AFL-CIO: GOP CUTS PUT JOB

SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS AT RISK

By Mark Gruenberg

PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)—Potential Republican cuts to future job safety and health spending put improvements in occupational safety and health at risk, a new AFL-CIO report says.

In its 20th annual report analyzing the safety and health data, issued for Workers Memorial Day, the fed warned that “business groups and Republicans are trying to block new regulations and targeted key Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Mine Safety and Health Administration rules. Attempts already have been made in this Congress to slash OSHA’s budget with proposed cuts that would decimate OSHA’s already inadequate enforcement.

“Workers in the United States need more safety and health protection, not less. Forty years after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, there is much more work to be done,” the fed’s report states.

The AFL-CIO hopes to use the data to protect federal job safety and health programs. The Obama administration and Senate Democrats staved off a planned cut for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, AFL-CIO Occupational Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario told Press Associates.

“We look to this to help us turn back the renewed attacks we expect” when Congress ponders future budget cutting moves, she added. “We still have too many workers injured, killed and diseased on the job.”

Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect draws on job safety and health data stretching through 2009, the latest full year available. It reports that deaths on the job hit an all-time low of 3.3 per 100,000 workers that year, mostly due to the fact that the Great Recession threw millions of people out of jobs. OSHA’s data may be available next month, Seminario says – and may be flawed, as states lack money to collect data.

“In 2009, according to preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,340 workers were killed on the job -- an average of 12 workers every day -- and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases,” the report says.

“More than 4.1 million work-related injuries and illnesses were reported, but this number understates the problem. The true toll of job injuries is two to three times greater -- about 8 million to 12 million job injuries and illnesses each year,” according to studies comparing OSHA reports with state workers comp and other data.

Tables within the report show the recession’s impact. For example, three states which had extremely large construction sectors – Florida, Arizona and Nevada – saw occupational fatality rates drop sharply from 2008 to 2009 as those sectors collapsed. “That’s the change in industry mix” in those states, Seminario says.

That’s important: Construction is still the occupational sector with the third-highest fatality rate – 9.7 per 100,000 workers in 2009 nationwide. OSHA chief Dr. David Michaels says construction consumes 60% of all OSHA inspections.

Meanwhile, the three states with the highest on-the-job fatality rates were Montana (7.2 deaths per 100,000 workers) and Louisiana and Wyoming (6.8 per 100,000 each). All three depend on extractive industries: Mining and, in Louisiana’s case, oil drilling. Their high rates are no surprise: Mining was second in on-the-job fatality rates, at 12.7 deaths per 100,000 workers.

Even in mining-heavy Wyoming, the recession hit: Its on-the-job death rates were in double digits every year until 2009, reaching 17.1 per 100,000 in 2007. Wyoming is a right-to-work state. Only six of the 23 right-to-work states had on-the-job fatality rates below the national average of 3.3 per 100,000 workers, and six of the right-to-work states finished among the bottom 10 in on-the-job death rates.

That statistic bodes ill for workers in New Hampshire, which had the lowest on-the-job fatality rate in the U.S., the report said: 0.9 deaths per 100,000 workers. Its GOP-run state legislature is pondering a right-to-work law, which would deprive unions of the money and bargaining leverage to train workers in job safety, and enforce it.

Other key findings of the report include:

* Latino workers have higher on-the-job fatality rates: 3.7 per 100,000 in 2009. There were 668 fatal injuries among Latino workers, down from 804 in 2008 and 990 in 2007, before the recession began. Latinos are disproportionately represented in two of the three highest-risk occupations, construction and farming.

* On-the-job injuries and illnesses cost the economy $159 billion-$318 billion a year. The AFL-CIO’s estimate is so wide because up to two-thirds of on=the-job injuries are unreported to OSHA, according to other studies.

* OSHA, as usual, lacks workplace inspectors. OSHA and the state OSHA plans have 2,218 inspectors to inspect the 8 million workplaces the job safety law covers. That doesn’t include workplaces not under the act, like state and local governments.

Federal OSHA can inspect workplaces on average once every 129 years, and

state OSHA plans can inspect them once every 67 years, the report says. The state with the best coverage is Oregon (once every 23 years) and the state with the worst is Florida (once every 241). Louisiana is second-worst (once every 214 years).

“A combination of too few OSHA inspectors and low penalties makes the threat of an OSHA inspection hollow for too many employers. More than 8.2 million workers still are without OSHA coverage,” the report adds. One fifth of the workers not covered by the law are state and local government workers in one state: Texas.

* There are now 7.3 OSHA inspectors per million workers, up from the historic low of 6.4 – fewer than when OSHA was established – in fiscal 2008, the last full year of the GOP Bush government. Bush’s OSHA de-emphasized enforcement in favor of industry-operated “voluntary compliance.”

“The current level of federal and state OSHA inspectors provides one inspector for every 57,984 workers,” the report adds. The International Labour Organization recommends industrialized countries have one job safety inspector per 10,000 workers.

* “OSHA penalties are too low to deter violations. The average penalty for a serious violation of the law in FY 2010 was $1,052 for federal OSHA and $858 for state plans,” the report notes. Even when workers die, “penalties are incredibly weak: The median initial total penalty in fatality cases investigated by federal OSHA was $7,000, with a median penalty after settlement of $5,600. For the OSHA state plans, the initial median total penalty was $5,188, reduced to $4,543 after settlement.

“Oregon had the lowest median current penalty for fatality investigations, with $1,500 in penalties assessed, followed by Wyoming ($2,063) and Kentucky ($2,275). New Hampshire had the highest median current penalty ($142,000), followed by Minnesota ($26,050) and Missouri ($21,000).”

“Criminal penalties under the OSHA law are weak. They are limited to cases in which a willful violation results in a worker death and are misdemeanors. Since 1970, only 84 cases have been prosecuted, with defendants serving a total of 89 months in jail. During this time there were more than 360,000 worker deaths.

“Much work needs to be done. Both OSHA and MSHA need to move quickly and aggressively to develop and issue new standards on serious hazards including silica, combustible dust, infectious diseases and rules to require workplace injury and illnesses prevention programs. Enforcement must be ramped up, particularly for employers who repeatedly violate the law. Funding and staffing at the agencies should be increased to provide for enhanced oversight of worksites and timely and effective enforcement,” the report concludes.

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