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January 04, 2006
Top Ten Workplace Health and Safety Stories of 2005
By Jordan Barab. Reprinted from Confined Space
Another year has gone by, OSHA and MSHA continue to do a heck of a job protecting the nation's workforce and once again it's time for the eagerly awaited Top Ten Health and Safety Stories of the past year.
OSHA fined BP $21.3 million, the largest fine in OSHA's history, sending shockwaves through the company when it was discovered the fine amounted to just over 2 hours of BP profits. BP has established an independent panel to review safety systems at all BP facilities in the United States, at the request of the US Chemical Safety Board, which is conducting an thorough investigation of the explosion.
Moving from the ridiculous to the tragic, in August, OSHA granted the prestigious "Star" Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) status to corporate killer W.R. Grace which was indicted earlier this year for knowingly exposing thousands of workers and community residents to deadly asbestos dust.
Finally, the agency decided to lend a helping hand to the financially struggling American Chemistry Council by forming an alliance with the chemical manufacturers association that seemed intended to help the association bolster its plummeting membership numbers.
And what, you may be asking, is OSHA in effect saying to the General Accounting Office which warned the agency in 2004 that there is no evidence that these costly programs are effective in reducing health and safety problems?
Foulke’s chief claim to fame was his term as Chair of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission during the Bush I administration, but his years since those glory days have been spent heading up the OSHA practice at Jackson, Lewis, a huge law firm notorious for its aggressive union busting practice, and heading up the Greenville, South Carolina Republican Party in his spare time.
Foulke will replace acting Assistant Secretary Jonathan Snare, a Texas Republican political operative who, before coming to Washington, played a major role in the infamous Texas re-redistricting and made money defending Metabolife, whose main product, ephedra, was finally banned by the FDA after killing more than 150 people.
Meanwhile, Stickler, who was most recently head of mine safety in Pennsylvania during the Quecreek Mine near-disaster was notable chiefly for managing coal mines that had injury rates that were double the national average.
The Kansas City Star ran an excellent series by Mike Casey Unlike most articles about trench deaths, Heidi Shrager's article about a fatal Staten Island trenching fatality actually explored in-depth the employer's conscious decision to violate OSHA's trenching standard, sending an immigrant worker to his death. I don't know if Shrager's article gets the credit, but the case has resulted in manslaughter charges.
And finally, that radical anti-capitalist publication known as the Wall St. Journal had a couple of good pieces on the failure of U.S. programs to regulate exposure to toxic chemicals, and corporate influence on the science that determines chemical regulations. If only their editorial staff actually read their own newspaper...
With these lessons under its belt, OSHA then responded to the hurricane Katrina disaster by failing to enforce OSHA standards, neglecting to ensure proper use appropriate respirators and ignoring the health and safety problems of mostly low paid immigrant workers working with toxic molds and other hazards for employers who were not under FEMA contracts.
And apparently greatly impressed by OSHA's resolution of the health and safety crisis in the Canine Cosmology industry, Enzi's bills would also encourage OSHA to increase its voluntary activities.
And finally, Enzi's bills would allow OSHA for the first time in its history to penalize employees for not wearing personal protective equipment like hard hats and gloves. Neither OSHA nor Senator Enzi seem to be aware that by failing to issue OSHA's long awaited standard that would require employers to pay for workers' personal protective equipment, the agency is essentially penalizing employees for using the safety equipment. On the federal level, prosecutors at the Justice Department have been indicting business owners using environmental laws that carry much stronger penalties than the OSHAct. W.R. Grace & Co. and seven of its current or former executives and department heads were indicted in February for attempting to hide the fact that toxic asbestos was present in vermiculite products at the company’s Libby, Montana plant. Grace had not only exposed workers at its plant, and the entire community of Libby, but also workers at plants across the United States where the vermiculite was processed.
Following a puny $175,000 fine against Motiva Corporation for the 2001 death of Jeffrey Davis who was killed when a tank full of sulphuric acid exploded, the Justice Department fined the company an additional $10 million last year for knowingly putting workers in danger. (The company was aware that the tank was leaking explosive vapors.) The size of the fine was a result of enforcement under environmental laws that permit EPA to cite companies if employers knowingly commit environmental violations that also endanger or kill a worker. (Fish were killed in the acid spill). The lesson: If you're a worker who's going to die on the job, make sure you take a bunch of fish with you.
Posted by Jordan Barab at January 4, 2006 01:05 AM