Europe To OSHA's VPP: Thanks, But No Thanks

Sometimes it takes someone on the outside (in this case outside the country) to get an honest perspective on the problems we have in this country. In this case, Laurent Vogel, a researcher with the European Trade Union Institute, has written an article about OSHA's Voluntary Protection Programs. Why? Because the United States is trying to export this program to the rest of the world.

VPP, for those of you who don't know, is a voluntary safety program originally developed during the Reagan Administration that allows firms that maintain good health and safety records to escape routine OSHA inspection, other than worker complaints, large number of injuries or fatal accidents. Companies must have a health and safety management system, then OSHA audits the program, and a team of specialists conducts a full onsite evaluation. Thge participating companies must show that their recorded injuries and illnesses say below the industry average for the past three years.

Vogel notes OSHA's enthusiasm for this program:

OSHA's appetite knows no bounds. Since 1998, VPPs can now be run in the federal civil service. In October 2004, an agreement was reached between OSHA and the army to extend VPPs to military sites, among other things. In August 2005, an OSHA official, Jonathan Snare, floated the possibility of extending the programme to US armed forces' combat operations in Afghanistan.

We've written here about how OSHA has even established a VPP program at one of its own offices.

One of the most important points that Vogel makes is that even though a VPP program requires "worker participation," there's no requirement that "worker participation" means that VPP programs must have unions. (Although "direct participation" schemes that often involve disciplinary control mechanisms are smiled upon.) He also cites OSHA's figure that only a quarter of VPP participating sites and barely 15% of sub-contracting firms have trade union representation, which is particularly troubling considering that about half employ more than 200 workers.

One of OSHA's biggest selling point for VPP is that it allegedly saves money. But this "hard sell" raises a series of issues:

1. It is not easy to determine whether VPPs make firms perform better , or whether it is firms that already run better-performing HSW systems who sign up to VPPs.
   
   
2. The figures come from the firms themselves. There is no enforcement action to address under-reporting of work-related accidents and diseases.
   
   
3. Long-term health effects are all-but absent from the VPP indicators. The main indicator is total sick days due to work injuries and occupational diseases, which excludes long latency health damage and that which does not necessarily involve time off (reproductive health disorders, for example). That may add to pressure on workers to make the earliest possible return to work.
   
   
4. There is no assessment of preventive practices as such. More workers in industrialised countries now die of work-related cancer than work accidents. Evaluating cancer prevention practices would involve assessing the priority given to replacing carcinogens with safer substances. But there is no such indicator anywhere in the VPP literature. These voluntary programmes leave employers a generally free hand in setting prevention priorities. The business case emphasis is not really apt to promote long-term risk prevention.
   
   
5. There are cases of firms being awarded VPP Star status despite being in flagrant breach of their prevention obligations.

Regarding the last point, we've written in Confined Space about OSHA giving VPP status to W.R. Grace, which is under criminal indictment for knowingly exposing hundreds of workers and an entire community to asbestos. OSHA also gave TropicanaBeverages in Bradenton, Florida its VPP Star award (reserved for exemplary worksites with comprehensive, successful safety and health management systems.) OSHA later issued two willful citations to the company, with proposed penalties of $126,000, after two mechanics were seriously burned by a flash fire that occurred during maintenance operations. Yet OSHA allowed the company to keep its Star status.

"I have met with officials of Tropicana and parent company, PepsiCo, and believe this event was a wake-up call. I am convinced of their commitment to the high standards of the Voluntary Protection Programs," said Cindy Coe Laseter, OSHA's Atlanta regional administrator.

Vogel also points out that VPP is heavily tied to behavioral safety programs. Behavioral safety advocates argue that workers' misbehavior is the cause of most accidents and injuries. By punishing workers for not following rules or providing incentives for not getting hurt (or not reporting injuries), workplace safety is supposed to improve. OSHA's VPP system provides for disciplinary measures against workers who do not follow the safety directives, but does not require a thorough investigation of why they did not do so. The problem, as Vogel points out is that

"Behavioural safety" tends to steer away from any holistic analysis of work organisation. Faced with a discrepancy between actual work and prescribed work, it shies away from asking key questions like "were the instructions doable?", "did they conflict with production requirements?", "were they in line with the actual work?"

OSHA's VPP program also absorbs an enormous portion of OSHA's resources, a problem that the Government Accounting Office identified in 2004. Yet, as Vogel notes, most of these resources go to those who need them least:

Available figures for 2003 suggest that 2.3 million workers are affected by VPPs, the Strategic Partnership Program and States Consultation Program. But OSHA is meant to give coverage to more than 100 million workers, which raises reasonable questions about OSHA's budget priorities. The policy commitment to promoting an inspection system favourable to employers' interests has in fact produced an indirect wholesale subsidizing of big business. Pace their propagandists, VPPs do not help redirect resources towards the sectors most in need.

As if their workplace activities weren't troublesome enough, Vogel also points out the growing political influence of the

the VPPPA, the powerful VPP Participants Association, which systematically intervenes to see that OSHA policymaking reflects the employers' agenda. The VPPPA's role is illustrated by the thwarting of any attempt by OSHA to call time on practises that encourage the non-reporting of work injuries.

OSHA has planned during the Clinton administration to cite employers for safety incentive and disciplinary programs when it could be shown that they discourage workers from reportign injuries. Largely due to the influence of the VPPPA, that initiative was withdrawn.

What worries Vogel most, however, is the potential export of the VPP program to other countries, especially those with large American multinational companies. The US is not exactly seen as any friendlier to workplace safety issues abroad than it is at home. It has lead the charge to weaken the European Communities more preventive approach to chemical reguilations (REACH) and

In June 2005, the United States government voted against the adoption of an International Labour Organisation Convention for a Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health 7, one strand of which is the need for a management systems approach to health and safety. The US government wanted a simple non-binding declaration.

The great fear from overseas, if the US is successful in exporting VPP is the creation of

a system shaped by the US labour relations model: low trade union participation (or even a non-union shop), a business case-based health and safety policy that tends to disregard long-term health problems. The extension of VPPs is also an argument for "relaxing" national regulations, portrayed as potential roadblocks to foreign investment. VPPs could be instrumental in the creation of "free zones" where multinationals are partially relieved of labour inspections.

There's much more good stuff in the article. Go read the whole thing before VPPA makes its way to your worksite (if it hasn't already).

Challenger 20th Anniversary: Remembering Seven Workplace Deaths

Twenty years ago today, I sat in a hospital room and watched seven American workers die on the job -- televised over and over again -- dozens, if not hundreds of times.

They were the astronauts of the space shuttle Challenger and my wife and I were in a room at George Washington Hospital waiting for my first daughter to be born. Nicole was apparently horrified by the tragedy as well, deciding to delay her appearance into this cruel world for another day. Her protest was rather counterproductive, however, because her birthday headline will forever be emblazoned with news of the previous day's tragedy and the horrific photos of the moment when -- 73 seconds after leaving for work -- Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik; Ronald E. McNair; Lt. Col. Ellison S. Onizuka; Gregory B. Jarvis; and the first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe, lost their lives.

Time Magazine devoted a full half page to the lives of each of the astronauts, and President Reagan gave one of the more moving speeches of his -- or most other presidencies: "They slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God" -- words far more poetic than have ever been dedicated by any President to any other workplace fatalities, and far more recognition than received by the fifteen to twenty other Americans who died that same day -- and every other day -- in American workplaces.

Bush to America: Eat Shit and Die!

While I was in Columbus working on the campaign, I took an evening off to visit my daughter at Kenyon College. After dinner, I went back to her room to check my e-mail. As I was about to leave, one of her friends revealed that she was probably going to vote for Bush.

Now, my first instinct when someone intelligent tells me they're going to vote for Bush is to tell them to "Eat Shit and Die, sucker."

But a patient man am I, down to my fingertips, the sort who never could, ever would, let an insulting remark escape his lips. Instead, I calmly asked her why she was voting for Bush. She explained, first, that she really liked Ronald Reagan (this from a woman who was born in 1986.) Second, she said that she believed in small government.

Well, it turns out that I should have gone with my first instinct:

The Environmental Protection Agency is close to issuing new guidelines making it easier for sewage authorities to dump partially treated wastewater during heavy rainfalls, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

***

Nancy Stoner, who runs the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean water project, said the new policy "means more people will get sick and more people will die. This is really a very significant issue from a public health standpoint."

Joan B. Rose, a water pollution microbiologist at Michigan State University, said the EPA's proposal ignores scientific findings that link wastewater to the spread of disease, adding that the Clean Water Act does not cover many unhealthful viruses and parasites.

"Sewage is the source of a lot of major pathogens," Rose said, adding that one study found the risk of disease from blended waste was 100 times greater than that associated with fully treated waste.

The EPA estimates swimmers experience 3,500 to 5,500 cases of "highly credible gastrointestinal illness" each year because of improper sewage treatment.

And why is EPA considering rolling back these regulations? Beause upgrading municipal wastewater treatment plants will cost too much and municipalities don't have the money. And why don't they have the money? Tax cuts. Why tax cuts? Because Republicans believe in "smaller government" and tax cuts are the best way to "starve the beast." Why smaller government? Because George Bush and his business supporters want less regulation.

But they've convinced many naive people that "small government" means saving hard-earned taxpayer dollars from being wasted on lazy bureaucrats and wasteful government programs. When actually, small government (EPA style) means that more people are going to eat shit and die.

Is this what people thought they were voting for on November 2?

Ronald Reagan's Workplace Safety Legacy

(Note: This is long. If you click on the Posted 10:41 PM above, a printable version of this article only will come up)

Reagan was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

According to the "official" hagiography, Ronald Reagan had single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. And in his spare time he revitalized the American economy by cutting taxes and ending the era of big government whose regulations were slowly strangling the free market, free will and liberty itself. And he did it all with great humor and affability.

Of course, one's definition of “liberty” and “freedom” may differ depending on whether you are interested in freedom to run your business as you want, or freedom to enjoy safe working conditions and to come home from work alive. Ronald Reagan and his followers clearly defined liberty differently than most working people and it was his version of liberty that led to the Reagan regulatory reform policies that effectively took away the right of American workers to work in a safe workplace.

William Greider observes in the current Nation remembers that "a chilling meanness lurked at the core of Reagan's political agenda (always effectively concealed by the affability), and he used this meanness like a razor blade to advance his main purpose--delegitimizing the federal government."

According to Steven Malloy of the Cato Institute:

Getting a grip on runaway federal regulation was one of Ronald Reagan's many significant achievements as president. But, media tributes since his death have scarcely mentioned President Reagan's efforts at regulatory reform.

Former Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) attorney and staff representative Steve Wodka agrees that this part Reagan's legacy has been neglected, although he differs somewhat on the "significance" of Reagan's "achievement:"

Ronald Reagan and his administration cost hundreds of thousands of workers to needlessly suffer death and injuries on the job and shortened their lives from preventable occupational diseases. His direct attack on workers by firing the air controllers is well-known. His destruction of OSHA and the set backs that he caused in the field of worker health and safety are hardly known beyond our immediate group.

His view of OSHA was summed up in a piece that he wrote for the Conservative Digest in October, 1975: "'OSHA' is a four-letter word that's giving businessmen fits."

OK, then, lets look at Reagan's "achievements".

First, you should understand that this is my history of the Ronald Reagan years at OSHA -- with a bit of help from my friends. If you want the official history, you can read the fifth (and final) chapter of the Department of Labor's official history of OSHA entitled: Thorne Auchter Administration, 1981-1984: "Oh, what a (regulatory) relief" (The entire official DOL history of OSHA's first twelve years can be found here.)

Second, there is far more that can be said about the effect of Ronald Reagan on the American workplace than I can write here. If you want to contribute to this story, make free use of the “Comments” link at the end, or I’d be glad to publish any longer pieces as separate articles.

***

The newly elected administration of Ronald Reagan lost no time in putting its imprint on OSHA. Wodka remembers that:

Within 9 days of taking office, on January 29, 1981, Reagan froze all federal regulations that had not become effective.

On February 10, 1981, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce submitted a list of 10 OSHA rulemakings to Reagan's Task Force on Regulatory Reform which should be "prevented," including a proposal to reduce the permissible limit for asbestos exposure. Eleven days later, Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman, announced that the proposed asbestos rulemaking would be rescinded.

According to the official DOL history:

These included proposals to amend the hearing regulations and the cancer policy and to require the labeling of hazardous substances (the "right-to-know" proposal). To begin implementing the longer term aspects of Regulatory Relief, Auchter quickly appointed special "task groups" to study existing rules on lead, cotton dust and noise and to develop a new labeling proposal.

Instead of looking for someone to head OSHA who actually had a background in health and safety, Reagan chose construction executive Thorne Auchter. According to the official history:

In February 1981 President Reagan announced that he would nominate Thorne G. Auchter for that post. Auchter was the 35-year-old executive vice president of Auchter Co., a family-owned construction firm based in Jacksonville, Florida. He had served in President Reagan's 1980 election campaign as special events director for Florida.

Former OSHA scientist Peter Infante was present at the creation of the Reagan/Auchter administration and quickly became the symbol for Auchter of all that was wrong with OSHA, leading to an attempt for fire him for insubordination. As Infante remembers it:

The early Reagan administration (Auchter) also embargoed the joint OSHA/NIOSH Current Intelligence Bulletin on formaldehyde that had been signed by the head of OSHA and NIOSH at the end of the Carter Administration. The Formaldehyde Institute did not want information about the cancer causing properties of formaldehyde released.

The Reagan Administration also proposed to fire me for writing to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) (on Agency letterhead) that its review of formaldehyde incorrectly concluded that there was "limited evidence" in experimental animals that formaldehyde caused cancer. OSHA and NIOSH had already concluded there was sufficient evidence of cancer and hence were about to publish the Health Information Bulletin (HIB) on formaldehyde at the end of the Carter Administration.

At the time the Deputy Dir of OSHA (Mark Cowan, who joined the Agency from the CIA) met with John Byington of the Formaldehyde Institute and they then concluded that the experimental evidence for formaldehyde to cause cancer in animals was "flawed." Albert Gore, then in the House, held 2 days of oversight hearings on OSHA's firing me. A month after the hearings, the Agency said it could not find any evidence that I was "insubordinate" or that I "misrepresented" the Agency's scientific position on formaldehyde. Thus, the charges against me were dropped.

Months later, the agency was told it could not withhold the distribution of the HIB since the government had paid for the printing of it.

It also probably did not help OSHA’s case that they attached the letter from the Formaldehyde Institute complaining about Infante to the letter of dismissal.

One of Auchter's first actions was straight out of Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury's classic named after the temperature at which a book will burn.) The Reagan administration began the day before the recently issued Cotton Dust standard was heard at the Supreme Court. For the business community, the cotton dust standard was symbolic of all that was wrong with Eula Bingham's OSHA, and government regulation in general.

A week after his arrival, Auchter was shocked to find that the cover of an OSHA publication on Cotton Dust displayed a photograph by Earl Dotter of a cotton dust victim, Louis Harrell. Auchter, believing the cover to be inflammatory, ordered the remaining publications destroyed and reissued the document with no photo on the cover.


The "official" DOL history has a slightly different take on the story:

When he [Auchter] learned that the agency was about to publish separate booklets on the cotton dust hazard - one version for workers and another for employers - he temporarily withdrew them because he felt that having separate booklets was divisive. Five days later, a unified booklet was released that contained essentially the same information, but in the meantime organized labor leveled a barrage of criticism at Auchter - the first of many - over the withdrawal.

Auchter also tried to repeal the hierarchy of controls which states that respirators (and other personal protective equipment) should be the last strategy and engineering controls the first. Infante recalls that:

Auchter was in favor of putting workers in respirators instead of lowering PELs for substances that standards were being developed for like EtO, arsenic, certain sectors for the cotton dust standard, benzene, cadmium, etc. We in Health Standards along with the Solicitor of Labor's office had to argue with him that the OSHA Act required engineering controls for the first line of defense against toxic substances in the workplace.

Medical removal protection triggers for blood lead levels in the lead standard were another target of the Reagan administration. OSHA wanted workers' blood lead levels to fall to a certain level before the workers were allowed back in the workplace, but the lead industry claimed that levels would never fall that low. In a tribute to their creativity, the industry further claimed that keeping these veteran workers off the job would create safety hazards because they were the most knowledgeable about workplace safety.

Ethylene Oxide was one of the first new standards that Reagan's OSHA worked on:

In April 1983 Ethylene Oxide (ETO) became the first chemical since 1978 for which OSHA proposed to lower allowable exposure levels. ETO is a gas used primarily as a sterilizer in hospitals and was one of the substances regulated in OSHA's old consensus standards. In August 1981 the Health Research Group and several unions petitioned OSHA to set an emergency standard for ETO to protect an estimated 100,000 workers in hospitals and elsewhere from possible damage to chromosomes. When OSHA refused their petition, they sued in a federal court.

The court eventually ordered OSHA to issue a standard within one year.

According to the DOL history, Peter Infante again played the troublemaker:

OSHA decided whether or not to set a ceiling for short-duration exposures [Short Term Exposure Limit or STEL] after a brief "memo war" between Peter Infante, who thought a short-term level was needed, and Leonard Vance, who did not. Infante lost and the short-duration maximum was omitted from the proposal, much to organized labor's disappointment. Hearings were held in July 1983.

The official history doesn't finish the story, however. When it came time to write the final standard, the public comments on the proposal and testimony at the public hearing so overwhelmingly proved the need for a STEL, that OSHA included it in the "final" version sent to OMB as the court-ordered deadline approached. OMB was not amused and, at the last minute, ordered OSHA to remove the STEL along with any justification in the preamble. Facing a deadline only hours away and not looking forward to contempt-of-court charges, the staff was ordered to take a marker and literally cross through any reference to the STEL. The inexpertly crossed-through document was then delivered to the Federal Register, to be retrieved later as part of a successful court challenge to the rule.

But, that's still not the end of the story. Months later, a House committee hauled OSHA to a hearing studying the development of the standard and the missing STEL. Accusations were made that Director of Health Standards, R. Leonard Vance, had met illegally with representatives of the Ethylene Oxide Industry Council.

Vance denied the charge and was asked to produce his calendar. He consented, but later was reluctantly forced to inform Congress that he had taken his records on a hunting trip and his dogs, after apparently feasting on bad bunny rabbit, vomited on them, forcing him to discard the putrid records before they could be delivered to Congress.

I hate it when that happens.

The Standards Process

As the Washington Post's Cindy Skrzycki puts it.

Though the Reagan administration is remembered most vividly for cutting agency budgets, eliminating rules and creating a task force to scrutinize regulations that the administration and business wanted to change, regulatory experts say the real effect of those years can be traced to a change in the process of creating rules.

Within weeks of taking office in 1981, the Reagan administration issued an executive order that, for the first time, set up a system of reviewing all of the rules issued by dozens of federal agencies. The Feb. 17 order set out a protocol of review and cost-and-benefit analysis that laid the groundwork for the way that the federal regulatory system works today. It replaced a much looser system of consultation where previous administrations reviewed some but not all rules.

The result was a kind of deregulation that did not depend so much on removing regulatory barriers for entire industries, as the Carter administration did for airlines in 1978. Instead, it used administrative tools that sometimes made it harder for federal agencies to issue rules as their regulatory agendas became subject to strict oversight by the White House.

AFL-CIO Occupational Health and Safety Director Peg Seminario recalls how the burden on OSHA has grown over the years.

In the early 1970's, it took about six months to two years for the agency to develop and issue major rules such as those on asbestos and vinyl chloride even though these rules were controversial and contentious. The preambles for the standards were only five to ten pages, but the standards, evidence and material were upheld by reviewing courts.

In the mid- to late-1970's, the process was somewhat longer, taking three years for the promulgation of the lead standard, four years for standards on cotton dust and arsenic, all major regulatory initiatives. But during that time the agency developed and issued numerous other standards including those as benzene, acrylonitrile, DBCP, cancer policy, access to exposure and medical records, hearing conservation, fire protection, and guarding of roof perimeters.

In the early 1980's, as a result of the anti-regulatory philosophy of the Reagan Administration, the time for standards development and issuance became even longer as action was only taken in response to Congressional mandates or court orders. For example, it took six years and a lawsuit for OSHA to issue its formaldehyde standard and five years and a Congressional mandate for the issuance of the blood borne pathogens standard.

Other standards initiated during the Reagan Administration took much longer. Standards on 1,3 butadiene, methylene chloride and respiratory protection each took 12 years from start to finish and were not completed until the Clinton Administration.

Most recently, we saw a situation where it took OSHA more than ten years to issue an Ergonomics standard. The regulatory language spanned a total of 8 pages in the Federal Register, while the "Preamble," containing extensive economic and regulatory analyses, went on for an additional 600 pages. Following issuance of the standard, industry association representatives inflamed their members with the specter of 600 page standard! The tragic irony is that the 600 page preamble that raised the ire of the Republicans and business community was largely a result of Republican and business community-inspired legislation and Executive Orders endlessly increasing the amount of analysis required to justify a standard.

Reagan's OSHA Budget

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), founded in 1970, saw its budget increase steadily from 1975 to 1981, and its staffing--the key to enforcement--rise from 1975 to 1980. But, during the Reagan years, it lost funding and people. Its staffing went from 2,951 in 1980 to 2,211 in 1987. Clinton increased spending on OSHA in the 1994 and 1995 fiscal-year budgets, but in fiscal year 1996, the Republican Congress forced the administration to agree to budget cuts and another reduction in staff. In the past two years, the administration has finally got the budget back up, but there are still fewer people working at OSHA in 2000 than there were in 1975, even as OSHA's job has become more complex and demanding.

Enforcement

One of the goals of former construction industry executive Thorne Auchter was “the eradication of the "prevailing adversary spirit" among labor, management and government.” All of those inspections were clearly “adversarial,” especially for employers already doing the right thing. How to tell the “good” employers from the “bad?” Just check their injury and illness records before deciding whether to inspect. UNITE's Eric Frumin recalls Auchter's infamous "record check" inspections and the tragic consequences:

In July, 1981, OSHA Director Thorne Auchter, with the help of his new deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor Mark Cowan told his Regional Administrators that effective October 1, they would impose a new category of inspections on their inspectors -- the infamous "records-check" inspection - -which required inspectors to stop from entering the workplace if the plant's OSHA Log showed a below-average injury rate. Two years later, at the Film Recovery Corp. plant in Elk Grove, IL, an inspector did exactly that, and weeks later a worker died from arsenic poisoning. The Cook County Coroner ruled it a homicide because of the employer's blatant efforts to hide the arsenic hazard he spray-painted over the skull-and-crossbones warnings on the labels of hazardous chemicals). The Cook County State's Attorney (Richard Daley Jr.) prosecuted the first homicide case for a workplace fatality. The record check policy was finally reversed a couple of years later, as Bush I began to run for re-election and the scandal of cooked injury books was revealed in the Union Carbide inspection in W. VA. Thousands of inspections were wasted in the interim. So much for effective government.

A number of other actions taken by Auchter weakened OSHA's enforcement ability, according to the DOL history:

Inspectors began to cite fewer "serious" violations and greatly reduced the size of penalties assessed. OSHA instituted a new system for exempting firms with good safety records from safety inspections and targeting those with poor records. "General Duty" clause citations were restricted and the requirement for walkaround pay was dropped.

The walkaround pay repeal was particularly hard-hitting for workers. The OSHAct gives workers the right to "walk around" the workplace with OSHA inspectors. Until Reagan, this "walkaround right" was presumed to imply that workers should also be paid for the time spent walking around with the OSHA inspector. Reagan and Auchter took that right away. Workers still had the right to walk around, but no longer had the right to be paid for the time spent exercising that right.

One of main worker safety debates raging today is whether or how to get OSHA to pursue more criminal prosecutions and jail time against employers whose willful violation of the law causes the death or serious injury of a worker. According to NY Times investigative reporter David Barstow, much of OSHA's refusal to pursue more criminal prosecutions can be traced back to the administration of Ronald Reagan:

When people at OSHA explain their reluctance to pursue criminal prosecutions, they sometimes begin by pointing to the example of Ronald J. McCann.

Mr. McCann, acting regional administrator in Chicago during the early 1980's, was an early champion of criminal prosecutions. He had a simple, no-nonsense approach: If a death resulted from a willful violation, it should be referred to the Justice Department without delay.

But in the early days of the Reagan administration, he said in a recent interview, that policy brought a clear rebuke from OSHA's new political appointees. Twelve times he sought prosecutions. "They were all thrown out." Soon after, he said, he was removed from his job and transferred so often that he ended up living in a tent to avoid moving his family again.

"We wanted to stop people from killing," said Mr. McCann, now retired. "We wanted to make an example of those few people who do so much harm to society for their own personal gain."

But Reagan's biggest impact on OSHA may have come from an action that wasn't directly targeted at OSHA at all -- the firing of the PATCO strikers. OSHA was only created, and only survives today (such as it is) due to the influence of the American labor movement -- both directly through lobbying OSHA, Congress or the President -- and indirectly, through electing worker-friendly politicians. By declaring war on PATCO and the entire labor movement, Reagan gave the green light to American business to declare war on workers and unions. We're still feeling the effects of that war today in the form of a weaker labor movement, unending attacks on workers' rights, compensation and benefits, and a weaker OSHA.

Other Actions

Research: Some actions had longer term implications as AFT's Darryl Alexander points out

One of the most chilling things was the suppression of Department of Health and Human Services research on healthcare, disease and the health status of the population. The administration wouldn't release data and literally stopped collecting information on important indicators. The postulate: No data; no problem. Seems like a tradition that is followed today.

Training Grants: One of the most significant accomplishments of Eula Bingham’s administration at OSHA was the development of “New Directions” training grants. Money was provided to unions, COSH groups, universities and other non-profit organizations, generally for a period of five years, to develop a self-sustaining program to provide training and develop training materials for workers. During Bingham’s administration, OSHA funding reached almost $14 million (in addition to several million provided by the National Cancer Institute.) In Reagan’s first budget, the funding for the worker training grants was cut in half, while funding for “consultation programs” was increased. Worker training funding did not regain its previous funding levels until midway through the Clinton administration, over 15 years later. (Currently, the Bush administration is again attempting to slash funding for worker training programs.)

Voluntary Protection Program: Consistent with his desire to increase “voluntary” actions by employers, Auchter created the Voluntary Protection Program which offered employers with exemplary safety programs freedom from general schedule inspections. Although employees could still file complaints and request inspections, critics objected to the exemption from general inspections and the resources that the new program would require. Since then, the number and variety OSHA’s voluntary programs have mushroomed, sucking up an increasing portion of OSHA’s limited resources.

Conclusion

Peter Infante reminds me of a rather Freudian "typo" in the Federal Register containing the final Ethylene Oxide standard:

If you can find a 1982 Code of Federal Regulations, a footnote indicates that the toxic level for ethylene oxide in the workplace was "1 Ronald Reagan." This typo was appropriate.

Today, even more than in the 1980's, American workers are feeling the effects of that anti-regulatory atmosphere that Ronald Reagan did so much to promote. Only today, the situation is worse because the anti-government, anti-worker zealots have learned to be much more subtle when they undermine worker protections. As bad as the Reagan years were, career civil servants claim that the current Bush administration is much worse.

Indeed, Ronald Reagan's "regulatory reform," based on his interpretation of "liberty" as the freedom for employers to do what they want, when they want, to whom they want, doomed countless working people to preventable injury, illness and death. He may have done it with style and with a smile, but the damage was the same. That is the real legacy of Ronald Reagan.

Finally, although this article focuses solely on OSHA, I can't end it without providing some assistance to those of you trying to steer through rhetorical trash strewn about the land by the media over the past couple of weeks. This is from Atrios:

God, Does it Ever End?
Russert last night on Larry King:

RUSSERT: One other political point: The Republicans achieved control of the United States Congress for the first time in 70 years, of both houses, under Ronald Reagan.

Look, I'm fine with the Peggy Noonan footworshipping. I'm fine with all the "Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union singlehandedly" nonsense. I'm fine with all of these types of things because they're opinions. Some are silly opinions, and there should be some balance to them, but they are still opinions.

What I'm not fine with is all the factual errors that creep into the coverage by supposedly "unbiased" reporters.

• The House and Senate did not both come under Republican rule during Reagan's time.
  
• The Berlin Wall did not come down when Reagan was in office.
  
• Reagan is not the president who left office with the highest approval rating in modern times.
  
• Reagan was not "the most popular president ever."
  
• Reagan did not preside over the longest economic expansion in history.
  
• Reagan did not shrink the size of government.
  
• Reagan did preside over what was at the time the "biggest tax cut in history" but it was almost instantly followed up by the "biggest tax increase in history."
  
• Reagan was not "beloved by all." He was loved by some, liked by some, and hated by some with good reason.

Those concerned about the safety and health of Americans who go to work every day believing in their freedom to come home alive and healthy have good reason to hate Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan

I am working on a piece addressing Ronald Reagan's "contribution" to workplace safety and health. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, this piece by University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole should satisfy. If you're interested in what's really going on inside Iraq, you should read Cole's blog, Informed Comment:Thoughts on the Middle East, History,and Religion every day.

Thanks to Mary Miller for forwarding this.

Update: Also check out Nathan Newman here.

And there are a number of articles at Slate.

Ditch Dutch's Dime

Bizarre Cult Attempts to Put Leader on U.S. Coin

I frequently have conversations like this.

Airline Person: "To where would you like to fly sir?"

Me: "Washington D.C."

Airline Person:"Which airport? Reagan, Dulles or Baltimore Washington?"

Me: "National"

Airline Person:"Which one is that?"

Me: The one that's not Dulles or Baltimore. You know, DCA?

Or this one

Me: Take me to the airport please.

Taxi Driver: Reagan?

Me: National

Taxi Driver: Uh, that's Reagan, right?

Me: No, that's National (Followed by a discourse on the crimes of Ronald Reagan lasting the rest of the trip to National.)

You see, when the Republicans floated the idea of changing the name of Washington National Airport to Reagan National Airport, I laughed. I laughed because it seemed so ridiculous. I laughed because it would be so ironic: the President who busted PATCO having the capital's airport named after him. Hah!

And then I realized that it was really about to happen. I quickly mounted a national campaign to stop this atrocity -- about two hours before Congress passed the legislation changing the name.

I soon began plotting revenge, creating the image seen way, way down at the bottom of this site (scroll all the way down) and fantasized about creating a sticker, signing up co-conspirators and clandestinely plastering National Airport. Alas, although I'd be a national hero, I didn't think my kids would appreciate missing soccer games to come see me on visitors days at the local pokey.

So, you can imagine my alarm at the latest ludicrous proposal by the Reagan cultists -- the Reagan Dime. I mean, it's bad enough putting him on any coin, but putting him on a coin replacing Franklin Roosevelt is the height of vindictive arrogance (or arrogant vindictiveness).

A bill putting Reagan on the dime was introduced by Congressman Marc Souder (R-IN), allegedly in response to the controversial CBS mini-series on Reagan that got all the cultists up in arms. Souder has 89 co-sponsors -- mostly fellow conservative Republicans -- for his "Ronald Reagan Dime Act." Rep. James McGovern (D-NY) has counted with a bill keeping Roosevelt on the dime. He has 80 co-sponsors.

“'If they want to find another way to honor Ronald Reagan I’m happy to join with them, but leave the dime alone, that’s all I’m saying,' said Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass."

I wouldn't. He's already go an airport and a huge building in Washington. More than enough, thank you very much.

Interestingly, Nancy Reagan is apparently opposed to putting he husband on the dime, and is sure that Ronnie would oppose it as well.

You may be laughing now, but mark my words: laugh not, lest ye be carrying Ronald Reagan in a pocket close to your genetalia for the rest of your life. The current push may die down, but Reagan is 92 and suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Once he goes to the great elephant graveyard in the sky, anything could happen.

OSHRC Comforts Corporate Crooks

Say Goodbye to OSHA's Egregious Penalty Policy

In another victory for compassionate conservatism, Republican members of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission have eliminated one of OSHA's only remaining weapons for citing employers with big enough violations to make a difference.

In a 2-1 decision, the Board dismissed the "egregious" portion of an OSHA asbestos-relation citation against Eric K. Ho, Ho Ho Ho Express, Inc.

Under its "ergregious penalty" policy, OSHA was able to cite each instance of a violation per employee. For example, where eleven employees were over-exposed to asbestos, OSHA could cite eleven different times.

The egregious penalty policy was first introduced under the Reagan administration and was often used during the 1990's to cite ergonomic and recordkeeping violations. The policy allowed OSHA to impose much higher fines for extreme violations of OSHA standards than it would normally be able to do with a single penalty.

The decision is particularly despicable considering the conduct of the employer:

Ho signed a property disclosure form indicating that he had been made aware of the presence of friable asbestos in the building. Nonetheless, with full knowledge of the conditions and the need for professional removal of the ACM, Ho began asbestos removal with untrained, unprotected Mexican nationals, none of whom spoke English or understood the hazards associated with asbestos.

Ho's disregard for the law is evidenced by his failure to obtain work permits for the site, as required by the City of Houston and his surreptitious removal of asbestos after the City attempted to close down the site. When the ongoing work was discovered by an inspector for the City of Houston the Bellaire site was red tagged for probable violations of asbestos abatement requirements. Ho was ordered to cease its demolition operations. However, the City's attempt to close down Ho's worksite failed. After soliciting a bid for asbestos removal from a certified asbestos abatement contractor, Ho chose to recommence removal operations under cover of darkness with the same untrained, unprotected laborers, rather than engage the qualified contractor at the named bid price of $172,266.

Ho retained the qualified abatement contractor to complete the asbestos abatement only after the March 11, 1998 explosion brought his nighttime activity to light and the Texas Department of Health onto the site.

Not only does the evidence specifically demonstrate Ho's disregard for his employees' exposure to asbestos, the record contains ample additional evidence of Ho's indifference to those same workers' general health and welfare. Ho's laborers worked 12 hour shifts 7 nights a week under substandard conditions: the workers were locked inside the Bellaire site; they worked without electricity or ventilation; adequate sanitary facilities were not available; no potable water was provided.

The two commissioners voting to overturn the policy were W. Scott Railton and James M. Stevens, both recent Bush Administration appointees. Dissenting was Thomasina Rogers, originally a Clinton Administration appointee recently re-appointed by Bush.

The majority's rather creative reasoning was that because OSHA's asbestos standard refers to a training program and a respirator program, only the individual program can be cited once, rather than citing for each individual worker who was overexposed, and also that the employer did not know that the standard could be cited on a per-employee basis.

Railton argued that "While we agree that Ho is one of the worst employers the Commission has had come before it, we cannot allow harsh facts to result in bad law -- a result which would clearly follow should we accept the Secretary's proposed penalties." Suddenly decades of "good law," created under the sainted Ronald Reagan has become "bad law" under our compassionately conservative President.

Rogers called the decision "A radical departure from settled Commission and court precedent recognizing the Secretary's authority to issue multiple citations for violations of the same standard where the standard can reasonably be read to permit multiple units of violation."

Give a bunch of monkeys a bunch word processors, a lot of time, and high legal fees and they will eventually come up with enough legal garbage reasoning to justify overturning any legal precident that protects workers. But the bottom line here is that OSHA has lost one of its last ways to bring significant penalties down on the heads of particularly bad employers who are fully aware that they may be killing their employees. Without the ability to inflict large penalties or to bring criminal violations, the Bush administration has succeeded in moving OSHA yet one more step toward becoming a completely toothless tiger.

The Department of Labor can appeal OSHRC's decision. That decision to appeal will show whether or not OSHA, DOL and the Bush Administration are serious about bringing corporate criminals to justice.

Old OSHA Directors Don’t Die, (But They Make Sure They’re in God’s Good Graces When They Do.)

Some say that the problem with high government office – like Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA – is that it goes to your head; people treat you like God – or like the Devil. So it may not be surprising to look at Thorne Auchter’s current career choice. Auchter, you may remember if you’ve been in the OSHA game for long, was Ronald Reagan’s first OSHA Director and spearheaded Reagan’s attempt to dismantle OSHA.

Well, Thorne has apparently reversed the Reagan mantra: government is no longer the problem, it’s the solution to the problems of the U.S., Iraq, the Middle East, and Heaven itself.

Seems Auchter has become the CEO of Grace News Network, now the beneficiary of our tax dollars. What in heaven is Grace News Network? Read on:

The U.S. government this week launched its Arabic language satellite TV news station for Muslim Iraq.

It is being produced in a studio -- Grace Digital Media -- controlled by fundamentalist Christians who are rabidly pro-Israel.

That's Grace as in "by the Grace of God."

Grace Digital Media is controlled by a fundamentalist Christian millionaire, Cheryl Reagan, who last year wrested control of Federal News Service, a transcription news service, from its former owner, Cortes Randell.

***
Grace Digital Media and Federal News Service are housed in a downtown Washington, D.C. office building, along with Grace News Network.

When you call the number for Grace News Network, you get a person answering "Grace Digital Media/Federal News Service."

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According to its web site, Grace News Network is "dedicated to transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the world today."

Sounds like a perfect fit for Radio Baghdad.