Those who don't know, think that there are people around -- scientists, public health officials, government officials and the like, who sit around trying to figure out what hazards might be facing workers and coming up with laws and regulations that make sure people are protected. That would be called prevention.

Those who know realize that no progress is ever made until there's a body count. Then everyone cries "Oy! we must do something. People are dying!"

Over the last month, five California workers died of heat related illness. CalOSHA, to its credit, has now proposed an emergency standard to protect workers against the dangers of working in high heat. It's an emergency standard because previously there were not standards to protect people working in high heat -- no requirements for water, a shadey place to rest, break times or training about the signs of symptoms of heat related illness and how to prevent it.

The standard will:

• Require education of employees and supervisors likely to be exposed to heat stress on how to prevent heat-related illness and what to do should it occur.


• Reiterate existing law requiring water -- at least a quart an hour for each worker -- to be available at all times, and ensure that workers understand the importance of drinking water frequently.


• Require that access to a shaded area is available to any worker suffering from heat illness or needing shade to prevent the onset of illness. "Shade" means blockage of direct sunlight by such things as umbrellas and tarps, not trees or vines, as some farm supervisors were trying to argue.


• Require the board to review, by no later than Jan. 1, the feasibility of providing shade for rest periods for outdoor employment.
Employers are also prohibited from retaliating against workers who exercise their heat-protection rights.

Even the California grape industry is supporting the regulations, making sure that everyone knows workers aren't just dying in agriculture.

Barry Bedwell, president of the California Grape and Tree Fruit League in Fresno, said he was "gratified the administration has acted in a timely manner.

"These regulations apply to all employees outdoors, a basic point that has to be understood," he said. "The sun does not play favorites."

The CalOSHA Standards Board will vote in early August to approve the emergency regulations, but they will only be in effect for 120 days unless the Board makes them permanent.

California Assembly Member Judy Chu has also proposed Assembly Bill 805 is aimed at forcing permanent regulations to protect farmworkers from heat stress, although the industry is opposing it.

Three of the five victims of the heat died in the fields. Two were construction workers:

• Salud Zamudio Rodriguez, a 43-year-old fieldworker who died while harvesting bell peppers July 13 near Arvin.



• Ramon Hernandez, 42, who was found dead in a melon field near Huron on July 15.



• Gonzolo Chavez Jr., a laborer who was found dead at a golf course construction site near Marks Avenue and Kearney Boulevard in Fresno on July19.



• Augustine Gudino, 42, of Visalia, whose body was found in a Kern County vineyard July 21.



• Eduardo Martinez Morales, a 48-year-old plasterer, who collapsed and died at a job site in El Centro.

The background information on Chu's bill points out that heat related fatalities are nothing new:

Between 1996 and 1999, DOSH investigated eleven work-related fatalities in manufacturing (3), construction (2), wild land fire fighting (2) and agriculture (4). Between 2002 and 2004, at least two additional heat stroke fatalities occurred in agriculture. According to the national survey of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses, The Division of Labor Statistics and Research, California industry had a total of 168 lost workdays from exposure to environmental heat in 1992 and 153 in 1998. Heat illness cases are severely underreported and may be recorded as heart attack or kidney failure.

Note that last sentence again. When I worked at OSHA, I received a weekly workplace fatality report. Every week there were heart attacks that generally weren't investigated because they were assumed to be due to "natural causes." Who knows how many of those may have been heat related, and who knows how many heat-related "heart attacks"are never even reported to OSHA.

Everyone's happy now -- except the families of the workers for whom the regulations have come too late:

"These emergency regulations are a historic breakthrough for farmworkers," said Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers. "It is tragic that farmworkers had to die before government took action. But Gov. Schwarzenegger has done what three previous governors didn't do — he, Sen. Dean Florez and Assembly Member Judy Chu [D-Monterey Park] took action, and we applaud them."

More here and here.

More information on the hazards of heat can be found here:

• ElCOSH
• AFSCME
• OSHA
• CalOSHA

Related Articles

• United Farmworker Fight To Stop Heat Deaths In California's Fields, July 28, 2005
• Heat Kills (Again), July 26, 2005
• Heat Kills, July 25, 2005
• Heat Stroke Tragedy, August 1, 2004

"Every industry gets their own little program," said Myron Ebell of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute. "There's pork in there for everybody."

Do the American people (especially those who voted this crowed in) have any idea who their representatives are really representing or what their tax dollars are really subsidizing? Do they understand what it means to put former energy industry executives into the White House?

Given how these guys have sold out on energy and environment issues, why would you trust them on workplace safety, labor, consumer, human rights, health care, transportation, military or anything else?

So what does the energy industry get for its hard work electing Republicans to the White House and Congress?

The bill exempts oil and gas industries from some clean-water laws, streamlines permits for oil wells and power lines on public lands, and helps the hydropower industry appeal environmental restrictions. One obscure provision would repeal a Depression-era law that has prevented consolidation of public utilities, potentially transforming the nation's electricity markets.

It also includes an estimated $85 billion worth of subsidies and tax breaks for most forms of energy -- including oil and gas, "clean coal," ethanol, electricity, and solar and wind power. The nuclear industry got subsidies for research, waste reprocessing, construction, operation and even decommission. The petroleum industry got new incentives to drill in the Gulf of Mexico -- as if $60-a-barrel oil wasn't enough of an incentive. The already-subsidized ethanol industry got a federal mandate that will nearly double its output by 2012 -- as well as new subsidies to develop ethanol from other sources.

***

For example, it exempts oil and gas companies from Safe Drinking Water Act requirements when they inject fluids -- including some carcinogens -- into the earth at high pressure, a process known as hydraulic fracturing. Betty Anthony, director for exploration and production at the American Petroleum Institute, said states already regulate the process, but residents of Alabama, Virginia, West Virginia and other states have complained that it has polluted groundwater in their communities.

Meanwhile, the measure will streamline Bureau of Land Management drilling permits -- even though the Bush administration already has granted a record number of permits on BLM land. Lawmakers also authorized seismic blasting in sensitive marine areas to gauge offshore oil reserves -- despite a moratorium on drilling in many of those areas. And the bill will exempt petroleum well pads from storm-water regulations under the Clean Water Act. Anthony said the provision makes sense because the wells are already exempt, but critics question why the oil and gas industry, which has seen record profits in recent months, should be exempt from any aspect of environmental law.

"This bill will allow America's most profitable companies to pollute our water supplies," said David Alberswerth of the Wilderness Society. "They're the kings of Capitol Hill."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) also managed to insert at least $500 million in subsidies over a 10-year period -- with the option to double the amount -- for research into deep-water oil and gas drilling, a grant that many lawmakers expect to go to the Texas Energy Center in DeLay's home town of Sugar Land. The bill also includes royalty relief for deep-water drilling projects, a strategy that helped jump-start production in the Gulf during the 1990s.

And let's not forget about the nuclear industry:

The bill's biggest winner was probably the nuclear industry, which received billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks covering almost every facet of operations. There were subsidies for research into new reactor designs, "fusion energy," small-particle accelerators and reprocessing nuclear waste, which would reverse current U.S. policy. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Tex.) even inserted a $250,000 provision for research into using radiation to refine oil.

The bill also included $2 billion for "risk insurance" in case new nuclear plants run into construction and licensing delays. And nuclear utilities will be eligible for taxpayer-backed loan guarantees of as much as 80 percent the cost of theirplants.

Whoa, wait a minute. Rewind. "Research into using radiation to refine oil?"

And what the hell are all of these Democrats doing on this bill? The bill passed the Senate, 74 to 26 and 275 to 156 in the House. Author Rick Pearlstein in a recent speech discussed how the Democrats can regain power:

The Republicans understand us better than we understand ourselves. When we are not credible defenders of the economic interests of ordinary Americans, we amount to little. When we are, we're a nuclear bomb to the heart of their coalition.

I think the Democrats blew it once again on this one.

The AFL-CIO convention has passed two safety and health resolutions. The most activist, Protecting Workers’ Safety and Health, was proposed by the Buffalo, NY, Central Labor Council and resolved that the AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions:

maintain a strong commitment to protecting workers’ safety and health and to fully incorporate these issues into expanded mobilization, political and organizing programs. Further, the federation will take a leadership and coordinating role, working with affiliates to build grassroots safety and health campaigns as part of these mobilizing, political and organizing programs.

The resolution points to the important role that health and safety issues can play in organizing:

Historically and currently, safety and health concerns have been a major reason workers have been
willing to organize and join unions. Even when employers have intimidated or overwhelmed organizers on wage, benefit, job security and retirement issues, workers still respond enthusiastically to effective organizing strategies based on workplace safety and health issues.

America’s workers are particularly concerned about safety and health issues that grow out of basic conflicts between workers and employers. These conflicts include abusive workload pressure, speed ups, excessive overtime, short staffing, dangerous exploitation of immigrants, cruel mistreatment of injured workers, etc. Most workers can appreciate a well-crafted message about the basic injustice of their jobs and the effects on their safety and health.

Although the resolution doesn't call for the resurrection of the recently abolished health and safety department (otherwise it wouldn't have made it to the floor), sponsors hoped that AFL-CIO leadership would realize that the goals of the resolution couldn't be attained any other way.

After all, without a fully staffed department, how does this happen?

The expansion of the federation’s efforts to move forward on safety and health issues and to stop assaults on existing laws and standards requires strategic leadership and the capacity to plan and implement these initiatives. To do anything less would be a serious disservice both to workers’ safety and health and to our hopes for a stronger labor movement.

The second health and safety resolution passed was essentailly the "House" resolution that apears at every convention and calls on the AFL-CIO to "continue to protect workers’ lives and health through a strong commitment to occupational safety and health."

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Ultimately, of course, most resolutions just provide filler between convention speeches. The test will be whether the unions in and outside of the AFL-CIO start to aggressivelly employ health and safety issues in their organizing campaigns, and whether the unions and the federation(s) have the strategic sense, capacity, resources and support that will be needed to fight off the coming attacks on worker safety from corporate America and Republicans in Congress.

Labels: AFL-CIO

Gee, I wonder why:

Hispanics shun safety class
State is battling increasing work injuries and deaths within group

By Deborah Bulkeley
Deseret Morning News

Work-related injuries and deaths among Hispanic workers are on the rise, according to federal statistics, while that statistic is falling for the general working population.

But educating Spanish speaking workers about on-the-job safety is proving to be a difficult task.

Seriously, read the article. It provides a perfect example of why "If you build it, they will come," doesn't work without a sophisticated understanding of your audience. I was on the committee at OSHA that decided who would receive training grants. Knowing from my years at AFSCME how difficult it is to attract trainees -- even when you have a "captive" audience -- I was always amazed and disappointed to read grant applications that put enormous effort into developing a training program and writing training materials, but almost no thought into marketing the program, particularly when they were attempting to reach out to workers from a different culture, who may be working several different jobs and whose employers don't really care about safety.

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My 19 year old waitress daughter was complaining yesterday that the restaurant she works at was making her wait tables outside where the Washington D.C. heat index was topping 105 degrees.

"There must be breaking some kind of law." Nope. You work in the heat or you don't work. Of course, as bad as waiting tables is, it's not even close to deadly farm work in California's central valley:

There was no eulogy for Salud Zamudio-Rodriguez after his death in the fields here.

In the 24 years since he left his village in rural Mexico, family and co-workers said, he made but one lasting impression. Whether picking lemons in Riverside County, grapefruit in the Coachella Valley or oranges in Tulare County, he moved like a machine up and down the rows, they said.

But two weeks ago, in the 105-degree sun of a brutal July, he could not keep up with the tractor that was dictating his pace in a bell pepper field near this Kern County town.

Co-workers said that for more than two hours, the tractor doubled its speed in a dash to finish the last pick of one field so the grower could begin a fresh field the next morning.

Zamudio-Rodriguez, 42, was so spent that a few minutes before the shift ended on the afternoon of July 13, he broke away from the machine and collapsed.

As the others were boarding their vans to go home, he began to shake violently from heatstroke.

"We watched him dying in the field," said Soledad Reyes, 43, who had been working next to him.

The bell pepper field belonged to Donald Valpredo, a longtime cotton and vegetable grower in the Bakersfield area. Valpredo called the worker's death a tragedy. He declined to comment on allegations by the co-workers that the crew had been pushed to go faster.

"There's an investigation and we are trying to cooperate. I don't think it's fair for me to say anything else without all the facts," he said.

"What's proper for me to say is our sympathies and regrets go to his family and friends," he said.

Even before Zamudio-Rodriguez's funeral Saturday, two more farmworkers died in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Both had worked in temperatures of about 108 degrees. The body of a melon picker was found July 14 next to a patch of ripe cantaloupes in west Fresno County. The body of a grape picker was found a week later beneath the shade of a vine in Kern County.

As I wrote earlier, CalOSHA is working on an emergency standard and the state legislature is considering a law.

And the United Farmworkers are leading the battle for protections:

Not surprisingly, the deaths have brought new energy to the United Farm Workers union, which held a march through Arvin on Friday night reminiscent of those in the 1960s and early 1970s when Cesar Chavez led a grape boycott and paralyzing labor strikes up and down the Central Valley.

Though it represents only a fraction of the grape pickers it once did, the union vows to use its organizing muscle and four radio stations statewide to press for higher wages and the passage of AB 805's tougher standards.

"It's not like the industry didn't have a warning," said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez. "Last year, after the death of Asuncion Valdivia from heatstroke, we sent letters to the major table grape growers. We asked them to take voluntary steps to deal with the heat.

"Not one grower responded to our call or implemented any changes."

The industry, of course, would rather depend on education and training than evil regulations.

Barry Bedwell, president of the California Grape and Tree Fruit League, said agriculture has not ignored the issue.

"For a year now, we've been holding seminars with growers, supervisors and workers on how to recognize and prevent heat-related illness," he said.

In the vast fields of Kern County, which stretch from the base of the Tehachapi Mountains to the outskirts of Delano 60 miles north, farmworkers talk about a few big growers who, they say, act with a kind of impunity. Rarely do state workplace regulators make their way into these fields, they say.

They pointed to Giumarra Vineyards, one of the largest table grape growers in the world, where the 53-year-old Valdivia died last July after working 10 hours in 100-degree heat. It was also a Giumarra vineyard where Augustine Gudino, 40, was found dead last week.

Farmworkers said Giumarra pushes its laborers to pick and pack at a fast pace and meet production quotas even in extreme heat. This season, they say, the pressure to harvest the grapes is even greater because the fruit, damaged by mildew, is deteriorating by the day.

And when you add a speed-up to the heat, the combination can be deadly:

Reyes, whose 17-year-old son was working beside her, has signed a written declaration for the UFW detailing the events. The son confirmed her account.

As the tractor moved through the fields, it pulled a conveyor belt onto which the pickers dumped their buckets of bell peppers, Reyes said in an interview. Typically, the tractor driver sets a reasonable speed, enabling the workers to drink water and still harvest three buckets of peppers every 15 minutes, she said.

But from 12:15 to 2:45 p.m. that day, the tractor driver, at the behest of the grower's foreman, set a pace that required them to pick six buckets every 15 minutes, she said.

"In all my years of picking crops, I have never worked that fast," Reyes said. "All of us were skipping plants to keep up, but Salud was trying to pick every pepper."

Five minutes before the end of the workday, she said, Zamudio-Rodriguez told her he was feeling ill and needed to quit. Instead of resting, though, he kept walking back and forth in a delirious state.

At some point, she said, Zamudio-Rodriguez walked up to the crew boss and collapsed in his arms.

The crew boss took off his hat and tried to fan him. Workers set him in the shade of an adjacent almond orchard and tried to give him water. But it did no good.

"I told the crew boss we have to call the ambulance," Reyes said. "It took 30 minutes for them to arrive. All in all, he was like that for an hour before he got any help."

On the way to Bakersfield's Mercy Hospital, still deep in the fields, Zamudio-Rodriguez died.

That radical left-wing newsrag, the Wall St. Journal, had a front page article today about the BP Texas City explosion that killed 15 workers and injured 170, indicating that it may have been cutbacks in staffing and maintenance that caused the explosion. BP, as you know, blamed the explosion on “surprising and deeply disturbing” mistakes made by plant workers who did not follow proper procedures, instead of poor maintenance or malfunctioning pumps, indicators and alarms that caused the problem.

According to the Journal, "now the search for the cause is raising some unsettling questions"

BP has denied any connection between cost-cutting and plant fatalities. It contends that overall safety at its American refineries has improved since it acquired them.

"I think the culture of safety, in terms of policies and procedures, was there," said Ross Pillari, president of BP Products North America. "But the implementation of these policies and procedures was clearly not there, because if it was, the accidents wouldn't have happened."

Now what the hell does that mean? The "culture of safety" was there, but "implementation of these policies and procedures was clearly not there?" I got news for you buddy. If people aren't implementing the policies and procedures, there's no "culture of safety."

Despite Pilari's assertion, it appears that BP was the model of bad workplace culture. Workplace "culture," also known as organizational factors does not just consist of managers telling workers to be safe and follow the rules. According to James Reason's book Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents (quoted in by Fred Manuele's "Serious Injury Prevention" Occupational Health & Safety, June 2005):

Latent conditions, such as poor design, gaps in supervision, undetected manufacturing defects or maintenance failures, unworkable procedures, clumsy automation, shortfalls in training, less than adequate tools and equipment, may be present for many years before they combine with local circumstances and active failures to penetrate the system's layers of defenses They arise from strategic and other top-level decisions made by governments, regulators, manufacturers, designers and organizational managers. The impact of these decisions spreads throughout the organization, shaping a distinctive corporate culture and creating error-producing factors within the individual workplaces

If BP has a culture of safety, it sure isn't preventing serious accidents, as the Journal summarizes:

BP has five refineries in the U.S. Two others that, like Texas City, were acquired during a buying spree started in the late-1990s have also had worker deaths recently.

On New Year's Day 2004, a technician at a plant in Whiting, Ind., fell and cracked his skull after a corroded handrail gave way. BP investigators concluded in an internal report, separate from the one issued in May, that there hadn't been a procedure to inspect and repair the facility's handrails, which date to the 1940s. BP said that it has since inspected all handrails at its refineries. Indiana regulators fined BP $1,625 over the incident.

In May, a contractor was found dead at BP's refinery in Cherry Point, Wash. An initial company investigation has found no evidence that the death was related to an accident, a person familiar with the inquiry said. The death is under investigation by the county coroner and state safety regulators.

Even excluding the Cherry Point death and the 15 fatalities in March, BP's four other deaths since January 2002 are more than the number recorded by its main rivals in the U.S., according to federal data and information provided by the companies. BP is America's third-largest refiner. No. 1 ConocoPhillips and No. 2 Exxon Mobil Corp. each had one death during that period.

The Journal also noted that staff reductions may have been to blame for the safety problems:

BP acquired the Texas City refinery from Amoco. In the 1990s, Amoco had reduced the plant's unionized work force by 19%, to 1,300 people, according to Sonny Sanders, a former Texas City employee and longtime labor-union official. Under Amoco, major maintenance overhauls, called "turnarounds," became less frequent, said Mr. Sanders, now a United Steelworkers representative. BP said it wasn't in a position to comment on Amoco's actions. The steelworkers union, which represents BP employees, has challenged the company's findings on the blast and is conducting its own probe.

As it absorbed its American acquisitions in 1999 and 2000, BP cut its work force of U.S. refinery employees and contractors by 10%, largely by means of buyouts in Texas City and Whiting, Ind. At Texas City, the staff of unionized maintenance craftsmen and operators fell by 213, or about 18%, the company said in written answers to questions for this article. The reductions were partially offset by greater use of outside contractors, BP added.

And then there's the maintenance cutbacks:

"The approach to reducing costs was well thought out and systematic," BP's Mr. Pillari said. It "does not appear, in so far as we have seen, to have had anything to do with the fatalities" at Texas City or anywhere else, he adds. The company said in written answers that it has steadily increased overall spending on maintenance in the U.S. At Texas City in 2003-2004, BP said that it spent 40% more per barrel of oil it refined than was spent in 1997-1998 under Amoco. BP declined to disclose dollar figures.

Current and former Texas City employees and contractors paint a different picture. Under BP, the refinery deferred some routine maintenance inspections because of staff shortages, according to three former employees and one current worker. In addition, certain safety procedures have been ignored at the plant, according to seven people who have worked there. Contractors and BP employees sometimes work high above ground without proper safety gear, according to four of these people. BP said that it requires strict compliance with its policies for working at an elevation.

But OSHA's regional director, Mr. Miles, said that managers at other Texas refineries he has inspected, including one nearby owned by Valero Energy Corp., are more actively involved in safety issues. "You don't see that down the street" at BP, he said.

Mr. Crow, the veteran maintenance contractor who was injured in March at Texas City, said disrepair at the plant was worse than what he has seen at comparable refineries. He said he was particularly troubled by corroding metal springs that hold refinery pipes in place. "Everything out there is rusty," he said.

Glenn Alexander, a 45-year-old electrical contractor who suffered shoulder and back injuries in the March blast, said corrosion plagued much of the refinery. Last year, he said, a metal structure supporting power and communications lines high above ground collapsed because of corrosion. No one was injured. Another section of the same sort of structure "was wobbly and could have fallen any minute," he said. Mr. Alexander was a plaintiff in the negligence suit against BP but agreed to a confidential settlement after he was interviewed.

Labels: BP

That management likes to blame worker behavior for accidents will come as no surprise to American workers. That this "blame the worker" theory is not consistent with the facts, that it doesn't get to the root causes of workplace incidents is also not a surprise to American workers.

So this new Mine Safety and Health Administration program comes as a great surprise to all of us.

MSHA Launches New Safety and Health Initiative

ARLINGTON, Va.- The U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) today launched "Make the Right Decision," a safety and health initiative that helps miners and mine operators focus on human factors, such as decision-making, when at work. The campaign encourages miners and mine management to work together on safety and health issues.

"MSHA will increase its focus on safety decisions during this campaign, which is not a limited-time initiative," said David G. Dye, deputy assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. "We want miners and management to make the right decisions to ensure the safety and health of America's miners."

Through "Make the Right Decision," miners and mine management will receive tools to help them recognize hazards and take appropriate action to correct or avoid risks. As part of the educational initiative, MSHA officials will conduct safety talks with miners and mine operators at mine sites nationwide and distribute posters, stickers and fliers with campaign messages.

Agency representatives plan to incorporate two programs in the "Make-the-Right-Decision" campaign. The first program is SLAM, an acronym for stop, look, analyze and manage. The second is SMART, an acronym for stop, measure, act, review and train. Together, these programs address the spectrum of safety decisions made in the mining workplace, from risk assessment at the miner level to risk management at the operator level.

So what's the problem with encouraging workers to make the right decision?

First, the assumption of this program is that most accident happen because workers make the wrong decisions. In other words, all you need is a little education, training and enlightenment and all will be well. If accidents continue to happen, they're caused by worker carelessness, incompetence, stupidity, suicidal tendencies -- and just plain dumb decisions.

In other words, "Make the Right Decision" is just your same old "behavioral safety" program under a new name. Behavioral safety theories say that worker carelessness or misconduct is the cause of most accidents, and disciplining workers is the answer. But behavioral theories don't hold up to a closer look at the root causes of most workplace accidents: generally management system and organizational problems that lead to unsafe conditions. (Confined Space has covered the issue numerous times before -- Here, here, here, here, and here to name just a few)

It is somewhat ironic that this program is starting now. Clearly acting Assistant Secretary Dye hasn't read the June 2005 issue of Occupational Health & Safety which contains an article by Fred Manuele entitled "Serious Injury Prevention."

Manuele cites experts who point out that what may look like "human error" are actually system errors:

R. B. Whittingham, in his book The Blame Machine: Why Human Error Causes Accidents, describes how disasters and serious accidents result from recurring, but potentially avoidable, human errors. He shows that such errors are preventable because they result from defective systems within a company.

Whittingham identifies the common causes of human error and the typical system deficiencies that lead to those errors. They are principally organizational, cultural, and management system deficiencies. Whittingham says that in some organizations, a "blame culture" exists whereby the focus in incident investigation is on individual human error, and the corrective action is limited to that level. He writes: "Organizations, and sometimes whole industries, become unwilling to look too closely at the system faults which caused the error"

He notes that although humans may be involved in the errors that lead to accidents, James Reason and Alan Hobbs, in Managing Maintenance Error: A Practical Guide point out that one needs to look deeper:

Errors are consequences not just causes. They are shaped by local circumstances: by the task, the tools and equipment and the workplace in general. If we are to understand the significance of these factors, we have to stand back from what went on in the error maker's head and consider the nature of the system as a whole . . . this book has a constant theme . . . that situations and systems are easier to change than the human condition

In other words, look at the safety systems and find the root causes. If managers (and MSHA)continue to attempt to prevent accidents by focusing on human errors and "wrong decisions," the same accidents, injuries and deaths will continue to happen.

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Labels: Behavioral Safety, Blame the Worker

This isn't good:

Republican operatives are watching the splintering of the AFL-CIO carefully to see if the divisions offer opportunities to gain a beachhead in labor. "This cuts the legs out from one of their main GOTV [get-out-the-vote] groups, a Republican Party official said with undisguised pleasure.

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While the GOP is eagerly watching the internal labor battles, conservative groups are announcing plans to step in to try to further weaken the union movement. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation announced plans to raise $2 million for "free legal assistance" to workers seeking to end their union membership and to stop paying dues.

Hopefully, a few years from now, they'll be downing more of the hard stuff and scratching their heads wondering "What the hell were we thinking?"
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Labels: AFL-CIO

I don't have too much original to say about it all, so instead I'll provide you a few links to some journalists and organizers more articulate than I:

Molly Ivins: Solidarity Later: Andy Stern and CWC Challenge AFL Power Base

To oversimplify, Sweeney pretty much bet his wad on the Democrats on the theory that labor will never come back unless it gets a level playing field. Setting aside the spinelessness and incompetence of the Democratic Party (I think Democrats who voted for the bankruptcy bill alone should be run out of the party), it sure looks like a losing strategy. Labor skates with the Change to Win Coalition cite the old definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. To oversimplify again, the CWC wants to move all the artillery over to grass-roots organizing.

It may take some arrogance to think your union would do better outside the AFL-CIO, but the CWC has some record on its side. In this debate, you should know that the word "arrogance" is code for Andy Stern, head of the SEIU, who is one impressive guy and also has the nerve to think he knows how to organize better than the leadership of the AFL-CIO. Stern is leading the walkout faction.

Stern's claim to fame is that SEIU has successfully organized the "unorganizable" -- some of the poorest, most powerless people in our society, the people who push mops, clean toilets and never voted in their lives. Credit is due to a superb new generation of organizers. (Obligatory disclosure: A few years ago, I addressed an SEIU convention, but had them donate my fee to charity. My most vivid memory is how proud they are of their children in military service.)

The CWC wants reorganization. They especially think the smaller unions should be merged because each has its own administrative apparatus. Their payrolls eat up dues that should be going to organizing, as do some useless central labor councils. The CWC unions, freed from AFL dues, can hire more organizers and make more progress

Andy Stern, SEIU: Unions Reinvented

But unions, overall, continue to decline. And the AFL-CIO — the national labor federation for the last half-century — has failed to make the hard decisions and take the necessary steps to make the union movement grow again. For months, a group of major unions has been talking to the AFL-CIO leadership on how to reorder priorities and modernize the federation's strategy and structure. But to no avail.

That's why we at the SEIU and three other major unions declared over the weekend that we would not participate in the AFL-CIO national convention in Chicago this week. And on Monday our union — with 1.8 million members — along with the 1.4-million-member Teamsters announced we would withdraw from the federation, effective immediately.

Nathan Newman: Not Such a Big Deal

In the end, the effects of the disaffiliations will be that we'll see some experiments, probably now in both the remaining AFL-CIO unions as well as in CtW, on different organizing strategies. There may be some gains from some healthy competition and maybe some losses from repetition and wasted resources, but this is not some epic divide in the labor movement, like the old AFL v. Knights of Labor, AFL v. IWW, or AFL v. CIO fights.

This will be something a bit different. I'm not sure what yet, but people who criticize it for lacking the drama and vision of past splits are probably right. But if it yields some real coordination among the CtW unions on some serious organizing drives against Wal-Mart or some other global companies, then the move to withdraw their money from the AFL-CIO to concentrate it on those drives may be worthwhile.

Bill Fletcher: Why This Split Is A Big Deal

My larger concerns revolve around potential raiding among unions, as well as the ignoring or obscuring of the larger issues that haunt organized labor. Yes, i am glad that people are talking about Wal-Mart, but what about non-union auto parts companies in the South; steel mini-mills in rural areas; or, on a different level, growing African American unemployment in the cities. In the absence of an analysis, it becomes hit & miss. In other words, we do not develop a strategy, but instead a series of tactical initiatives.

My final point: the great Un-debate showed an amazing capacity to ignore the rank & file, and particularly to ignore the issues and involvement of trade unionists of color. i find this especially damning for those labor leaders who have positioned themselves as visionaries. If the base is not in the vision, except as the object of the work of 'great leaders,' what sort of movement are we building?

Harold Meyerson: Labor's Big Split: Pain Before Gain

In planning to build a new federation with some organizing capacity of its own, the dissidents are harking back to the old CIO, which, with Lewis at its helm, roared out of the old AFL determined to unionize America's industrial workers. The economic and political environment is decidedly more hostile to organizing now than it was then, but Stern, Hoffa and their allies recognize that they will have to win victories on a CIO-like scale to justify their split. No one can say whether the birth of this new labor movement will lead to a desperately needed reversal in fortune for America's workers. Some stars, after all, burn most brightly just before they altogether flicker out.

David Moberg: The fractured state of these unions

The odd twist is that for 10 years Sweeney has exhorted unions to spend more on organizing, tried to help unions develop their ability to organize and urged unions to focus on organizing strategically in a few core industries, not simply to organize indiscriminately.

But as president he has little power, except over his staff. The AFL-CIO is a voluntary federation; individual unions can go their own way on most issues with impunity. Sweeney has followed a tradition - which fits well with his own low-key style - of seeking consensus among the 57 member unions and not forcing issues.

Ironically, many of the unions now backing Sweeney have resisted the program he has advocated. And to add to the irony, some of the unions on the other side are among the most general of unions - organizing anybody and everybody.

Teamsters Union president Jim Hoffa, one dissident, insists that the Teamsters will remain an extremely diverse union, but his proposal for dues rebates would give the Teamsters more money and indirectly pressure small unions that wouldn't qualify for a rebate to seek mergers, possibly with the Teamsters.

In response to the challengers, Sweeney has adopted scaled-back versions of many Change to Win proposals. But the opponents think that he isn't changing the AFL-CIO enough, and the Service Employees Union is quite likely to leave, possibly to be joined by the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, UNITE HERE (textile and hotel workers), along with the already departed Carpenters. Change to Win - surely with a new name - could become an alternative federation.

David Bacon:Reconnecting Labor with Its Radical Roots

It's important for unions to start an honest discussion of why the gains have been so limited, and what political direction is best for US workers. While the current debate over structure makes important points, there are deeper issues that need to be resolved. Simply changing the AFL-CIO's structure is not enough.

In the current debate, almost all proposals put the issue of stopping the slide in members and power-the problem of organizing-in center stage. This is not a bad place for discussion to start, so long as it takes a deeper look at why this is such a hard area for unions to make progress. Organizing large numbers of workers will not just help unions. Wages rise under the pressure of union drives, especially among nonunion workers. Stronger unions will force politicians to recognize universal healthcare, secure jobs, and free education after high school, not as pie-in-the-sky dreams, but as the legitimate demands of millions of people.

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Raising the percentage of organized workers in the United States from just 10 to 11 percent would mean organizing over a million people. Only a social movement can organize people on this scale. In addition to examining structural reforms that can make unions more effective and concentrate their power, the labor movement needs a program which can inspire people to organize on their own, one which is unafraid to put forward radical demands, and rejects the constant argument that any proposal that can't get through Congress next year is not worth fighting for.

As much as people need a raise, the promise of one is not enough to inspire them to face the certain dangers they know too well await them. Working families need the promise of a better world. Over and over, for more than a century, workers have shown that they will struggle for the future of their children and their communities, even when their own future seems in doubt. But only a new, radical social vision can inspire the wave of commitment, idealism, and activity necessary to rebuild the labor movement.

Tim Nesbitt: Searching for ‘a more perfect union’

What happens on the local level is more complicated, but also more likely to be resolved in a cooperative fashion. Both Hoffa and Stern said that their unions will continue to make payments to central labor councils and state federations, even though the current rules of the AFL-CIO do not allow non-AFL-CIO unions to be formal members of these state and local organizations. Still, where there’s the will, there’s a way. And if the “Change to Win” unions say they want to participate in local organizations with AFL-CIO unions, we’ll have every incentive to find creative ways to accomplish that.

As I reminded reporters in Oregon today, we’ll still have the same number of unions with the same number of union members and the same resources after this convention. We may have to restructure our efforts, but we have a long tradition of working together in broad-based labor coalitions and campaigns of the kind that raised Oregon’s minimum wage in 2002 and produced a pro-worker majority in our State Senate in 2004. This is one area where we’ve learned what works for working families, and we’re committed to expanding, improving and continuing it.

The Nation: Debating Labor's Future

Stern vs. McEntee vs. Cohen vs. Wilhelm vs. Sweeney vs. Hoffa

Thanks to Nathan Newman and LabourStartfor some of these links. For many more, check out Nathan's column in the House of Labor and LabourStart here.

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Labels: AFL-CIO

I've never been a fan of the "safety pays" slogans that OSHA seems to have fallen in love with. You know, if you just convince corporate America that safe companies will be more profitable, you won't need all those anti-capitalist, business-killing OSHA regulations and big government interference with the magic of the marketplace.

The problem is what if safety doesn't pay? What happens when companies make more money endangering their workers than making conditions safe, or when accidents cost money -- but not really that much?

British Petroleum is taking a hit in its bottom line because of the March 23 explosion at its Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers and injured 170.

Well, not exactly a hit, more like a small pinch. BP announced a $5.66 billion profit for the second quarter of 2005, but it was $700 million less than it would have been due to settlements related to the March 23 Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 workers. (That would be slightly more than 1% of it's 2nd quarter profits.) Profits were up $4.38 billion in the second quarter of 2004, mainly because of record high oil prices.

Although BP has paid out tens of millions of dollars to many of the workers killed on the job, it has yet to reach settlements on the workers seriously injured.

Rob Ammons, a Houston attorney handling many of the injured workers' suits, said BP's initial response to claims has been rapid and appreciated.

"It was refreshing to see BP take a reasonable approach to resolution of the death claims and we're still waiting to see if that continues on to the folks whose backs have been broken and lives have been ruined but remain alive," he said.

"One would think that if they do accept responsibility for this, then it should extend not just to those who were killed, but also to those who were hurt and are unable to work any more because of those injuries."

Related Stories

• Lessons From Texas City, June 29, 2005
  
• BP Pays Off, Big and Fast, June 23, 2005
• BP Scapegoats Aren't Taking It; Sue Company, June 22, 2005
• Preventing Future Refinery Disasters: Real Sanctions or More Voluntary Alliances?, June 13, 2005
• BP To Incompetent Workers: “Nevermind … or Not? May 25, 2005
• BP: Corporate Scapegoating? May 23, 2005
• Blaming The Worker: In Texas City and On the Rails, May 18, 2005
• Refinery Deaths and Injuries Hidden By Flawed OSHA Recordkeeping Rules, May 16, 2005
• BP Kills More Than Any Other Refining Firm, May 15, 2005
• "I Should Have Been Killed" -- Survivors of Texas City BP Blast, April 19, 2005
• BP Amoco Texas City Update: Plant Owners Aware of Venting and Trailer Location, Hazards, April 10, 2005
• Workplace Safety Enforcement: A Tale of Two Countries, April 5, 2005
• Transparency? Or PR Savvy?, March 26, 2005
• BP In California: "callous and intentional noncompliance purely for economic reasons", March 24, 2005
• BP, site of fatal explosion, is Nation's Leader in Accidents, March 24, 2005
• At Least 14 Dead, Hundreds Injured In Huge Refinery Explosion, March 23, 2005

Labels: BP