" between Chafee and Inhofe "would not require firms operating plants near population centers to replace volatile chemicals with safer compounds -- when and where possible and cost-effective. "

"The legislation approved today continues to provide far too many loopholes," Corzine said. "The bill fails to require review and approval of industry security plans, which may end up on a shelf, collecting dust. It also fails to require implementation of safer technologies, even in cases when they are cost-effective and their use could save many lives."

In addition, Corzine blasted the Inhofe bill for imposing criminal penalties on federal employees who publicly disclose a company's security plans but calling only for civil penalties if companies violate the law.

Corzine did not say he would oppose the bill, but rather claimed he would work to improve it during debate on the Senate floor.

The bad news is that the committee is expect to pass the bill. The good news is that, even if the committee and the full Senate pass the bill, the House is unlikely to act this year.

Labels: Chemical Plant Security

Maybe They Need Some Real Unions

Things are bad in Chinese workplaces:

BEIJING, Oct. 23 — New work safety rules and beefed-up enforcement have failed to reduce the death toll in China's mines and factories so far this year, and a government official acknowledged that the problem "has not been completely addressed."

Accidents took the lives of 11,449 workers through September, an increase of 9 percent over the corresponding period a year earlier, according to national data released Thursday. The official tally shows the number of deaths dropping slightly in notorious coal mines, but rising in other mines and jumping by 19 percent at factories and construction sites.

The undiminished carnage reflects the relatively low priority that China's government puts on safety. There is heavy emphasis on raising production, and workers are forbidden to form independent unions.

Although China's new leaders have promised to overhaul the way they manage the economy to better reflect the needs of workers and peasants, top leaders rarely speak about the enormous numbers of casualties in a wide variety of industries. They have continued to repress workers who voice concerns about poor labor conditions as potential threats to the Communist Party's hold on power.

What's interesting is the important role that strong, independent unions are assumed to have in assuring safer working conditions...in China.

In this country one rarely sees the link made between strong unions and safer working conditions.

REACH For Chemical Safety

Every year, more than 60,000 people in the United States die from preventable diseases caused by exposure to chemicals and other agents in the workplace…. Together, workplace illnesses and injuries are estimated to cost more than $145 billion annually in the United States, on par with the cost of all cancers combined or the total cost of heart disease and stroke.

This sounds like something that our compassionate government would want to do something about, doesn’t it?

Well, the European Union is about to address this problem through its REACH program, an shocking idea that tosses out the notion, promoted by the chemical industry, that chemicals should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

REACH stands for Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals, and is intended to address both workplace exposures and environmental pollution in the European Union.

Under REACH, chemical manufacturers and importers would be required to gather and report the quantity, uses and potential health effects of approximately 30,000 chemicals. About 1,400 of these chemicals are known or suspected to be carcinogens, reproductive toxicants, persist in the environment or to accumulate in body tissues. The initiative would subject these 1,400 chemicals to an authorization review similar to that used in the regulation of pharmaceuticals. Approval of any use that could result in human exposures would be predicated on a thorough assessment of safety considerations and alternative products.

I have written before about the "precautionary principle" and the fits it is causing among U.S. chemical manufacturers here and here, which also link to some excellent articles in the American Prospect.

REACH is based on a 2001 European Commission “White Paper on a Future Chemicals Strategy,” outlining the Commission’s intentions for a fundamentally new integrated chemicals policy. The specific objectives include:

• Making industry responsible for generating knowledge on chemicals, evaluating risk, and maintaining safety—a duty of care;
  
  
• Extending responsibility for testing and management along the entire manufacturing chain;
  
  
• Substitution of substances of very high concern and innovation in safer chemicals; and
  
  
• Minimization of animal testing.

EU officials are currently touring the United States, traveling to Washington D.C., San Francisco, Chicago and Boston where they will be meeting with U.S. government officials, environmentalists, academics, union staff and workers to explain the initiative. The tour is being sponsored by the University of Massachusetts at Lowell's Center for Sustainable Production which you should check out for much more information.

The tour comes only days before the European Commission is expected to issue its proposal for debate by the European Parliament and Council over the next year. As might be expected, these developments are generating a considerable amount of concern among American chemical companies and other businesses. And they're not taking it lying down.

A report issued recently by the Environmental Health Fund revealed a major campaign on the part of the Bush Administration and the U.S. chemical industry to weaken the European program: “As these documents show, the US government essentially operated as a branch office of the US chemical industry.” And for the usual reasons: it would cost too much money, put jobs at risk and it would restrict trade by banning certain chemicals.

The American attitude was put most succinctly last year, as I’ve reported before, by the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Rockwell Schnabel who

complained in a Wall Street Journal Europe op-ed that European regulators did not take enough business input into their decisions and that they were concentrating too much on environment and health at the expense of growth and trade.

Schnabel has also warned the Europeans that

The EU has a right and a duty to protect its citizens, but must do so in a way to avoid excessive or inappropriate regulations which increase the cost of producing goods and services and place jobs at risk.

Organizations like the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), representing over 300 large companies, have joined in. The NFTC calls REACH "a growing attempt to limit trade through the use of technical barriers:"

The EU is intent upon protecting the public from all potential risks associated with industrial and technological advancement. Suspect activities include not only those conducted by longstanding industries applying advanced technologies (e.g., chemicals, autos, aeronautics, electronic and electrical equipment, cosmetics and all related downstream industries), but also those engaged in by newer industries themselves defined by the cutting-edge technologies they employ (e.g., biotechnology, nanotechnology, biocides, etc.)...What is apparent is that the EU has once again created a ‘strawman’ of hazard for the purpose of protecting the public against an unidentifiable and unmeasurable harm to humans or the environment that has not yet materialized.

Well, I don’t know about a “strawman,” but addressing harm “that has not yet materialized” is what the “precautionary principle” is all about.

Some industry representatives have even called REACH a national security threat to the United States because foreign governments will have control over the chemicals U.S. companies can sell, without our input.

Of course what American companies may really be worried about is not what those crazy Europeans do over there, but that their ideas may spread over here. Chemical safety in this country is largely regulated by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Passed in 1976, TSCA does a fairly good job requiring chemical manufacturers to test and prove the safety of new chemicals.

The main problem with TSCA is that when it was passed, it “grandfathered” in chemicals in commerce prior to December 1979, which still make up 99% by volume of all chemicals used in the United States today. These chemicals are considered safe unless the Environmental Protection Agency can demonstrate that they present an “unreasonable risk” to human health and the environment on a chemical by chemical basis.

The ineffectiveness of TSCA was made clear in a 1994 Report by the U.S. Government Accounting Office that found that since TSCA was passed, EPA has only been able to restrict only five chemicals (PCBs, chlorofluorocarbons, dioxin, asbestos and hexavalent chromium.)

According to the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that less than ten percent of the approximately 2,800 high production volume chemicals (those produced over one million pounds per year) have a basic set of publicly available toxicity information;more than forty percent lack any toxicity information at all. Even less is known about chemicals produced in smaller volumes or mixtures of chemicals. Yet, this lack of evidence of toxicity is often misinterpreted as evidence of safety.

Europe currently has a similar system where only new chemicals require testing and approval. The European REACH program, does not grandfather chemicals, but bases their regulatory requirements on the amount in use, as well as the hazard category they fall into. In addition to making the environment and the workplace safer, the Europeans hope that requiring the registration and testing of all chemicals will encourage companies to innovate and find safer substitutions.

The American companies’ fears of imitation be not be totally unfounded. According to the Lowell Center, San Francisco passed its own precautionary principle ordinance in June 2003 which integrates precautionary principles into the city’s purchasing policies by choosing only the safest alternatives for specific product categories such as cleaners and pesticides.

A group of scientists, public health advocates, labor unions and environmental advocates in Massachusetts have developed a bill, Act for a Healthy Massachusetts was introduced (which I’ve written about before.) that would require substitution of 10 priority chemicals where safer alternatives exist.

Unfortunately, there is evidence that the American pressure, along with growing fears of the European chemical industry may be having some effect, with the British, French and German government becoming increasingly critical of REACH. Debate is raging across Europe.

'Given our understanding of the way chemicals interact with the environment,' noted the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in a recent report, 'you could say we are running a gigantic experiment with humans and all other living things as the subject.'

Vital economic interests are at stake, too. Chemicals are Europe's third-largest manufacturing industry and a large and profitable exporter. But although Reach has often been portrayed (not least by the DTI) as 'a threat' to a successful employment and export sector, the reality is that the current regime has done it no favours.

Because today's rules implicitly favour existing products, which don't have to be tested, over new ones, the European industry lags behind Japan and the US in innovation.

Meanwhile, its poor image has become a major handicap in the competition to woo talented graduates to take up a chemical career.

REACH still has a long way to go before it becomes law. It has to be considered by the European Parliament and Council, which will be debating it through next year's parliamentary elections as well as the addition of ten new countries into the EU next year.

Despite the obvious debate between European environmentalists and the chemical industry, it is amazing to this reporter, a scarred and battleshocked veteran of numerous American regulatory wars, how substantive and civilized the discussions in Europe are. While the final shape of REACH is still unclear, all parties seem to agree that the current system is broken and something needs to be done.

It's that consensus that may be the most worrysome development to American companies who are used to getting their way through lies and blackmail.

OSHA Puts Reactives Guidebook on Web

Cheapskate Companies Applaud.

As promised by Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA John Henshaw, the OSHA webpage is now providing free access to the Center for Chemical Process Safety's book Essential Practices for Managing Chemical Reactivity Hazards. This is apparently being done instead of revising OSHA's Process Safety Management Standard, as recommended by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.

I already wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. So I'll just paraphrase what I wrote then:

Anyone who can't afford to buy a book (even a really expensive book) on their own has no earthly business running a plant that processes hazardous reactive chemicals.

So on behalf of the Hooterville General Store and Petroleum Refinery, thanks OSHA.

P.S. Do you think we're all idiots?

Labels: Chemical Safety Board

New "Zero Lift" Web Discussion Forum

As OSHA cancels its Nursing Home Initiative, the Work Injured Nurses Group (WING USA) has stepped into the breach, starting a new web discussion forum "offered in hopes of being helpful to those working toward safe patient handling."

The forum is designed "to facilitate communication and collaboration among those working toward safe patient handling."

Check it out here.

Wing USA was started by Anne Hudson, an R.N. who suffered a career-ending back injury from lifting patients

Since suffering a work-related spinal injury in June of 2000, and losing my position solely because I was unable to continue heavy lifting, I want to help increase awareness of what can and does happen to back-injured nurses across the country.

Check out the WING USA main site here. The site contains an enormous amount of helpful information and ammunition for nurses seeking to improve their working conditions.

Asbestos Agreement: Almost Out of Time and Patience

Imagine my pleasure and surprise the other day when I read in the New York Times: "Agreement Reached on Asbestos Bill."

Labor, industry, trial lawyers, and insurance companies have been trying, in vain, for years to reach an agreement on fair and affordable compensation for victims of asbestos exposure. An agreement had been reached on the concept of a trust fund, but there was no agreement on the size. Until now?

So you can imagine my disappointment when I actually read beyond the headline and discovered that the only participants in teh agreement were the insurers and manufacturers -- but no labor. What did they agree to? A trust fund that was $40 billion smaller than the already too small version agreed to by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Neither the AFL-CIO nor the Washington Post were amused.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist badly wants an agreement before Congress adjourns next month, but time and tempers are growing short:

Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, sponsor of an earlier proposal for an asbestos victims' fund that congressional auditors say would be worth about $136 billion, was more blunt.

"They (the unions) have to get off their duffs and tell us what they want," Hatch told Reuters in a Capitol hallway.

"That's not what they told us last week. They told us that (the $114 billion proposal) was their final offer," Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO's occupational health official, said when told of Frist's and Hatch's comments.

Seminario, speaking by telephone to Reuters, said it was not fair to say that labor had not made its position clear. Months ago, she said, the AFL-CIO said it favored a proposal by Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy that would provide a compensation fund for asbestos victims of between $128 billion and $185 billion.

She said AFL-CIO officials were prepared to continue talking to senators about the issue, but doubted a bill of such complexity could be finished in the waning weeks of this year.

Labels: AFL-CIO, Asbestos

Shop 'Til Workers Drop: The Specter of Wal-Mart

Strikes Spread. AFL-CIO Issues Report on Wal-Mart Health Care Abuse

Los Angeles isn't the only city where grocery workers are on strike (or being locked out) and Wal-Mart is being blamed

Officials at Kroger and the nation's other dominant supermarket chains -- Ahold, Albertsons and Safeway -- cite competition from Wal-Mart Stores and other box stores moving into the grocery business as a reason to hold the line on labor costs.

Those costs include health care benefits that are the sticking point in United Food and Commercial Workers union strikes of 3,300 workers at 44 Kroger stores in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio; 70,000 workers at three Southern California chains; and 10,000 workers at three chains in Missouri.

And it's not good for workers' health either:

At the Cross Lanes Kroger, striking UFCW workers say Wal-Mart's opening five years ago cost their store $100,000 in weekly receipts, between a third and a half of the store's income.

In response, workers say, Kroger has slashed the store's payroll from 86 to 45 full- and part-time workers.

"All we hear from management is, 'Do more,' " said Kay Underwood, 49, a 29-year Kroger employee. "We did an employee survey, and the number of us on Paxil, Prozac, blood pressure medicines -- you name it -- has gone sky-high. We're killing ourselves for this company."

Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO has just released a study on "Wal-Mart's Race to the Bottom on Health Coverage"

As 70,000 grocery store workers are on strike to keep affordable health care, Wal-Mart’s role as the force driving the race to the bottom in health care benefits has risen to center stage. “The grocery store workers striking with the UFCW are taking a stand for all American working families who are being squeezed beyond their limits by our broken and inadequate health care system,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. “As Wal-Mart continues to leech off communities, forcing taxpayers and workers to pick up health care costs, it does tremendous damage as it drives other companies to do the same.” While historically providing good health benefits to their employees, the supermarkets now argue that they must shift greater costs onto workers in order to counter the cutthroat competition they face from Wal-Mart.

I've written several pieces on Wal-Mart and the grocery strikes (see below), and you can also find more comprehensive information on these strikes as well as other retail store strikes and organizing campaigns at You Are Worth More, a webpage created by UFCW Local 789.

UAW & USWA Sue OSHA over Metalworking Fluids

The United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers Unions filed a lawsuit against Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao over OSHA's failure to issue a standard protecting workers against the hazards of metalworking fluids.

"The UAW petitioned OSHA to take action on metalworking fluids 10 years ago," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. "Since then, millions of factory workers have been exposed to these hazardous chemicals. Tragically, some have developed asthma, pulmonary fibrosis or other severe respiratory ailments, while others have cancer because of the metalworking fluid mists they've been forced to breathe at work."

"The United Steelworkers is proud to join with the UAW in helping the working men and women who are being exposed to these hazardous chemicals in their workplaces," said USWA President Leo Gerard. "All we are asking is that OSHA do its job and take needed action to protect the health and safety of American workers."

According to OSHA

Metalworking fluids (MWFs) can cause adverse health effects through skin contact with contaminated materials, spray, or mist and through inhalation from breathing MWF mist or aerosol. Millions of workers engaged in the manufacture of automobiles, farm equipment, aircraft, heavy machinery, and other hardware are exposed to machining fluids.

Skin and airborne exposures to MWFs have been implicated in health problems including irritation of the skin, lungs, eyes, nose and throat. Conditions such as dermatitis, acne, asthma, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, irritation of the upper respiratory tract, and a variety of cancers have been associated with exposure to MWFs (NIOSH 1998a). The severity of health problems is dependent on a variety of factors such as the kind of fluid, the degree and type of contamination, and the level and duration of the exposure.

The current 5 milligrams per cubic meter, although the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has recommended a standard 10 times more stringent -- 0.5 milligram per cubic meter. The UAW first petitioned OSHA for a standard in 1993 and in 1999 OSHA's Standards Advisory Committee voted to recommend that OSHA adopt the same standard suggested by NIOSH. Nevertheless, OSHA took metalworking fluids off of its regulatory agenda last year.

"OSHA has failed miserably in its responsibility to protect American workers," Gettelfinger continued. "Our lawsuit with the Steelworkers seeks to right this wrong, and offer our members and other workers who are exposed to these chemicals the protection they deserve."

An Intolerable Outrage: Forgotten Victims of 9/11

$87 billion for Iraq. Meanwhile, back on the home front....

David Rapp used to pride himself on being an active guy. A 250-pound construction worker, he drove piles on the Williamsburg Bridge and on projects all over the city. He could carry a sack of cement on his shoulder as easily as you carry an order of takeout sushi back to your desk. He liked fixing cars. He went crabbing in Jamaica Bay.

Then came September 11. Rapp spent several months at ground zero, drilling steel reinforcements into the “bathtub wall”—the slurry wall between the pit and the Hudson River that prevented the water from flooding the area.

Rapp’s illness began with a faint dizziness and shortness of breath, but it steadily got worse. Before long, he was useless to his former employers. They laid him off. Now Rapp is very, very sick. He’s suffering from severe pulmonary disease—meaning he never gets enough air. He has frequent respiratory infections. He’s on twelve medicines. He carries an oxygen tank wherever he goes. “I just went straight down,” Rapp says, his voice somewhere between a whisper and a rasp. “It’s real depressing.”

***

Rapp is one of perhaps thousands of people who are not cops or firefighters but who toiled at ground zero and are now sick, even disabled, from asthma, chronic infections, and other respiratory illnesses. These conditions, some experts maintain, were caused by the “crud”—the mixture of dust, ash, fumes from burning plastic, pulverized concrete, and vaporized human remains around ground zero.

Unlike the cops and firefighters whose heroism—and subsequent illnesses—have gotten huge amounts of attention, these other workers lack the medical safety net and pension enjoyed by the guys in uniforms. So they are scrambling for treatment in all kinds of ways. Some are on waiting lists for financially strapped private programs. Others are still battling for workers’ comp. Still others are defying doctors’ orders and working—because with a job comes health insurance. While some have found temporary treatment, they all share an uncertain future, with no guarantee that they’ll get the long-term care they’ll need.

The reason for this is not hard to divine. Two years have passed since the attacks, and there has been no comprehensive effort by the federal government to treat people who got sick helping out at ground zero. Incredibly, thousands of people are ill from a national disaster, and the federal government is AWOL.

Labels: 9/11 World Trade Center Workers

Washington State Ergonomics Campaign Update

The campaign against Proposition 841 which seeks to repeal Washington's ergonomics standard goes on:

Every year, 50,000 Washington workers suffer these kinds of "soft tissue" injuries such as carpal-tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. These injuries are expensive. Nearly half the cost of our state's workers-compensation system is attributed to these injuries. When business complains about the increasing cost of workers' compensation, doesn't it make sense to look at proven ways to reduce costs?

From an Op-Ed in today's Seattle Times by Washington State Labor Council President Rick Bender.

The "No on 841" Web Page is here.

Labels: Ergonomics

DOE to Sick Workers: Chill

This is certainly a surprise: The Department of Energy is dragging its feet coming up with data to determine whether former nuclear weapons workers were made ill by exposures on the job.

Worker advocates want the program moved from DOE to the Department of Labor.

A federal program established three years ago to help compensate thousands of workers made ill by exposure to toxic materials at government weapons facilities is "failing" and needs to be reorganized, according to a bipartisan group of senators.

The Department of Energy has not properly implemented the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, creating a seven-year backlog of claims, the senators said Friday in a letter to leaders of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on energy and water development.

The 10 most dangerous jobs in America

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5,524 Americans were killed on the job last year. This was down 6.6% from 2001, and the lowest level since 1992 when this survey started.

Nevertheless, that's still over 2,600 more than were killed on 9/11, yet the war on workplace death hasn't quite reached the same level as the war on terrorism. After all, these were "just accidents." Careless workers, acts of God, "just one of those tragic things."

Let's be careful out there.

(The actual BLS Survey can be found here.)

L.A. Strikes Over Health Care: The Hidden Issues

It always amazes me, although it really shouldn't after all of these years, how there can be so many news stories over a strike and many of the main issues still get lost.

For example, reading most news articles, one might think that three Southern California grocery chains are on strike. Actually, however, only Vons is on strike. In a show of management solidarity, Albertsons and Ralphs have locked their workers out.

The other piece of missing information is what the fight is really about. To read most of the papers, one would think that the strike is over a simple $5 co-payment and $15 a week for family coverage that the companies want to impose. BUT

On the surface, the changes proposed to the grocery workers' health benefits appear minimal: Where employees now pay no contributions to their health care premiums, they would have to contribute $5 per week per employee for single coverage, and $15 per week per employee for family coverage.

This is the only thing employees are directly being asked to pay, said Stacia Hill Levenfeld, a spokeswoman for Albertsons. She said no other changes were written into the proposed contract, which has not been disclosed.

But it's not the $5 or $15 a week the workers are striking over, said Mickey Kasparian, president of UFCW Local 135 in San Diego. What the union disagrees with, he said, are costs that would result from lowered employer contributions into a trust fund that pays for insurance premiums.

"This is not about us being stubborn and walking on a picket line for five bucks a week," Kasparian said. "It has to do with the entire cost of the plan."

According to Kasparian, the grocery stores now pay $3.78 into the employees' insurance fund for each hour an employee works. But he said the rejected proposal called for lower contributions for new hires, reducing them to $1.35 per hour.

As new employees are hired over the three-year contact, Kasparian said, that would reduce the fund to around 50 percent of its current worth. He said that would eventually force the chains to cut back on benefits and go with more bare-bones insurance options. These would most likely carry with them higher co-payments for out-of-pocket expenses such as office visits, prescription drugs and hospitalization.

Other cuts would also have to be made, Kasparian said, including the elimination of some of the health plans that union members choose from.

How most Americans would know this without reading several newspapers is beyond me. It's not beyond me, however, how too many Americans still view unions as selfish and unreasonable.

And then there's this. The supermarkets justify their hardline on the fact that Valdemort's Wal-Mart's coming. (See posting immediately below.) While it's true that Wal-Mart's growth has threatened supermarket chains (and workers) in many parts of the country, the spectre of Wal-Mart may serve as a convenient excuse for many companies' self-inflicted wounds:

The supermarket companies have all been warned by Wall Street to get their costs under control or risk seeing their stocks shunned like sour milk. But other than Kroger, whose management appears to be widely admired by investors, the companies have been struggling with self-inflicted wounds. Safeway has been dealing for years with the results of a series of mismanaged acquisitions it made across the country and with the aftermath of a 1986 leveraged buyout, which saddled the company with debt. Albertsons, whose operational systems are less efficient than those of its rivals, has been a chronic also-ran behind its two big rivals in many cities where all three compete.

These ills hobbled Albertsons and Safeway when the economy turned down. By some measures, in fact, most of the companies' losses of revenue over the last couple of years can be blamed on the recession, which discourages the purchase of high-profit goods such as fine wines and specialty foods. "If you look at comparable-store sales among food retailers today," Mark Husson, a supermarket analyst for Merrill Lynch, told the trade magazine Supermarket News last month, "if they're down 2%, I think 1.5% of that is due to the economy."

That suggests that the Wal-Mart issue is merely a convenient stalking horse for labor concessions the supermarkets would be asking for anyway. Although Wal-Mart has announced plans to create 40 California "supercenters," the behemoths that include grocery departments, none has been built in the state and the schedule for a rollout is murky.

To get more information from the horse's mouth, check out the workers' strike page here.

California Supermarket Strike and Lockout: Something Wicked This Way Comes

As usual, the supermarkets are acting like jerks, to put it mildly. But the real culprit may be here [See Above]: Wal-Mart.

Many factors explain Wal-Mart's ability to charge low prices, including economies of scale, the pressures it puts on suppliers and its embrace of imports — it imported $12 billion in goods from China last year, one-tenth of American imports from China.

Another big factor is Wal-Mart's relatively low wages. Its sales clerks average about $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, while the poverty line for a family of three is $15,060. In California, the unionized stockers and clerks average $17.90 an hour after two years on the job. Mr. Flickinger said wages and benefits for Wal-Mart's full-time workers average $10 to $14 per hour less than for unionized supermarket workers.

And check out Calpundit (a fellow blogger's) take, along with comments.

By the way, has anyone ever noticed how much Wal-Mart sounds almost like "he who shall not be named," Valdemort?

Where's Harry Potter when we need him?

Highway From Hell

This is an tragic story of death on the highway, unsuccessful government-citizen attempts to influence the work of the industry that creates many of the conditions for those deaths, and the inability of government to find the fiunding to make the highways safer.

In a nutshell, the Port of Los Angeles is only open during regular work hours when it disgorges 47,000 trucks onto the 24 mile Long Beach freeway each day, "a number that is expected to double or triple in coming years." Efforts are underway by the LA County Council to get the Port to move cargo 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so that much of the freight can move at night when the freeways are emptiest instead of "flooding the freeway with trucks while commuters are traveling to and from work."

The most recent accident involving one of the trucks occurred when "A northbound tractor-trailer hit a compact car and tore through the center divider at Olympic Boulevard, crushing another car," killing seven passengers in the two cars.

I found one of the most troubling parts of the article to be the California government's inability to come up with funding to modernize the freeway "designed in the 1950s largely for cars but now carrying 15% of the nation's international cargo."

An ambitious plan to rebuild 18 miles of the freeway faltered this spring when residents complained that they had been left in the dark about a project that could remove 800 or more homes in poor neighborhoods. A lack of federal and state funds means that any plan is unlikely to proceed soon, officials say.

"The bottom line is that we need to improve the corridor physically by expanding the freeway, by upgrading the freeway to state standards, and also adding truck-only lanes," said Stephen Finnegan, transportation policy manager of the Automobile Club of Southern California. "The physical improvements need to happen."

The truck crashed into a metal-and-wood barrier on the freeway median. Such barriers on the Long Beach Freeway were to be replaced with concrete barriers as part of a $400-million improvement, but a Caltrans spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail Friday afternoon, "There is no funding at this time to install the concrete barriers" on the Long Beach Freeway from the San Diego Freeway to the San Bernardino Freeway.

In other words, we have situation where the anti-tax foes of "big goverment" are killing people trying to get to work.

Of course, if this were an industrial hygiene problem, fixing the freeway might be considered more of an engineering control -- putting up barriers so that if an accident happens, loss of life will be minimal.

Substitution -- the first choice of the industrial hygiene hierarchy of controls -- would mean getting the truck traffic off of the freeway during peak commuter hours by keeping the port open 24 hours a day. So far, the Port is resisting, citing objections from truckers and warehouses. The City Council isn't buying it. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA),

said he had told the ports he would willingly sit down with the warehouse owners, truckers, shippers and union representatives to try to help work out a new system.

He added, "They've never called on me yet."

Source: My Mother

Good News For A Change

Government-Business-Labor Coalition Helps Immigrant Workers

This is interesting. Hispanic workers in Texas are having some success getting back pay and making their workplaces safer by working with Justice and Equality in the Workplace, a coalition organized in July 2001 to help inform Hispanic immigrants about their rights as workers and to uncover illegal employment practices and discrimination.

The coalition is made up of the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance and Wage and Hour Division, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Mexican, Colombian, Guatemalan and El Salvadorian consulates, the City of Houston, the Harris County AFL-CIO, the Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Hispanic Contractor's Association in Houston, the Associated General Contractors of America's Houston chapter, the Houston Chamber of Latino Business Owners and, lately, OSHA.

Realizing that a disproportionate number of Hispanics die in construction-related accidents, Randy Magdaleno, chairman of the Hispanic Contractor's Association's Houston chapter, wanted to get involved with the coalition.

He said that workers need to get safety training and be encouraged to point out unsafe conditions.

"It may hurt us, but we need to start making changes," Magdaleno said. "We're going to have to speak out and say this is not a safe work environment."

Last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and joined the coalition. Since the coalition formed, the U.S. Department of Labor has received more than 700 complaints and recovered $1.5 million in back wages for immigrant workers. OSHA has issued 35 safety and health standard citations with penalties of more than $90,000 to employers that have broken labor laws by putting immigrant workers in danger. And the Mexican Consulate and the mayor's office have received hundreds of complaints, mostly from those like Herrera who allege they were not paid their wages.

See, I don't just report bad news.

No On 841

More on this later, but in the meantime, check out the No On 841 website, especially the Lies and Lying Liars of 841 page. (That's the Washington State referendum to kill the ergonomics standard.)

Labels: Ergonomics

See No Evil: OSHA Declares “Mission Accomplished” on Ergonomics in Nursing Homes

On the ergonomics front, OSHA is moving from Operation "Hear No Evil" on the recordkeeping form, to Operation "See No Evil" in its enforcement program.

Just over a year ago, Assistant Secretary for OSHA, John Henshaw announced with great fanfare a new Nursing Home Initiative that would attack the high rate of ergonomic injuries, as well as other hazards suffered by nursing home workers.

Henshaw originally justified the program by the fact that:

Nursing and personal care facilities are a growing industry where hazards are known and effective controls are available. The industry also ranks among the highest in terms of injuries and illnesses, with rates about 2 ½ times that of all other general industries. By focusing on specific hazards associated with nursing and personal care facilities, we can help bring those rates down.

On Tuesday Henshaw announced that he was ending the program: Mission Accomplished.

The "National Emphasis Program for Nursing and Personal Care Facilities" was an attempt by OSHA to show that it was serious about ergonomics. Nursing home workers, as Henshaw said, had 2 1/2 times as many injuries and illnesses as private sector workers. And over half of those injuries are from overexertion and other ergonomic problems. (And just to put all of this in perspective, OSHA estimated during the Clinton administration ergonomic hearings that only around one-half of all ergonomic injuries were even reported.)

Nursing homes had been part of OSHA's regular "Site Specific Targeting" program. In fact, 2500 nursing and personal care facilities, out of a total of 13,000 in the private sector, were notified by OSHA last year that their injury and illness rates were higher than average and that they therefore had a higher than average chance of being inspected. Approximately 800 nursing homes would have been inspected under the targetting program, but Henshaw announed that under the NEP, 1000 would be inspected.

Nursing homes were a good place to show that it was serious about enforcement in workplaces that had a high rate of ergonomic injuries. In addition to MSDs, OSHA also targetted bloodborne pathogens, tuberculosis and slips & falls.

So what's the deal? Henshaw had promised to inspect 1000 nursing homes they have inspected almost that many. And despite the fact that they are ending the program, "We will continue to inspect workplaces where there are numerous MSDs, and we will cite employers if they have ignored their responsibility to protect their workers from injury."

So what were the results of those 1000 inspections? According to Henshaw, OSHA has citing a whopping 7 facilities under the general duty clause for failing to protect workers from ergonomic hazards, and issued "alert letters" to 104 additional sites.

The average penalty? Just over $1600, with penalties ranging from $230 to $2975. So out of 2500 nursing homes with injury and illness statistics above average, out of almost 1000 that have been inspected, a total of 7 have received citations for ergonomic hazards -- in an industry where over half of the injuries are related to ergonomics. (For those of you who are mathmatically challenged, that's about 7 tenths of one percent of all of those inspected 3 tenths of one percent of all those on the list.)

That should be enough to strike terror into the hearts of nursing home workers from coast to coast.

But wait, says Henshaw

Of course, the bottom line is not the numbers of inspections or citations we issue. It is reducing workplace injuries and illnesses.

Hmm. Hard to argue with that. So have workplace injuries and illnesses been reduced?

Who the hell knows!

When Henshaw announced the program, the latest statistics available, from 2000, showed that Nursing Home workers were 2.3 times as likely to be injured on the job as the average private sector worker. The current figures (from 2001) show that nursing home workers are 2.4 times as likely to be injured on the job. 2002 numbers won't be available until December.

So, on one hand, Henshaw says that the proof of the pudding is not the number of inspections completed, but the reduction of injuries. On the other hand, we have no idea if injuries have been reduced as a result of the program, but the most important thing is that we've done the inspections. Time to close up shop:

We said we would conduct about 1,000 inspections, and we have done that. I want to let you know today that we have now completed that emphasis program, and we are not renewing it.

Nevertheless, nursing homes are doing so well that instead of inspecting 800 nursing homes next year that would have been expected as part of the targeting program, OSHA will only inspect 400, or half that number.

OK, the number of citations and level of penalties haven't exactly been overwhelming and there is no evidence that the number of injuries is coming down significantly. So what's going on here?

The only thing I can think of is the intense pressure that OSHA has been under by industry anti-ergo zealots that I've written about before.

Or, as SEIU's health and safety director Bill Borwegen says,

OSHA apparently does not see the need to treat a workforce of low paid women who are disproportionately compirsed of people of color - many working as single mothers, with the same degree of protection afforded workers in other high hazard sectors typically with different gender and/or race demographics. And this, after Chao, a former member of the board of directors of a large nursing home chain, promised the Congress and others that she would focus on the needs of nursing home workers soon after becoming the Secretary of Labor.

Henshaw's ergonomics program makes about as much sense as...as...as Bush's economic program. But Henshaw was perfectly clear about one thing:

I want to be very clear about one thing when it comes to enforcement. We do not, have not and will not enforce voluntary ergonomics guidelines. We make this point on page six of the guidelines. And I have made it in letters to senators and representatives, in the frequently asked questions section on our ergonomics webpage, in news releases and in speeches I have given.

And just in case you missed that...

We've also made very clear to our inspectors that when they issue citations and provide examples of ways to fix problems, they should NOT use the guidelines for these recommendations. Rather they should turn to the literature -- there are plenty of examples available.

(And the guidelines are based on what, if not the literature? Oh, nevermind!)

OK, so we have an enforcement program that consists of no standard, wimpy, unenforceable guidelines, fewer inspections, a tiny handful of citations, puny penalties and a flawed recordkeeping system that will further encourage underreporting....

In other words, OSHA's COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO ERGONOMICS.

Labels: Ergonomics, nursing homes, Recordkeeping

Ergo Barbarians Pillage ANSI Ergonomics Standard

The foes of ergonomic protections for workers often remind me of the Barbarian hordes early in the first part of the last millennium.

You know, behead the men, rape the women, enslave the children, burn the village, mow down the crops and then sow the earth with salt. Kill the farm animals and throw them down the wells. And eat their pets.

First, they repeal the federal OSHA standard. When they fail to pass legislation to kill the Washington state standard, they try and fail to convince the courts to kill the standard. Now they're trying to kill the standard with a referendum.

Hmm, did we miss anything? Curses, there's that pesky ANSI standard. Shoot it, stab it, then strangle it and drown it. Make it swim with the fishes.

Since 1990, a committee sponsored by the National Safety Council has been attempting to adopt a "consensus" standard on upper extremity musculoskeletal injuries. Now, after 13 years, the ANSI “Z365” committee is close to finalizing an ergonomics standard.

But not so fast, in response to an appeal from the same ergonomic foes that pushed the assassination of the federal standard, ANSI handed down a decision that both labor and industry spokespersons say will ultimately kill the standard.

I'm really to tired to go into all the details (That's "tired" as in "tired of," as opposed to sleepy tired.)

So this is it in a nutshell:

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) issues voluntary "consensus" standards on a variety of health and safety issues. Industry safety people get together with union safety people, along with a few academics, and they hammer something out that is satisfactory to all parties.

Because they're "consensus" standards, they often aren't as tough as OSHA standards, but because these aren't mandatory government regulations, they can usually work much faster than OSHA, with less political interference. That is, until the ergo barbarians got them in their sites.

See, the ergo Barbarians want no trace of ergonomics left upon this earth. Even a seedling could a giant standard grow. If they could, they'd probably wipe all reference to the Clinton administration's standard from the history books.

But I digress....Where was I?

Oh yes, ANSI doesn't develop the standards themselves. They appoint a "secretariat" that puts together a committee that writes the standard. In this case, the National Safety Council is the secretariat.

The committee, which only addresses upper extremity injuries (not back injuries) has been making steady, but slow progress for over a decade. Last year, they had a final draft and asked for final comments. This was too much for the ergo Barbarians who filled an appeal with ANSI, questioning whether NSC was an appropriate secretariat, due to a number of stupid procedural red herrings issues similar to the procedural red herrings issues made against the federal OSHA standard.

I won't even go into the details of ANSI's decision, but basically they placed a number of burdensome and expensive hurdles on NSC. NSC, not the most worker-oriented organization, has been looking for an excuse to dump the costly, never-ending, and politically controversial hot potato standard for a number of years. Both industry and labor sources agree that ANSI may have given them the reason:

Randy Johnson, vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was "pleasantly surprised" by ANSI's decision.

The AFL-CIO's Bill Kojola argues that "ANSI has basically caved into the rantings and ravings of the National Coalition on Ergonomics."

If anyone really wants the gory details of the ANSI decision, you can find it here. But I wouldn't bother. Go rent some movie about Genghis Khan instead. You'll get the basic idea.

Labels: Ergonomics

Strikes in Los Angeles

This is an interesting article about the grocery store and transit strikes, and police sick-out in L.A

All three unions are protesting proposals that would require them to shoulder higher health-insurance costs, an issue that has been percolating nationwide for more than a decade. In California, the sluggish economy and yawning budget deficit have brought the issue to a head this year, particularly for the sheriff's deputies and the MTA's mechanics, who are in the midst of contract negotiations.

In addition, surging union membership in Los Angeles combined with several recent successful strikes here have likely helped convince union leaders that such actions have
a better chance for succeeding than they did in the past, experts say.

Reality Bites

The holidays are coming. And you know what that means. Those tiresome arguments with your Republican relatives about what a great job the Bush Administration has done in relieving the “regulatory burden” on the poor suffering business community. But it ain’t so.

A standard refrain from Congress all throughout the Clinton Administration was “Help, help. Too many costly regulations. We’re all going out of business. The sky is falling. Woe is us.”

Well, now we have a former EPA administrator of the Republican persuasion arguing pointing out the environmental regulations are good for the economy – even better than EPA has argued.

Bill Reilly, EPA administrator under the first President Bush, writes about the OMB study that came out a couple of weeks ago showing that “the benefits of Environmental Protection Agency regulations -- benefits to both health and the economy -- significantly exceeded the economic costs of complying with those regulations”

Industry representatives, of course, disagreed. Reilly is not convinced:

An industry spokesman quoted in The Post responded to the report by claiming that the EPA typically underestimated the costs when proposing new regulations. That is no doubt a widely held view. It is dead wrong.

And not only was the industry wildly overestimating costs (no surprise there), but even the EPA overestimated the costs of regulations.

Referring to acid rain regulations issued while he was at EPA, Reilly describes reality:

The electric power industry estimated that eliminating one ton of sulfur dioxide (the bill aimed to eliminate 10 million tons) would cost more than $1,300.The EPA, CEA and OMB ultimately agreed on a cost estimate of $600 to $800 per ton. We got it wrong: Over the ensuing decade the cost proved to be less than $200 per ton.

In fact, a review of some of the major regulatory initiatives overseen by the EPA since its creation in 1970 reveals a pattern of consistent, often substantial overestimates of their economic costs. Catalytic converters on cars, the phaseout of lead in gasoline, the costs of acid rain controls -- on each of these, overly cautious economic analysts at the EPA advocated proposals they considered important but projected high-end costs that undercut the acceptance of, and heightened the opposition to, their initiatives. In fact, the OMB report makes clear that the weakness in analyzing the likely impact of new environmental rules lay in a highly conservative calculation of benefits. Where the costs of four major EPA rules in the 1990s were $8 billion to $8.8 billion, the benefits are now calculated to have been between $101 billion and $119 billion.

The main reason estimates of costs and benefits have been off is that official analyses fail to take into account technological innovation in response to regulations.

A 1995 study by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) on several OSHA regulations showed the exact same thing. The OTA

looked at several OSHA standards that had been in effect for a number of years to determine the accuracy of cost and benefit estimates by OSHA and the regulated industries. The study showed that not only does industry grossly overestimate expected costs, but even OSHA routinely overestimated the costs and underestimated the benefits of standards. OTA found that part of the reason that OSHA overestimates costs is that the agency fails to take into account the fact that American businesses are especially talented at developing new technologies that are much more cost effective and efficient than OSHA had predicted.

So cut this article out and take it with you when you head home for the holidays.

Hear No Evil…..

Of course you don’t have to worry about whether those pesky regulations designed to keep workers from being injured are good or bad for the economy if you don’t see any injuries in the first place.

The Washington Post’s regulatory columnist, Cindy Skrzycki describes OSHA’s new recordkeeping form and how it seems to be missing a column for musculoskeletal injuries.

This is as business/Republican dream come true. Sure, they could make the federal ergonomics standard go away. They can get away with wimpy enforcement. But those pesky ergonomic injuries kept accounting for one-third of all injuries and illnesses year after year. So what to do? Make it has hard to count them as possible. Presto Chango, problem solved.

But no. The business community says the numbers will go down because it’s suddenly because of their good deeds:

They argue that the incidence of such injuries is declining because of voluntary actions taken by employers. They insist there is no agreed-upon definition of an ergonomics injury; hence, they are uncountable.
"No one could agree on a definition, so how could you have a separate recording column on it?" said Randel Johnson, vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits at the chamber. "There is no agreed-upon scientific definition. They made the right decision."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics differs.

The bureau uses the same definition to count days away from work caused by such injuries as the Clinton recordkeeoping rule would have used: A musculoskeletal disorder is “an injury or disorder of the muscles, nerves, tendons, joints and cartilage and spinal discs.”

Including that definition in an official OSHA rule would have supplied some of the answers tin a longstanding unresolved debate. What exactly is a musculoskeletal disorder and how does one prove it is work-related? It may have also made it easier for the agency to cite employers for an unsafe workplace due to problems with ergonomics.

And that was the problem. Even though their on course to sweep the problem under the rug, their still having fits about OSHA’s feeble enforcement effort, as I’ve written about before (scroll down).

Business groups have monitored closely and worried about OSHA's approach to ergonomic problems ….. The agency has issued 11 citations, but the penalties in those cases have been small. It also has issued or proposed guidelines for several industries to follow, but these are not mandatory, and the agency can't enforce them. It did create a National Advisory Committee on Ergonomics to study the issue.

So ergonomics situation in the American workplace may soon look better – on paper. But to nurses and poultry processing workers life will only get worse. More pain. More disability. More careers ended. Only no one will notice.

If a worker falls to an ergonomics injury, but no one counts it, did it really happen?

Labels: Ergonomics, Recordkeeping

Too Much of a “Good” Thing?

If that first dessert tasted good, why not have another – with whipped cream this time. Now we’re faced with the biggest deficit in the history of this country, probably in the whole history of mankind, and what are House Republicans planning? A huge tax increase. What else?

The World Trade Organization says that U.S. export subsidies are illegally subsidizing American businesses and to avert a trade war with the European Union, we have to get rid of them. Fair enough.

The Senate says, OK, we’ll cut those subsidies benefiting businesses and make up the the harm it may do to those businesses by cutting their taxes. But then we’ll make up the loss to the budget that those tax cuts would cause by closing existing business loopholes. Makes sense, given the deficit.

But not according to the Republican-Taliban party ruling the House of Representatives.

House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) hopes to complete a bill this week or next that would reduce the Treasury's revenue by around $100 billion over 10 years, but lobbyists say the true cost could be considerably more than the $130 billion version Thomas drafted this summer.

And this coming one week after

The Congressional Budget Office reported that corporate tax receipts in the fiscal year that ended last month had fallen by 11.1 percent, to $132 billion. Measured against the size of the economy, corporate taxes fell to the lowest level since 1983, and the second lowest level since 1936. After tax loopholes and deductions were included, the effective corporate tax rate in 2002 was 24.6 percent, according to a study
released last month by the non partisan Congressional Research Service.

Yeah, that second dessert tasted really good. But tomorrow morning you have to step on the scale and face reality.

Why? Because They're Evil

Teach Your Children Well

I have three teenage children. They're good kids, all relatively free of drugs and sex (as far as we know -- ha, ha.) But my wife and I have clearly made a serious mistake in their upbringing. We seem to have raised them to actually think for themselves, and sometimes even to challenge the unassailable wisdom of their parents -- even when it comes to political issues. Where have we gone wrong?

I have fond memories of sitting my tiny children on my lap every four years to watch the political conventions. I would objectively and dispassionately point out to them how much uglier the Republicans were than the Democrats.

As they soon learned that ugliness is only skin deep, they've also been indoctrinated instructed with never-ceasing waves of well documented and logical arguments about why Republicans are full of sh%#, even if the D's aren't exactly always saints.

And now this! My eldest recently accused me of being unpersuasive in these matters because I'm so biased against Republicans. (And some are her best friends' parents are Republicans -- and they're actually very nice people -- I've met and socialized with them on occasion.)

In fact, I've even received letters from a few Confined Space readers arguing that if I was more "objective" and less biased and partisan, I might be more persuasive. Well, I admit that I may not be "evenhanded," in the sense that our "objective" media seems to think is necessary, but that's not the same as not being "objective." As economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman said

"There's a confusion between objectivity and even-handedness, they are not the same thing," Krugman said. "If Bush said the earth was flat, the reports in the mainstream media would say, 'Shape of the Earth: Views Differ."'

(Anyway, I don't spend all of this time writing this thing so I can be "evenhanded." You've got the so-called "liberal media" for that.)

But I ask you (and my children): Check out the greatest hits from the articles below and ask yourselves: is there not good and evil in the world? And do we not objectively know which is which?

For example, this is from yesterday's Washington Post :

Provisions Benefiting Energy Industry Are Folded into Bill

• For several years the Environmental Protection Agency has been studying whether an increasingly popular -- but environmentally controversial -- drilling technique used by Halliburton Co. and other big oil and gas operators pollutes underground drinking water supplies.
  
  Now Republicans drafting broad energy legislation have decided not to wait for EPA to issue its final report. Instead, the House-Senate compromise on the energy bill exempts the technique, known as "hydraulic fracturing," from some of the controls of the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act.
  
  Hydraulic fracturing "involves injecting a mixture of fluids and sand under very high pressure to crack rock and coal seams, aiding the escape of trapped oil and gas. The technique is spreading because of a boom in drilling for methane gas in coal beds. Most of the richest lodes are adjacent to vast underground drinking water reservoirs."
  
  
• Language agreed to by House-Senate negotiators would, for the first time, end a requirement that construction activities related to oil and gas exploration operate with a permit under the Clean Water Act.

Yeah, I'm sure when Congress passed the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act , they really didn't seriously intend for them to apply to the oil industry. Of course not.

And note the reference to "House - Senate negotiators." They're all Republicans. So who's negotiating with whom?

And, wait a minute... Haliburton. Haliburton. Where have I heard that name before?

• House Republicans are pushing for revisions in underground gasoline storage regulations that could make it easier for companies to get federal aid to clean up leaks and spills even if the companies are financially able to pay, congressional sources said.

All the more money available to put back into Republican campaign coffers. Did someone say "corporate welfare?"

• Meanwhile House GOP officials, led by Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), have insisted that the legislation limit the liability of manufacturers and refiners of the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), which has been blamed for polluting water supplies in California, New Hampshire and other states.
  
  Lyondell Chemical Co., based in [House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay's home state, is the largest manufacturer of MTBE, industry officials say.
  
  The provision would prevent communities from collecting damages resulting from MTBE infiltration into water supplies unless there is proof the product was handled negligently. Manufacturers and refiners could not be sued merely because their products contain MTBE.

You might think they were just trying to save their money for their friends. That's part of it, but there's another motive at work here: "It would strike at trial lawyers, a thorn in the side of the GOP's big business backers and a key source of campaign funds for Democrats."

****

The second example of evil has to do with the battle raging in Texas over the unprecedented mid-term redistricting plan that Texas Republicans, lead House Majority Leader Tom Delay, are trying to push through the Texas Legislature that would eliminate 7 Democratic House seats.

You've all heard about the ongoing battles, boycotts, walkouts, and involvement by the Department of Homeland Security. Now a report by Republican operatives has leaked out, illuminating the motives in all of their most disgusting detail.

For those wishful thinkers who think that the Democrats may be able to take the House of Representatives back sometime in their lifetimes, the success of this plan will make that all but impossible.

The author of the report, Joby Fortson:

appeared to take special delight in writing about what he predicted would be the fate of two Texas Democrats, Frost and Rep. Lloyd Doggett. "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha . . .," he wrote before describing how the plan would affect their districts.

Discussing Frost's district, which runs between Fort Worth and Dallas, Fortson said, "It simply disappears." He said black voters in Fort Worth would be shifted into a Republican-dominated district, black voters in Dallas would be sent to a nearby district that is already heavily black, and Hispanic voters would be moved into another GOP district.

This one's good too:

In another section, Fortson described how the GOP plan would shift Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.) into new, unfriendly territory.

"Chet loses his Killeen-Fort Hood base in exchange for conservative Johnson County," he wrote. "They will not like the fact he kills babies, prevents kids from praying and wants to take their guns. State Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth (R), come on down, you are the next congressman from Texas."

And then there's the inevitable racist angle of this plot, as described in another Washington Post article

A Republican official did not dispute the purpose of the new redistricting plan. "We're not going to get them all, but it puts a number of them behind the eight ball," he said of the Democrats. "Virtually every Anglo Democrat is going to have a rough time."

All of the most endangered Democrats are white. State Rep. Garnet Coleman, a black Democrat from Houston, called the Republican plan "racist" and said that its central purpose is the elimination of elected white Democrats.

"That is the target, because they want to change the face of the Democratic Party to black and brown so they can continue to run racist innuendo in their campaigns," he said. "It is the elimination of [Texas] Anglo Democrats in the U.S. Congress."

Children, come here. Daddy has something to talk to you about......

Worker Trial Against IBM Toxic Chemical Exposures Begins

This will be an interesting case:

Working in I.B.M.'s plant in San Jose, Calif., in the 1970's and 1980's, Alida Hernandez thought she had the dream job, assembling computer disk drives for what was then the most prestigious company in the electronics industry.

But eventually, Ms. Hernandez said, the chemicals she worked with caused her to lose her sense of smell. "I thought it was just part of the job,'' she said. Then two years after she retired in 1991, Ms. Hernandez discovered she had breast cancer and eventually underwent a mastectomy.

James Moore worked in the San Jose disk drive factory for nearly 30 years. In his first four years there, he said, he worked with chemicals that he would later learn were toxic. In 1995, he contracted a largely incurable form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma and has undergone radiation treatment. Mr. Moore, who has retired, says he sometimes has trouble breathing.

Neither Mr. Moore nor Ms. Hernandez can say for certain how they contracted cancer, but both say they know one thing for sure: Through much of their working lives, they were exposed to chemicals on the job that at times made them feel sick, often landing them in the offices of I.B.M.'s on-site doctors who they say would treat them and send them back to work.

And there's more to come:

The suit is the first of its kind in the electronics industry to go to trial. Two hundred fifty similar cases have been filed against IBM -- primarily in New York and Vermont, where Big Blue has semiconductor-manufacturing plants, and in Minnesota.

The workers have already suffered a serious setback – even before the trial begins:

Although the trial has yet to begin, the plaintiffs' case has already suffered a serious setback: In pre-trial hearings this week, the judge granted IBM's motion to exclude its "corporate mortality file," a database of death records of 30,000 employees over a 30-year period. The plaintiffs had this database analyzed by Boston University School of Public Health epidemiologist Richard Clapp, who wrote in a declaration that IBM employees were "dying disproportionately of cancer at a much younger age" than the general population.

IBM contended that the plaintiffs' use of these records, plus an epidemiologist's analysis of them, does not follow any scientific method. “It doesn't show any relation between chemicals and disease,” said IBM spokesman Bill O'Leary.

I haven’t read the judge’s actual decision. One article with more information about this decision stated that the judge also found that “was irrelevant and would be prejudicial and confusing to the jury.”

These accounts are rather disturbing, mainly because of the judge’s lack of understanding of epidemiology. Epidemiology is the study of disease in populations. Epidemiology is not intended to show causation – e.g. that a specific chemical caused a specific disease. It only shows that certain populations may have a higher rate of certain kinds of cancers than the general (unexposed) population. Epidemiologists then attempt to find possible explanations based on previous exposures. It’s not an exact science, but it’s certainly relevant.

And the analysis would be “confusing to the jury?” Why not let the jury decide that.

This is also disturbing as long time readers of Confined Space know because it harkens back to recent warnings of the effect of the Daubert Decision.

Last June, I reviewed a report released by a group of experts in the legal and scientific community entitled Daubert: The Most Influential Supreme Court Ruling You've Never Heard Of:

Daubert was originally intended to assist judges in determining what evidence could be admitted into a trial. But as the authors explain:

The 1993 Daubert ruling directed federal judges to act as "gatekeepers" in the courtroom, using a standard that requires expert testimony to be both reliable and relevant before allowing it to be presented to juries. However, over the past 10 years, some judges have misinterpreted and broadened the reach of Daubert. Some have excluded scientific opinions when there is (or appears to be) disagreement among legitimate scientists; while others pick apart each piece of the scientific evidence presented by an expert rather than assessing the evidence as a whole, the way scientists do.

What this means is that when corporate attorneys manage to cloud the science and confuse the judges, the evidence gets labeled as “junk science” and good cases often get dismissed by the judge before they even get to a jury. Victims of toxic chemicals and drugs are the losers.

This seems to fit that analysis to a "T."

Another problem that the plaintiffs have is that workers are generally not allowed to sue their employer. Workers Compensation is generally the “exclusive remedy.”

Given this stipulation, lawyers for the workers will have to prove that I.B.M. was aware that employees were being sickened by their jobs and chose to cover it up. The case against I.B.M. is one of concealment, akin to a fraud case, rather than negligence.

Stay tuned.

OSHA Regional Administrator Accuses OSHA of Refusing To Test OSHA Inspectors for Beryllium Disease

OSHA is neglecting the health of its own employees, according to Region 8 Director Adam Finkel.

Finkel has accused the agency, specifically Assistant Secretary for Labor John Henshaw, of refusing to provide testing for OSHA inspectors who may have been exposed to beryllium dust while conducting inspections.

Beryllium is an extremely toxic metal that carries a high risk of disease following even very low exposure. Hundreds have already died of chronic beryllium disease (CBD); a fast-progressing and potentially fatal lung disease, the only known cause of which is exposure to beryllium. A blood test used by industry and the U.S. Department of Energy can detect whether a person has been sensitized to beryllium, a necessary condition for the onset of CBD. The test costs approximately $150 per application.

Finkel is one of only 10 OSHA Regional Administrators. He is in charge of the 6-State Rocky Mountain region. According to the whistleblower compliant filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on behalf of Finkel,

Beginning in 1999, OSHA scientists developed a protocol for testing active and retired inspectors. In March 2001, the agency rejected a recommendation to set up a pilot-testing program for beryllium. Then, in April 2002, Assistant Secretary Henshaw announced that the agency would not even provide information or counseling to potentially affected agency employees and retirees.

According to Finkel,

The risks of delay or failure to test are so substantial, and the costs of testing so minimal, that in my view, the only plausible reason to defer or deny testing is fear of tort liability. Such a concern is inappropriate for a public agency.

OSHA had previously accuse Finkel of leaking to the press information about OSHA's refusal to provide testing of inspectors, and was attempting to transfer him out of RA position back to Washington. The transfer was stayed last June by the Merit Systems Protection Board. There are rumors that he has not been transferred back to Washington, but that information has not been confirmed.
More here and here.

It's A Dog's Public Employee's Life

In 16 years working for AFSCME, representing state, county and municipal public employees, I came to a few conclusions:

• Public employees do the most important work this society demands to make life in this country livable and comparatively comfortable.
  
  
• I wouldn't want to do almost any of their jobs
  
  
• They are underappreciated and underpaid. In fact, many people take out their frustration at politicians, or their own problems on public employees.
  
  
• Their jobs are dangerous, particularly due to workplace violence. Year after year, more AFSCME members in social services would be killed than corrections or law enforcement. Violence, added to the other hazards that highway workers, sewage treatment plant workers, hospital workers, etc., etc., experienced, combined with the fact that public employees in over half the states aren't covered by OSHA.

Anyway, it's nice to see an occasional reporter who gets it.

Labels: Public Employees, Workplace Violence

A Good Vintage? Ergonomically Correct Wine

Some California vineyards are switching to smaller tubs in an effort to reduce back injuries among farm workers.

California workers' compensation reports indicate 43 percent of all reported injuries in agricultural jobs were sprains and strains. Overexertion was cited as a cause for 25 percent of these reported injuries.

But the switch to smaller bins is just one part of worker safety programs constantly under review in Napa and Sonoma counties, where agriculture ranks second only to construction in terms of deaths and injuries for workers, according to statistics from the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

***

Grape pickers have a high risk of repetitive stress trauma because they must perform rapid, repetitive motions of the upper body over a long period. They stoop, lift, carry and dump picking tubs up to 20 times an hour, which doesn't include gripping and moving the tub as they move down the row to cut grapes from the vines.

Research has found that by reducing the weight of the grapes in the tub to less than 50 pounds, workers suffer fewer strains, sprains and back injuries, which account for nearly half of all the reported injuries in California agriculture.

But ergonomic hazards are not the only workplace safety problems farmworkers face:

CalOSHA accident reports tell the stories of what can go wrong on Sonoma County farms, ranches and vineyards, the accidents that lead to serious injury or death: there's the report of the farmworker who was killed after being struck in the head while operating a post hole driver; the worker at a dairy who got his hand caught in a feed auger and had to have a finger amputated; the vineyard worker who was riding in the bed of a pickup and broke his leg when a bin of grapes crushed it.

Last week in Napa County, a vineyard manager was killed in a forklift accident.

"Nationally, agriculture is one of the most hazardous occupations, ranking right up there with construction and mining. But the amount spent on improving farm safety is just a fraction of what's spent on mining safety," Dr. Marc Schenker, director of the Western Center for Agriculture Health and Safety at UC Davis said.

And this is interesting:

Exposure to pesticides is another hazard for agricultural workers, but ranks below farm machinery accidents and repetitive strain trauma in the cause of illnesses and injuries, said Schenker.

"Despite most popular impressions, pesticides are not the biggest hazard affecting farmworkers, particularly in California, where we have fairly strict controls on their use," said Schenker.

In 2001, the last year for which data is available from California's Department of Pesticide Regulation, there were 10 reported cases of pesticide illnesses in agriculture in Sonoma County. Most of the illnesses were skin rashes or eye irritations caused by sulfur, an organic element used to control mold and mildew in the vineyards.

Interesting, perhaps, but probably not true according to those who actually work with farmworkers, especially if the hazard is being judged by the number of reported cases of pesticide poisoning.

First, almost all reported cases of pesticide poisoning are acute poisonings, e.g. doses so high that they cause severe vomiting, convulsions or death. Long term, or chronic poisonings generally are not detected, as it may take many years for chronic effects, like cancer or liver disease, to show up. And even then, farm workers are exposed to so many different pesticides -- most of which they can't even identify -- that it's difficult, if not impossible, to trace health effects back to exposures.

Finally, there is pressure on farmworkers from the growers not to report pesticide poisonings at all.

Subcontractor Pleads Guilty In Fatal Scaffold Collapse

Collapse Kills 5 Workers

NEW YORK -- A Long Island subcontractor pleaded guilty to manslaughter Tuesday in connection with the deaths of five workers killed in a Manhattan scaffold collapse.

Lives Come Cheap on the Farm

This seems like kind of a low price to pay for killing someone in a confined space. I'm sure his family must feel much better now.

A Sioux Center, Iowa, farm has paid $1,125 in fines for violations connected to an employee's death this summer.

The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health agency found that Bar-K Farms did not report the death of 31-year-old Kenneth Van Wyk of Ireton, Iowa, to IOSH within eight hours. Bar-K was fined $750.

IOSH also fined Bar-K $375 for failure to study the potential hazard associated with or conduct training for working within a confined space.

Van Wyk died July 18 while repairing a steel 11,000-gallon liquid storage tank at Bar-K's Carmel, Iowa, location. Van Wyk was inside the tank and suffocated because of a lack of oxygen.

The Weekly Toll

Tree trimmer electrocuted

Springfield, OH -- A tree trimming employee died Saturday morning when he touched a bucket lift truck that came into contact with a power line.

After an effort to revive him, Anthony R. Hacker, 24, of New Carlisle was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Clark County Sheriff's Office.

Construction worker is killed by backhoe while working in ditch

CHULA VISTA, CA – A construction worker at the site of a
future residential community was fatally injured yesterday when a backhoe struck him.

The county Medical Examiner's Office identified him as Alfredo Alvarez, 41, of San Diego. He worked for TC Construction in Santee.

Alvarez was working alone in a 6-foot-deep, 6-foot-wide and 9-foot-long ditch used for water lines when backhoe's bucket hit him, according to police reports. The backhoe then fell into the ditch, but not onto him.

Chula Vista police Sgt. David Eisenberg said the backhoe's operator accidentally swung the bucket into Alvarez's abdomen.



Fallen bridge worker 'not hooked in' to safety system


La Cross, WI -- Anthony Poterala, who died Monday in a fall from a bridge construction project in La Crosse, was buried with military rites Friday in his hometown of Tomahawk, Wis.

Poterala, 34, "was not hooked in" to the fall protection system workers are required to use, said Paul Nortman, superintendent of the project for Lunda Construction Co. "We don't know why he decided to unhook himself."

[Question: Will the readers of the La Cross Tribune ever learn why "he decided to unhook himself?"]

Co-workers say the ironworker who died after
falling from a bridge had unhooked his safety harness to move to another work area.


Worker Killed by Cement Truck

Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials still are investigating how a construction worker was killed by a cement truck Tuesday in Stevens Point as he replaced sidewalks.

"We have a rough idea of what happened, but we're still tying down loose ends to verify," said Mark Chasco, a team leader at OSHA's Appleton office.

Walter J. Novotny, 47, Auburndale died after a cement truck rapidly accelerated as it was being repositioned

Construction Worker Dies In Accident

A worker died in an accident at a construction site in Kansas City, Kan., Tuesday afternoon. Police identified the victim as Antonio Cruz-Castillo, 62.

The accident took place at 4349 North 122nd St., where a home was under construction. KMBC's Kris Ketz reported that a gable over the home's front door collapsed on top of the victim, who was working for a painting company at the site. Other workers pulled the structure off the man, but he died at the scene.


Roofing worker plunges to death

The death of a roofing company worker who fell 60 feet from a Dayton, Ky., building Tuesday is under investigation.
David Sturgeon, 33, of 811 Scott St. in Covington, died instantly after plunging from the roof of the Raymee Building at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Berry Street.

"He was throwing some debris off the roof and he apparently slipped. It's a very steep roof and I guess he lost his balance," Garnick said. "But he didn't have his safety harness on -- it was rigged up, but he didn't have it on."

Construction Worker Dies In Workplace Accident
Man Is Crushed Under Tire Of Machine03

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- A construction worker was killed in a workplace accident on Thursday.

Ivan Pippert, 76, died after he was run over by a piece of construction equipment called an earthmover. Pippert was a mechanic for Foley Construction, and he was at work on one of the company's sites in Lawrence when the accident occurred.


Boxcar kills train employee

A Burlington Northern Santa Fe employee was killed when he was run over by a boxcar early Wednesday at the company's Calwa Yard at 3901 E. Vine Ave., Fresno police reported.

Leana Kent, a company spokeswoman, identified the victim as Todd Mohler, 35, of Fresno, a freight train conductor who joined BNSF in June 2001.

Gillette man killed at Bel Ayr mine

GILLETTE, WY -- A Gillette man was killed in an accident at RAG Coal West's Bel Ayr coal mine about 20 miles south of Gillette on Tuesday, according to mine officials.

Brad Beavers, 36, an RAG mine employee, was killed when a tow strap broke as he and another miner attempted to use a pickup to get another pickup unstuck. Beavers was struck by the "tow hook," said Steven Laird, RAG manager of lands, legislative and public affairs.


Mount Vernon man killed by falling tree

A Mount Vernon, MS man was killed when a tree he was cutting down in St. Elmo fell on top of him Friday afternoon, according to the Mobile County Sheriff's Department.

Max Weaver, 45, was helping Chestang Tree Service clear a lot on Saucer Road


Small Town Struggles with Two Deaths

This western Ohio farm town and its 32-member volunteer fire department were struggling to carry on after two firefighters were killed Wednesday in the blast at a lumber company that injured nine other people. ``We're hurting. We're overwhelmed,'' said Schnelle, adding that Garman once went two straight years without missing a single fire run.

Kenneth Jutte, 44, was atop a silo for wood shavings at Hoge Lumber Co. in nearby New Knoxville and Garman, 40, was in an aerial basket when the smoldering scrap exploded, blowing the top off the concrete structure and throwing them to the ground.

Driver's body found in water

TACOMA -- A 61-year-old Edgewood man died Monday when his front-end loader toppled into the water at the Simpson Tacoma Kraft Co. mill.

Robert G. "Gary" Hueneka apparently was in the 20-deep water of Commencement Bay for an hour or more before his absence was noticed and Tacoma Fire Department divers were called.


Roof collapse kills 1, hurts 2

Cape Coral, FL -- A collapsing roof killed a construction worker Thursday while he worked on a Cape Coral church’s basketball pavilion, police and witnesses said.

Richard Scott Erling, 37, of Cape Coral died on the scene at First Baptist Church. A blue sheet covered the carpenter’s body in front of the building’s metal, open-air framework Thursday afternoon.

Labels: Weekly Toll

OSHA Deputy Nominated to Chem Board

President Bush has nominated Gary Visscher, Deputy Assistant Secretary of OSHA, to a soon-to-be vacant seat on the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.

Visscher was a former Vice President of Employee Relations for the American Iron and Steel Institute. From July 1999 through November 2000 he served as a Member of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Visscher served in Congressional staff positions from 1983-1999, including Workforce Policy Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce from 1989-1999. It was in this position that, following the 1994 elections when the Republican's took both houses of Congress, Visscher helped spearhead Republican Congressman Cass Ballenger's (NC) attempt to remake the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

CSB Board members serve for 5 years. The terms of two members appointed by President Clinton, Dr. Andrea Kidd Taylor and Dr. Isadore (Irv) Rosenthal expire this year. Dr. Taylor came out of the Health and Safety Department of the United Auto Workers Union, while Rosenthal was corporate health and safety director for Rohm and Haas.

Visscher would fill Rosenthal's seat, while Rixio Medina, currently Manager of Corporate Health, Safety and Security for CITGO Petroleum Corporation, would take Taylor's seat, leaving the Board without any representation from organized labor for the first time in its history.

The Legislative Authority creating the Chemical Board states that

Members of the Board shall be appointed on the basis of technical qualification, professional standing, and demonstrated knowledge in the fields of accident reconstruction, safety engineering, human factors, toxicology, or air pollution regulation.

Labels: Chemical Safety Board

Ergo Almost Enters Pres Debate

Gosh. Joe Lieberman almost mentioned the word ergonomics in the Democratic Presidential debate Thursday nite.

Responding to a question about labor's role in rebulding the economy, Lieberman condemned Bush for repealing "workplace safety regulations" and said he would reinstate them as soon as he became President. Couldn't quote come up with the word "ergonomics" though, or maybe didn't want to.

I'm not endorsing him. I don't even like him much, but it's nice to hear the subject of workplace safety raised during a national debate.

Labels: Ergonomics

Give Them a Brake. And Some Barriers

As usual, the newspapers don't give any details on what might have prevented these deaths. And as they're all public employees in states without OSHA coverage, we may never know.

Second road worker killed

The death of a second Chicago-area highway worker this week has state officials urging caution in construction zones, while a judge is keeping the driver in the first accident behind bars because of his criminal record.

A semi truck entered a closed lane on Interstate 294 early Thursday morning and killed a 26-year-old tollway worker, State Police Sgt. Steve Clemente said. Police identified the man as Paul Liotine of West Chicago. He and several other tollway workers were replacing reflectors in the pavement.

Authorities said charges had not yet been filed and it did not appear drugs or alcohol were a factor. But the Chicago man arrested after an accident that killed a 36-year-old mother of seven in an I-57 construction zone on Monday had four previous DUI convictions and police said his blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit.

And this

MODOT Accident

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Local highway department crews are mourning the loss of a fellow worker. 35-year old Karla Baublitz of Sarcoxie was killed yesterday morning near 7th and Schifferdecker in Joplin. Baublitz was one of two MODOT workers who were repairing a tractor when they were struck by a small pickup. State troopers say the driver of the truck fell asleep at the wheel. Baublitz was pronounced dead at the scene. Her fellow worker, 31-year old Trevor Keller is being treated for serious injuries.

And this

Runaway truck kills driver

A city garbage truck driver was run over and killed Thursday morning after he tried to chase down his runaway truck on a South Hills street.

***

Leonard's death marked the second time in five years that a city garbage worker was killed by a runaway truck. On May 15, 1998, Kenneth S. Tester, 35, was crushed in the cab of his truck after it rolled down Saline Street in Greenfield and struck a house porch.

Labels: Public Employees

Gold Medal For Workplace Killing?

About 1,200 employees at the 2004 Olympic Village staged a 24-hour strike Thursday, a day after a construction worker was killed at the site.

The strikers stayed off the job to protest safety conditions.

A construction worker -- the fifth to die on the site -- was hit by a vehicle Wednesday.

Union representatives repeatedly have complained of poor conditions, including limited access to toilets and running water.

Four Greek construction groups are building the residential zone of the village, which will house 16,000 athletes and officials at Menidi, 15 miles north of Athens.

Good Riddance!

Republican Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles (R-OK), has announced that he will retire next year. Nickles has been a frequent guest in my nightmares over the past three years:

For business leaders, Nickles has been a stalwart. In 2001, he led a successful effort to kill ergonomics rules that the Clinton administration wrote to force companies to take detailed steps to prevent workplace injuries.

I have "fond" memories of him leering at us outside the Senate chamber as he led the assassination of the ergonomics standard, and then standing around gloating after the foul deed was done.

Greatest Quotes:

"It's probably the most expensive, intrusive regulation ever promulgated."

"It's probably the most expensive, intrusive regulation ever promulgated, certainly by the Department of Labor and maybe by the government entirely"

Golly, maybe in the whole world! Or in the history of the universe!

"The Senate did the right thing tonight by voting to overturn the most intrusive, expensive and job-killing regulation ever handed down by OSHA. It was the right thing to do for employers and employees alike"

He should go get a job in a poultry processing plant or a nursing home.

Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., holds a copy of the regulations issued by the Clinton administration dealing with workplace ergonomics during a Washington news conference.
Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Labels: Ergonomics

GAO Finds MSHA Provides Lax Oversight of Mining Industry

The federal government’s General Accounting Office (GAO) has found serious problems with the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s enforcement program. The report “criticized it for not pursuing mine safety violations and for providing lax oversight of the industry.”

The GAO report comes as the rate of coal mining fatalities in the United States is rising. So far this year, 26 miners have been killed in accidents, compared with 27 for all of last year, which was a record low.

Kentucky and West Virginia lead the nation in coal mine fatalities with eight deaths each, according to MSHA statistics.

The investigation was conducted in response to a request by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) following the Quecreek Mine accident in Pennsylvania in which nine miners were trapped underground for three days. According to a summary in the Louisville Courier Journal, the report found that

• Almost half of the mine safety violations cited by agency inspectors during the past decade weren't corrected by the required deadlines.
  
  
• Some mines may be operating without adequate ventilation and roof support systems because MSHA doesn't provide adequate oversight.
  
  
• Inspection procedures sometimes are unclear and enforced inconsistently and information on accidents is compiled but is not being used to improve safety.
  
  
• Plans for new coal slurry ponds, called impoundments, are backlogged because the agency is short on engineers and is facing a personnel crisis.
  
  
• Nearly half of its inspectors will be eligible to retire in the next five years, and the agency has no plan for dealing with that — a shortage that could hamper the government's ability to ensure the health and safety of miners, the report warned.

The GAO recommended that MSHA :

• monitor the timeliness of technical inspections conducted
  as part of the 6-month review of certain mine plans,
  
  
• ensure that mine operators are correcting hazards identified during inspections in a timely manner,
  
  
• develop a plan for addressing anticipated shortages in the
  number of qualified inspectors due to upcoming retirements, and
  
  
• revise the systems used to collect information on accidents and
  investigations.

Neither the United Mineworkers, nor Senator Kennedy were pleased by the findings of the report:

The report's findings drew sharp rebukes of MSHA from the nation's miners' union and from Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Tom Harkin of Iowa, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee's labor subcommittee.

"It's a pretty tough report. It's a bad report card on" MSHA, said Joseph Main, administrator of the United Mine Workers of America's Department of Occupational Safety and Health.

Kennedy said the GAO study "makes clear the Department of Labor is failing to meet its responsibility."

"The current agency failures are an invitation to new disasters," the senator said in a statement. "The mine agency is being overwhelmed by its mission. It can't protect miners if it fails to inspect and monitor the nation's coal mines regularly and thoroughly."

MSHA, on the other hand was not convinced

A Mine Safety and Health Administration spokesman declined comment yesterday, pointing instead to the agency's Aug. 19 rebuttal by Dave D. Lauriski, assistant secretary of Labor for mine safety and health. The rebuttal, included in the back of the report and issued in response to an earlier GAO draft, critiqued everything from what it described as several "inaccuracies" to the report's title.

Kaltech: Don't Forget Training....

My friend Jim Young at the New Jersey Work Environment Council correctly points out that when I reported on the Chemical Safety Board's Kaltech/Chelsea explosion investigation last week I neglected to mention that one of the root causes was the failure of Kaltech to train its employees in hazardous chemical and hazardous waste safety, as well as the failure of the NY City fire code to require training of employees who work with hazardous materials.

The Board recommended that Kaltech train its workers, that the NY Fire Code be revised to include worker training and that the fire department train its inspectors in safe management of hazardous materials.

As Jim says, "This official endorsement of training should, in my opinion, by broadcast, underlined, shouted from the rooftops during this period when union safety and health departments are so vulnerable."

Couldn't agree more.

OSHRC Comforts Corporate Crooks

Say Goodbye to OSHA's Egregious Penalty Policy

In another victory for compassionate conservatism, Republican members of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission have eliminated one of OSHA's only remaining weapons for citing employers with big enough violations to make a difference.

In a 2-1 decision, the Board dismissed the "egregious" portion of an OSHA asbestos-relation citation against Eric K. Ho, Ho Ho Ho Express, Inc.

Under its "ergregious penalty" policy, OSHA was able to cite each instance of a violation per employee. For example, where eleven employees were over-exposed to asbestos, OSHA could cite eleven different times.

The egregious penalty policy was first introduced under the Reagan administration and was often used during the 1990's to cite ergonomic and recordkeeping violations. The policy allowed OSHA to impose much higher fines for extreme violations of OSHA standards than it would normally be able to do with a single penalty.

The decision is particularly despicable considering the conduct of the employer:

Ho signed a property disclosure form indicating that he had been made aware of the presence of friable asbestos in the building. Nonetheless, with full knowledge of the conditions and the need for professional removal of the ACM, Ho began asbestos removal with untrained, unprotected Mexican nationals, none of whom spoke English or understood the hazards associated with asbestos.

Ho's disregard for the law is evidenced by his failure to obtain work permits for the site, as required by the City of Houston and his surreptitious removal of asbestos after the City attempted to close down the site. When the ongoing work was discovered by an inspector for the City of Houston the Bellaire site was red tagged for probable violations of asbestos abatement requirements. Ho was ordered to cease its demolition operations. However, the City's attempt to close down Ho's worksite failed. After soliciting a bid for asbestos removal from a certified asbestos abatement contractor, Ho chose to recommence removal operations under cover of darkness with the same untrained, unprotected laborers, rather than engage the qualified contractor at the named bid price of $172,266.

Ho retained the qualified abatement contractor to complete the asbestos abatement only after the March 11, 1998 explosion brought his nighttime activity to light and the Texas Department of Health onto the site.

Not only does the evidence specifically demonstrate Ho's disregard for his employees' exposure to asbestos, the record contains ample additional evidence of Ho's indifference to those same workers' general health and welfare. Ho's laborers worked 12 hour shifts 7 nights a week under substandard conditions: the workers were locked inside the Bellaire site; they worked without electricity or ventilation; adequate sanitary facilities were not available; no potable water was provided.

The two commissioners voting to overturn the policy were W. Scott Railton and James M. Stevens, both recent Bush Administration appointees. Dissenting was Thomasina Rogers, originally a Clinton Administration appointee recently re-appointed by Bush.

The majority's rather creative reasoning was that because OSHA's asbestos standard refers to a training program and a respirator program, only the individual program can be cited once, rather than citing for each individual worker who was overexposed, and also that the employer did not know that the standard could be cited on a per-employee basis.

Railton argued that "While we agree that Ho is one of the worst employers the Commission has had come before it, we cannot allow harsh facts to result in bad law -- a result which would clearly follow should we accept the Secretary's proposed penalties." Suddenly decades of "good law," created under the sainted Ronald Reagan has become "bad law" under our compassionately conservative President.

Rogers called the decision "A radical departure from settled Commission and court precedent recognizing the Secretary's authority to issue multiple citations for violations of the same standard where the standard can reasonably be read to permit multiple units of violation."

Give a bunch of monkeys a bunch word processors, a lot of time, and high legal fees and they will eventually come up with enough legal garbage reasoning to justify overturning any legal precident that protects workers. But the bottom line here is that OSHA has lost one of its last ways to bring significant penalties down on the heads of particularly bad employers who are fully aware that they may be killing their employees. Without the ability to inflict large penalties or to bring criminal violations, the Bush administration has succeeded in moving OSHA yet one more step toward becoming a completely toothless tiger.

The Department of Labor can appeal OSHRC's decision. That decision to appeal will show whether or not OSHA, DOL and the Bush Administration are serious about bringing corporate criminals to justice.

Labels: Ronald Reagan

Ergonomics: From Washington D.C. to Belzoni, Mississippi

Molly Ivins Tells the Truth About Boy George

Looking for something to read after you finish Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right? Read Molly Ivins' Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America. Ivins, as most of you know, is one of the most hard-hitting, amusing and politically astute writers in America. Added to this, she talks to actual, real workers about actual real issues -- like ergonomics -- and relates them back to what Boy George is doing to the people of this country.

This is from an interview with Ivins in the Austin Chronicle:

One of my favorite examples is that chapter on ergonomics ("The Blues in Belzoni"). When Bush came in, he appointed a guy named Eugene Scalia, son of the Supreme Court justice, to be the top lawyer at the Department of Labor. Scalia the Younger has spent his entire career as a very highly paid lobbyist in Washington, working for manufacturers associations, for the specific purpose of defeating ergonomic regulations. That was an effort started at the Labor Department by Elizabeth Dole -- that well-known communist. For 12 years they worked on trying to set up a central set of regulations. Everybody was at the table -- the manufacturers, the labor unions, the docs, all the players -- trying to prevent repetitive stress injuries, which actually cost industries an enormous amount of money, because millions of people get these things from repetitive motions at work. These regs had been worked out, they had been placed in the Federal Register, and then the Bush administration came in with a very clever ploy, and they undid the whole thing.

We went down to Belzoni, Mississippi, to talk to a bunch of very nice black women who work at the Delta Pride Catfish factory there. Not all of them get this, but there is a kind of repetitive stress that results in gangliatic cysts on the back of the wrist. These women -- they're not 30 years old yet -- their fingers look like they have rheumatoid arthritis, their hands look like a bunch of bent twigs. ...

They listened to this whole story about this guy Eugene Scalia -- of course they'd never heard of him, and they'd never heard of "ergonomics" -- but they said, "Huh, he says this is 'junk science'? Well, you tell him I want his ass next to me on the second gut line, and I'll show him some junk science. Just bring that boy down here."

Labels: Ergonomics

Canadian Workers on the Vanguard of Environmental Protection

Cradle to Grave Product Responsibility

Tired of just tossing your old car into the trash (or junk yard) when you're done with it. The Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW) is advocating a better way that will not only protect the environment, but also create new jobs:

The CAW is calling on Canadian governments to apply a policy called "extended producer responsibility" to the auto industry. Also known as take-back legislation, this policy holds manufacturers accountable for the goods that they produce for the product's entire lifetime. This means that owners can return vehicles to the manufacturer at the end of their useful life. Instead of cars winding up in unsightly junkyards, landfills or incinerators, their manufacturers would be obliged to take them back.

So it's good for the enviroment. But it's also good for jobs:

By lobbying for take-back legislation, the CAW is merely demonstrating enlightened self-interest. The CAW envisions a vehicle disassembly plant beside every assembly plant. Even if car sales decline in an environmentally friendly future dominated by public transit, cyclists, pedestrians, and tele-commuting, there would still be jobs for auto workers.

The Wal-Mart Effect

Can someone tell me how this is good for America?

WHEN WAL-MART COMES to town selling groceries, it undercuts prices in the market by 14 percent. So says UBS Warburg, an investment firm that studied the impact of Wal-Mart Supercenters in Dallas, Las Vegas and Tampa.

That's good news for consumers, bad news for the competition and awful news for workers in the supermarket industry

Yeah, sure, it's good for consumer -- as long as the consumers don' t happen to also be employees of the struggling unionized supermarkets.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire: Still Lessons to Be Learned

Thee was a good review last week in the NY times of a new history of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911:Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle.

The reviewer, Mike Wallace, distinguished professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and director of the Gotham Center for New York City History at the City University of New York Graduate Center, thinks this is the best history written so far about the fire, but he also has an important message. He criticizes the author for implying that the fire and subsequent investigation lead almost automatically to important permanent reforms of “the New Deal, women's rights, labor empowerment and urban liberalism, first in New York, then across the country.”

But

Such triumphalism, while inspiring, overlooks the fact that history can run backward, and that gains won can be lost again — and have been, repeatedly. Many of the initial post-Triangle reforms were strenuously opposed by conservative businessmen. Unable at first to prevail amid mass indignation at the fire and shocking revelations about working conditions in the city and state, they were soon back in the saddle and able to halt, hamstring or reverse liberal initiatives.

The Depression galvanized progressives again, and the New Deal expanded the terrain of social democracy, but by the late 1930's, opponents had regained the initiative and dismantled many of its signature programs. In the 1960's and 70's reformers won health and safety and pollution regulations; today's free marketeers are whittling these away. And sweatshops that exploit vulnerable and unorganized immigrant workers are again alive and malignantly well in New York City.

Mr. Von Drehle's fine history is a welcome reminder of the realities of life in a laissez-faire jungle, and of the Triangle fire's importance in spurring the movement that helped tame it. But resting on our ancestors' laurels won't prevent a return to the conditions he deplores; only constant pressure from informed citizens and an organized work force can accomplish that.

It's nice to see a reviewer/historian who realizes that historical progress doesn't just happen unless people make it happen.

Buy it here.

Busy, Busy Busy

"Be careful what you wish for," they say. I want to thank many of you who have been sending in stories, and story ideas over the past week(s). As you can see, I'm rather behind in those and other breaking news. I still haven't caught up from the hurricane outage and have been travelling. Gotta do something about this day job.....

OSHA Grants: Bad News for Labor

One of OSHA's most lasting successes over the years has been its worker training grant program. Started by Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, Eula Bingham in the late 1970's, the grant program, now known as the Susan Harwood Grant Program, has resulted in training programs benefiting tens of thousands of workers.

Although the program was significantly reduced during the Reagan-Bush I years, it began to regain its former size and significance during the Clinton era, rising to over $11 million in FY 2001. The 5-Year New Directions grants were reduced during times of low funding to one to two year grants. They were again extended into 5 Year grants in programs announced in FY 2000 and again in early FY 2001, by Assistant Secretary Charles Jeffress, giving grantees time to build a program that could plant some lasting roots.

One of the first acts of the Bush II administration was to rescind the last round of grants issued by the Clinton Administration only days before they were to take effect. They then tried to cut off the first round of 5-year grants after the first year. Democrats in the Senate, along with Republican Arlen Specter (PA), directed OSHA to refund the program.

Bush's first OSHA budget proposed eliminating the Susan Harwood Grant program and reducing OSHA's grant budget from $11 million to $4 million. The goal was to rely more on internet and other forms of electronic training rather than "inefficient" classroom training that had the disadvantage of being done during work time (ignoring the fact that OSHA standard require training to be done on worktime.)

Somehow they tried to sell the program as part of their Hispanic outreach program, conjuring up visions of tired Hispanic workers dragging home to their trailer parks from a 10 hour day cutting chickens in the poultry plant, making dinner, helping the kids with homework, and then relaxing in front of their high-speed internet connections for a bit of health and safety training.

Failing to pass the laugh test, the Senate once again ordered OSHA to fund the entire program, including subsequent years of the 5-Year grant program. Late last month, OSHA announced its new round of grants. In addition to refunding the 5-year program, OSHA announced 50 new grants. But this round has a slightly new twist. Throughout the almost 25 years of OSHA worker training grants, through Democratic and Republican administrations, there has been a tradition of even-handedness between business associations and unions. No longer. The only promise Boy George has managed to keep over the past few years is his promise to "Change the tone" in Washington -- seemingly for the worse:

Out of the 50 new grants that OSHA announced, only 4 (or 8%) go to unions or labor-management coalitions, while 14 (or 28%) go to businesses or business associations.

Compare this with FY 2000, the year before Bush II took office. Labor had 31% of the grants, while business had 37%. (Universities had 14% of the grants in FY 2000 and 52% this year.)*




I participated in the grant process during the two rounds of Grants in FY 2000 and 2001. We bent over backward to maintain some balance between labor and businesses.

This almost makes me feel like that was kind of stupid.




*Note: I have no way of knowing how many unions actually applied for grants this year, nor did I compare the amount of money granted to each group.