BUSH LABOR DEPT. TWISTS RULES TO HARM WORKPLACE SAFETY

Friday, July 25, 2008

(PAI)BUSH LABOR DEPT. TWISTS RULES TO HARM WORKPLACE SAFETY

By Mark Gruenberg

PAI Staff Writer

            WASHINGTON (PAI)--In yet another demonstration of its anti-worker attitudes, the GOP Bush regime’s Labor Department is using an internal memo from a top White House honcho to ban new federal rules helping workplace safety, in one instance, while in another case, it ignores his same memo, so Bush’s DOL can push through a new rule harming workplace safety.

            Confusing? Yes. But it’s part of the eight-year Bush pattern of hurting workers.

            In one of the two cases involved--rules on construction cranes--workers have already been hurt and killed. And a rule to protect them has been deep-sixed, over protests of the advisory committee of experts OSHA convened to consider the issue.

            The key to the controversy is a memo issued earlier this year by Joshua M. Bolten, Bush’s White House Office of Management and Budget director.   OMB gets all proposed federal rules before they are published for public comment.

            Remembering past administrations’ tendencies to rush rules through in their closing days, Bolten banned all new rules after June 1, unless OMB already has them in hand. Once a rule is on the books, it’s hard to undo without endless hearings, comments and sometimes lawsuits.

            But there was a catch. Bolten said he would waive that ban for “extraordinary circumstances.” And a political cabal in the Bush Labor Department’s policy office found one: Making it tougher to measure workplace risks from exposure to hazardous chemicals and toxins. On July 7, OMB said it would go along with the Bush DOL.

            After dithering since at least 2006 on “risk assessment” of workers’ exposure to chemicals and hazardous toxins, all of a sudden, the Bush DOL decided speed things up and race the clock.   Their hope: A new rule making it harder to measure exposure.

            Usually, rules dealing with toxins in the workplace are left to impartial non-partisan career workers within OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The Labor Department’s policy shop is staffed with political and ideological appointees. They’re drafting the new rule about assessing workers’ risks of exposure to chemicals.

            The present risk assessment rule assumes a worker exposed to a chemical works for 45 years. DOL’s policy people say that overstates the risk. They want to change it so fewer workers are assumed to be exposed to risks.

            “This is flat-out secrecy. They are trying…to reduce required workplace protections through a midnight regulation,” AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director peg Seminario told The Washington Post.

            But when it comes to construction crane safety, the Labor Department invokes Bolton’s memo to do nothing at all, despite crane collapses which have killed at least 17 workers since May 30 and injured dozens of other people, both workers and bystanders. OSHA’s crane safety standard has not been updated in 35 years.

            The latest crane collapse was in mid-July in Houston. It killed seven workers and injured four others.

            Five years ago, Bush’s OSHA established a “negotiated regulatory” committee of advisors to OSHA to work out a new rule for construction crane safety. The panel was dominated by the construction industry, but it included two union representatives. Its object was to come up jointly with a new rule on construction crane safety that everyone could live with.   And it did, in July 2004.

            Then-OSHA administrator John Henshaw, an industrial hygienist, hailed that 119-page proposal as “a significant step forward in protecting the thousands of workers who operate and work around cranes.” But then the stall began. OSHA then took ore than two years for a required analysis.

            Instead of issuing a draft crane rule in late 2007, as promised, OSHA sat on it--and finally sent it to OMB this year, where it got caught by Bolten’s no-rules memo.

            “OSHA is mortally constipated and can’t get a proposed rule out, even one that is already written for it,” one pro-worker construction safety newsletter, The Pump Handle, comments.

            Even OSHA’s own advisory committee, dominated by industry, was upset. It complained in a letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao about the delay. It sent the letter before Bolten’s anti-rules memo halted--or was supposed to halt--every federal rule in its tracks. The panel operated under the assumption that if everyone, including unions, agreed on the new construction crane safety rule, then the process would speed up, the administration would agree, and the standard would go through.

            “The lack of progress on this important safety and health standard remains a disservice to the entire industry affected by this standard.   We strongly urge you ensure this standard and its publication receive the immediate attention it requires,” the committee wrote Chao. There has been no response from Chao. Meanwhile, Bolten’s memo has apparently killed the proposed crane safety rule. And falling cranes keep killing workers and bystanders.                 ###