SEARCH
After Eight Years of Bush, Can OSHA be Fixed?
The Bush administration left a lot of wreckage in its wake. The crumbling economy, the home foreclosure crisis and a broken health care system are getting most of the recent headlines and calls for immediate repair.
But for the men and women who get up and go to work every day—and want to come home alive and without injury—there is something else the Bush administration trashed that needs fixing and fixing fast—the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
A special edition of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NYCOSH‘s) newsletter “Safety Rep” asked nearly three dozen safety and health experts from the union, scientific and academic worlds this question:
After eight years of Bush can OSHA be fixed?…During the last eight years, tens of thousands of workers died or were injured on the job—a direct result of the failure of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to promulgate new standards and stringently enforce the law.
Writing in the special edition’s introduction, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka says the first major step must be bringing in new leaders, including
the administrators of OSHA and MSHA [Mine Safety and Health Administration] who are actually committed to a strong federal role in worker safety and health and who see their roles as advocates for worker protection.
And in stark contrast to the Bush administration, the new leaders should bring workers and their unions and safety and health professionals, as well as employers, into the process of developing agendas and setting standards.
The U.S. Senate took a first step toward that goal yesterday when it finally confirmed Obama’s nominee for labor secretary, Hilda Solis.
Denis Hughes, president of the New York State AFL-CIO, says growing worker power through unions is a key factor in the health and safety fight.
The first and foremost thing workers can do to protect their safety and health is to join a union. Without a union to protect them, rights to safe and healthful working conditions are a legal abstraction.
Hughes says workers now have the best opportunity in years to fight for stronger enforcement of workplace safety laws and tougher penalties for safety and health violations. But he adds:
Our demands for safer workplaces will be met with stiff resistance from the business community. Passage of the Employee Choice Employee Act and increasing our numbers is a necessary first step in the fight for safe and healthful workplaces.
Several of the special edition’s contributors—including those outside the union movement—wrote that the Employee Free Choice Act and its resultant growth of workers’ unions will be a major factor in improving worker safety.
AFT President Randi Weingarten says the new Obama-led OSHA should restore the ergonomics standard the Bush administration wiped off the books in the first few months after Bush took office.
That standard, which was the product of painstaking work, was an important step in combating work-related musculoskeletal disorders that now affect 1.8 million U.S. workers each years.
Public employees are not covered by federal OSHA’s standards, although some states have extended coverage to public employees. A number of the writers call for bringing public-sector works under OSHA’s umbrella.
Among other issues the health and safety experts discuss are:
- The immediate need for a mandate from the Obama administration to issue standards already in the pipeline;
- Increased funding for worker training programs;
- Programs to aggressively reach out to immigrant workers and the organizations that work with them;
- Strategies to protect worker safety and health during disaster response;
- New requirements to prevent underreporting of injuries and illnesses; and
- The need to establish mandatory labor-management safety and health committees.
NYCOSH, is a non-profit coalition of 200 local unions and more than 400 individual workers, physicians, lawyers, and other health and safety activists dedicated to the right of every worker to a safe and healthful job.
Click here for the full report.
 |
Become a Fan on Facebook |  |
Follow Us on Twitter |  |
Subscribe to YouTube |  |
Subscribe to Blog RSS | ||||
6 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Of course, besides OSHA there is the FDA, SEC, and complete deterioration of any consumer protection.
Jim
NY Times February 26, 2009
Union Crane-Safety Teacher Admitted to Oversight Lapses
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
After two fatal tower crane accidents last year, New York City instituted a series of reforms to increase safety and oversight in the construction industry, including requiring a 30-hour class for crane operators and other workers on the safest way to raise and lower a tower crane.
But some sessions of the city-mandated class are being taught by a union official who has admitted that he helped unqualified people, including organized crime figures, get into his union, according to sworn testimony and investigative reports. He and other union officials helped some of those men secure licenses to operate smaller cranes at construction sites across the city, the testimony and the reports say.
The official, James P. Conway, teaches the classes for Local 14-14B of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which has signed a consent decree to operate under the oversight of a court-approved corruption monitor.
A spokesman for the city’s Buildings Department, which oversees the newly required safety classes, said it was conducting no checks on the individual instructors to determine their qualifications or background.
Although the law that requires the safety training specifies that the Buildings Department must approve the “provider” of the training, the spokesman, Tony Sclafani, said the agency interprets that to mean the unions offering the class, not the individual teachers.
Mr. Sclafani said the agency could not provide the names of any of the people who were now teaching the course, only that five entities were responsible for the instruction: Local 14-14B, three other unions and a private construction safety company. Of the nearly 500 workers who have taken the class since the law went into effect last fall, he said, 160 were trained in the program offered by Local 14-14B, which represents about 900 people who work with heavy construction equipment, including some who operate tower cranes.
He defended the department’s oversight of the program, saying it “has audited and will continue to audit these courses to ensure these standards are being met.”
“This training is one of many construction safety reforms the department has implemented in the past year, including a groundbreaking study of high-risk construction that resulted in 41 critical recommendations to improve operations throughout the city,” Mr. Sclafani said.
One of the other unions that offers the safety course, the Cement and Concrete Workers, praised the city’s handling of the program, according to a spokesman, Roberto Lebron. He said that in the union’s view, the city had done a very good job organizing the review of curriculums for the course.
But Mr. Conway’s admissions, and similar allegations against him by other union officials, seem at odds with the image of safety and integrity the city seeks to present as part of its overhaul of construction oversight.
Mr. Conway, 44, made the statements about his conduct in a 2003 interview with federal and state prosecutors and investigators who were preparing two racketeering cases against Local 14-14B and a related union, according to a report summarizing his statements. By 2004, after prosecutors and investigators had won the cooperation of half a dozen other union officials, the cases in federal court in Manhattan and Brooklyn had resulted in the convictions of more than 45 union officials, union members and crime figures.
In the interview, Mr. Conway said that at the behest of another union official, he solicited dancers at a strip club they frequented to join the union’s apprenticeship program.
Sworn testimony by several other union officials in a more recent, related federal case in Manhattan contains allegations that echo the admissions made by Mr. Conway, who was not charged in either racketeering case.
A lawyer for Mr. Conway, Sean O’Shea, said his client would not comment about the admissions and accusations contained in the reports and testimony.
The new class that Mr. Conway teaches is mandated by a law passed by the City Council and signed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in September. It was initiated by the Bloomberg administration and the City Council after two fatal crane accidents left nine people dead and dozens injured last year.
The accidents — one of which occurred during the dangerous and delicate operation of raising, or “jumping” a tower crane — also led to corruption arrests that focused on the Buildings Department unit that inspects cranes and licenses operators.
Federal authorities have contended that the Genovese and Colombo crime families have for decades “exerted corrupt influence and extortionate control” over Local 14-14B officials, securing no-show jobs for mob associates and receiving kickbacks. Even after the racketeering cases sent several current and former union officials to prison, concerns about mob influence and corruption led to a recent court-approved consent decree requiring that the union’s activities be overseen by a corruption monitor, not yet selected.
The city, in developing its safety instruction program, was not unaware of the union’s problems. Last year, four years after the racketeering convictions, the city moved to revoke the crane licenses of three union members who had served prison terms, but still had managed to renew their licenses. The three men later surrendered their licenses.
But no action has been taken against several others who renewed their city licenses after serving prison sentences. Mr. Sclafani has said that a felony conviction — even one related to the construction industry — does not automatically disqualify an applicant. On Wednesday he would not say if any action would be taken against the others, but noted that an administrative investigation was under way.
Because several calls to the union’s president, Edwin L. Christian, were not returned, and Mr. Conway’s lawyer declined to comment, his qualifications for teaching the course, which focuses on the safety procedures for raising and lowering tower cranes, were not clear. But Mr. Conway has held a city license since 1986 that entitles him to operate tower cranes. A lawyer for the union, James Steinberg, would not comment on the training program and said that Mr. Christian might have been unavailable because he was in Hawaii on union business.
Mr. Sclafani, asked why the agency had allowed a union with integrity problems to offer what the city has described as important safety training, said, “These are the people who perform this type of work,” adding the agency had reviewed the curriculum.
Mr. Conway, the union’s director of industry advancement and its former training director, portrayed himself as a reluctant handmaiden to organized crime in a Dec. 11, 2003, interview with law enforcement officials.
The State Organized Crime Task Force report of that interview indicates that he said several times in the session that he feared losing his job if he did not do the bidding of the men who were the mob’s liaisons with the union. And he also told his interviewers — federal prosecutors from Brooklyn and Manhattan, a prosecutor and an investigator from the task force and an F.B.I. agent — that he feared for his safety when a crime family’s liaison to the union told him about killing a man with a car bomb. He said he had his next union car equipped with a remote starter.
He also told the law enforcement officials that he had gone to some lengths to try to do the proper thing in certain instances. He said he made efforts to help get more minority applicants into the union, even seeking the assistance of federal labor officials to set up an apprenticeship program toward that end.
Mr. Conway said that he believed the union’s testing process, which he acknowledged repeatedly bypassing and manipulating to help mob figures and their family members and the friends and relatives of union members and officials, was used to keep out minority applicants. He described shepherding the cases of two minority applicants through the process, an action that incurred the wrath of one union member whose sons Mr. Conway had tested and failed.
Corners cut and beers downed at Fed-run OSHA classes
BY BRIAN KATES, JOE KEMP and GREG B. SMITH
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Sunday, February 1st 2009, 3:15 AM
Theodorakis/News
OSHA trainer Darrel Innis conceded the construction safety course had problems.
Safety is for sale in the dimly lit Aqueduct North bar in the far reaches of the Bronx.
Last Sunday, a group of hardhats hunkered down for what was supposed to be 10 hours of crucial construction safety training.
One of the “hardhats” was an undercover Daily News reporter. What he found was that the $125 course took just over two hours, factoring in time spent waiting for the instructor to show and breaks to grab a beer.
The course was the OSHA 10, a 10-hour lesson created by the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration that’s supposed to teach the basics of job safety and reduce dangerous conditions at job sites.
It is designed to combat the record number of construction deaths (19) and injuries (181) in the city in the last year.
Many of the injuries and deaths occurred when workers ignored safety rules like wearing harnesses, properly assembling scaffolding or handling equipment safely.
As a result, the city began requiring anyone working at a building 15 stories or higher to prove they’ve taken the course by July. Those who’ve already done so will have to take a refresher within five years.
“Cheating is rampant,” said Martin Daly, training director for the District Council of Carpenters. “I hear a lot of stories about guys getting OSHA cards in the back of a bar.”
Many industry experts say the classes are often a joke. With 125,000 construction workers expected to complete the course by 2014, insiders have noted a rise in bogus training.
OSHA officials declined to comment on the two-hour OSHA 10 class The News discovered, except to say they monitor classes on a random basis.
“Certainly it is an ongoing challenge … to try and maintain quality,” said James Barnes of OSHA’s national office. “You’re always going to have people who try to do things the right way and people who don’t try to do things the right way.”
OSHA 10 is supposed to cover specific topics for required amounts of time. Four hours are for health and safety, protecting against falls, electrical shock and falling objects, and use of protective gear.
Then comes two hours covering proper handling of material, hand and power tools, and ladders, assemblage of scaffolding, operation of cranes and equipment used in excavations.
The final four hours serve to review or to “teach any other construction industry hazards or policies.”
OSHA 10 trainers must take a rigorous course called the OSHA 500 and must now sign documents certifying they have given the required hours of training for each class. In New York, there are 39 such trainers.
Normally, union trainers give the course over three evenings, Daly said. “If you give 10 hours in one day, they won’t absorb it,” he noted.
That wasn’t a problem at the Aqueduct bar in Woodlawn when a Daily News reporter signed up for the OSHA 10.
In a dark and frigid room above the bar, about 32 workers – none of whom brought paper or pencil – paid $125 each for what was described on the form they filled out as a “10 hour OSHA CLASS.”
A registered OSHA trainer named Darrel Innis introduced the basic tenets of the class, then turned it over to another certified instructor, Grover Drakeford, who showed up an hour late.
Drakeford then skipped most of the lesson. He eliminated large chunks of required material, read from slides and frequently took breaks.
The four-hour section on health and safety issues took about 90 minutes, with the equipment safety lesson taking another 47 minutes. The four-hour discussion session disappeared completely. Much of the class consisted of watching videos and slide shows.
During one break, workers slipped downstairs for a beer. At another point, a worker fell asleep.
The instructor blew off crucial lessons, such as the section on the proper way to erect scaffolding. He skimmed through slides describing proper angles and measurements to build stairways and set up ladders.
After two hours and 17 minutes of class time, the “students” received official-looking “temporary” cards certifying they’d completed 10 hours of “certified” OSHA training.
Innis promised permanent cards would arrive from OSHA by mail in six weeks.
Reached later by The News, instructor Drakeford declined to discuss the class, but Innis agreed that the class should have been longer.
Innis said he got his OSHA training through an on-line course and explained, “It doesn’t say specifically how we do the training but it does say make it last.”
He then admitted, “The class that we did wasn’t done properly.” He claimed he left the class at Aqueduct North and when he returned two and a half hours later, “it was already a done deal.”
He said he would “reprimand” Drakeford, cancel the paperwork to OSHA, and notify all the students they would have to retake the class for free.
Asked why so many “students” in the class expected the course to take only a couple of hours, Innis said, “I’ve done classes that only lasted five or six hours before, but most of the time I try to keep it close to the 10-hour mark.”
“I take this very seriously,” he said outside the Bronx apartment that serves as his business office. “I don’t want you to think we’re some fly-by-night place that just hands out OSHA cards.”
gsmith@nydailynews.com
Re the NYCOSH document on revamping OSHA: Excellent points being made, but also some oversights:
The core problem remains that there is no tort liability, and no criminal liability, for the employer who severely injures, or toxic-chemical exposes workers; and virtually no criminal liability for the employer in the death of workers.
Tort liability must be established.
Employers, and senior management, must be able to be held criminally liable for the disease that cripples or the corporate negligence that injures and kills, similar to what is done in other countries.
“Discounting Death: OSHA’s Failure to Punish Safety Violations That Kill Workers,” a report prepared by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Edward Kennedy, dated 4/29/08 is an excellent and thoroughly researched overview of the very serious problems with OSHA. While it lays out what needs to be changed, the Conclusion doesn’t go far enough. The “willful” designation must cease as a requirement to refer for criminal prosecution; criminal prosecution must include criminal negligence that causes severe injury, illness, as well as death; the misdemeanor penalty must be changed to a felony; and similar to Canada’s Corporate Manslaughter Law, must hold senior managers within the corporation accountable under the law; require equity fines that require company shares to go into a compensation fund for injured, ill or deceased workers; require public notice of conviction on criminal manslaughter.
Patrice Woeppel, Ed.D.
Author: Depraved Indifference: the Workers’ Compensation System
Yes OSHA can be fixed, but then it always did need fixing, didn’t it ? Our Unions need fixing too, as a Teamster I wish the IBT was still a part of the AFL-CIO. But, for some resaon most of the guys can’t seem to understand that he ain’t what his daddy was.
Patrice hopefully, this Administration would re-write a report against Employers and upper management for tort and criminal liability for action taken intentional that injure are kill workers.
If this did W. could go to jail for the nelgligence tort act when the employees from Pacific Gas & Electric spoke about Ergonomics in 1982 and now diseases like musculoskeletal and carpal tunnel injuries have travel around the world globally.
W. main focus is past investors who lost money investing in solar panels caused by defective computer chips.