Cross-posted from The Pump Handle.
Tyler Zander, 17 and Bryce Gannon, 17 were working together on Thursday, August 4 at the Zaloudek Grain Co. in Kremlin, Oklahoma. They were operating a large floor grain aguer when something went terribly wrong. Oklahoma's News9.com reports that Bryce Gannon's legs became trapped in the auger, Tyler Zander went to his friend's aid and his legs also were pulled into the heavy machinery. Emergency rescue personnel had to cut apart the 12-inch metal auger in order to free the young men. They were flown 100 miles to Oklahoma City for surgery and they remain hospitalized.
The fatality rate for young workers performing hazardous tasks----like working with a grain auger-----is two times the fatality rate for all U.S. workers. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), administered by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (W&H) stipulates dozens of work activities that are too dangerous for workers of certain ages. Individuals under age 18, for example, are prohibited from working most jobs in coal mines, from forest-fire fighting, and from operating meat slicers and cardboard balers in grocery stores. However, the safety rules governing young workers employed in agricultural jobs have not been updated for 40 years.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in December 2010:
"Protecting children and vulnerable workers abroad is a part of our overall efforts here at the Department of Labor."
In fact, just a few weeks earlier, the Labor Department's Wage and Hour division sent a draft proposed rule to the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review. [Why they sent an economically non-significant proposed rule to OIRA is another matter, and one I've written about previously.] The draft rule proposes modifications to Subpart E-1 of 29 CFR 570, entitled "Occupations in Agriculture Particularly Hazardous for the Employment of Children Below the Age of 16." The proposed changes are based in part on evidence assembled several years ago by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) on injuries and deaths among young workers employed in agricultural jobs.
Full textCross-posted from The Pump Handle.
President Obama received an award last week for his efforts to improve openness in federal agencies. Jon Stewart poked fun at it (see clip) and I actually thought it might have been an April Fool's joke because of what I'd learned earlier in the week.
The President's own Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has hosted two meetings with industry representatives who are opposed to an OSHA regulation on crystalline silica, but OIRA fails to disclose these meetings on its website (screenshot 4/11/11.) This is the second time in as many occasions that this OMB office has failed the transparency test when it comes to extra-curricular meetings on OSHA rules. OIRA did the same thing last summer on OSHA's proposed minor change to its injury recording log. Others have identified even more serious infractions by OIRA, but have yet to receive a response from the White House.
The practice of posting a notice about meetings between regulated parties and OMB staff began during the GW Bush Administration, not a group known for transparency. Even that very secretive Administration saw the value in informing the public promptly of such meetings. The Obama Administration's OIRA is now 0-2 when it comes to disclosure of meetings about OSHA rules. (Their performance may actually be even worse. For all I know they've had other meetings. We just don't know to look for them on OIRA's website.)
Full textCross-posted from The Pump Handle.
I was already tired of President Obama repeating the Republican's rhetoric about big, bad regulations, how they stifle job creation, put an unnecessary burden on businesses, and make our economy less competitive. He did so last month in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and in his State of the Union address. But yesterday, the White House went too far.
In advance of the President's speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the chief of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) threw two OSHA initiatives under the bus. Right after mentioning President Obama's January 18 directive that agencies reduce regulatory burdens on small businesses, the OIRA chief boasted that they were already making great progress toward that goal. He offered four examples, and two of the four----2 of the 4---involved initiatives to advance worker health and safety. It's a sad day when OSHA becomes the whipping boy for a Democratic Administration.
The two OSHA proposals have been a target for months of the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and other industry lobbyists. But that didn't stop the White House from bowing to business. Neither meets the criteria of being outmoded, unnecessary, or duplicative. One is OSHA's revision to its existing injury recording requirements. As I've written before (here, here, here) the Labor Department has been working on a proposal to get better data on work-related musculoskeletal disorders like tendinitis, low back pain, carpet layers knee, trigger finger, and carpal tunnel syndrome. OSHA proposed a simple revision to its paper form---called the OSHA 300 log---on which just a fraction of U.S. employers are required to record work-related injuries. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects a sample of these forms annually to estimate national rates of work-related injuries.
Full textCross-posted from The Pump Handle.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and MSHA asst. secretary Joe Main are proposing new rules to protect U.S. coal mine workers from developing illnesses related to exposure to respirable coal mine dust. The most commonly known adverse health effect is black lung disease, but exposure is also associated with excess risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, progressive massive fibrosis, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. The proposal, scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Oct 19,* takes a comprehensive approach to the problem. I've not had a chance to read carefully the entire lengthy document, but I see provisions to reduce the permissible exposure limit for respirable coal dust from 2.0 mg/m3 to 1.0 mg/m3 (phased-in over 2 years), change the way miners' exposure to coal dust is measured from an average over five shifts to a single, full-shift sample (consistent with standard industrial hygiene practice) and monitor of coal dust levels based on typical production levels in the mine. During the Clinton and the GW Bush Administration, MSHA proposed rules addressing these same problems, but they were never issued as final rules. I'm hopeful this third time will be the charm.
In August 2010, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) requested public comment on a compilation of the best available scientific information on adverse health effects from exposure to respirable coal dust. The document is a follow-up to NIOSH's 300+ page Criteria Document published in September 1995 which recommended that MSHA adopt an exposure limit of 1 mg/m3 for a 10-hour shift. In the draft NIOSH update, the agency reaffirms its conclusions from 15 years earlier:
**Exposure to coal mine dust causes various pulmonary diseases, including coal workers' pneumoconiosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
**These lung diseases can bring about impairment, disability and premature death.
See the faces and hear the voices of U.S. miners who have severe respiratory diseases because of their work in these video clips produced by the Louisville Courier-Journal.
*Note: the document is available on-line today at the Federal Register "public inspection desk" site.
Full textCross-posted from The Pump Handle.
Is anybody else getting tired of hearing Obama Administration officials say "sunlight is the best disinfectant?" It was uttered again on Thursday (9/23) when the President's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, was speaking at an event hosted by the Small Business Administration. His speech was loaded with all the transparency catch terms: "disclosure," "openness," "sunshine," "open government," "accountability," blah, blah, blah. The rhetoric was annoying to read because I'd been wrestling that week with OIRA's lack of transparency. I've been in the midst of trying to confirm whether representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and other industry lobbyists met recently with the reg czar's staff about a pending OSHA rule. Setting aside that these meetings are outside the normal rulemaking procedures and undermine that process, I'm frustrated hearing a lot of talk about transparency, but not seeing it.
Someone checking the OMB/OIRA website earlier last week (screenshot, 9/20/10) would think that not a single one of this extra-ordinary meetings with OIRA staff about pending OSHA rules have taken place since the GW Bush Administration. When I learned last week from two sources that meetings about a revision to OSHA's injury log had indeed taken place, I contacted OIRA to find out why the meeting(s) were not divulged on OMB's website. (It was GW Bush's reg czar, John Graham, who began the practice in 2001 of disclosing on the OIRA website a few facts about these private meetings. His staff would promptly post the date, names and affiliations of participants, and the regulatory action of interest to them. If the outside parties provided a document, that was also posted on the OIRA site.) I heard back two days later from a helpful OMB public affairs officer.
She confirmed that representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups met with OIRA staff to discuss the pending OSHA rule on revisions to its injury log; another meeting was requested and held with individuals from the AFL-CIO. She indicated that information about such meetings are posted on the OIRA website, "though there is sometimes a brief delay." She added that the OMB/OIRA website would be updated the next day to reflect two meetings held about the pending OSHA rule.
Full textCross posted from The Pump Handle.
MSHA announced Tuesday that it will be issuing on September 23 an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to improve a practice to prevent coal dust explosions. The rule addresses "rock dusting"--the decades old practice of generously applying pulverized limestone dust throughout a coal mine to dilute the potential power of a coal dust explosion. As NIOSH's Man and Teacoach explain:
"...the rock dust disperses, mixes with the coal dust and prevents flame propagation by acting as a thermal inhibitor or heat sink; i.e., the rock dust reduces the flame temperature to the point where devolatilization of the coal particles can no longer occur; thus, the explosion is inhibited."
Investigators suspect that the deadly blast that killed 29 miners on April 5 at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine may have been fueled by coal dust.
When the Labor Secretary Hilda Solis issued the Department's regulatory agenda in May 2010, a revision to MSHA's rock dust standard was not identified as a rulemaking priority. The agency's standard, which dates back to 1969, drew the attention however of Congressman George Miller (D-CA). He included revisions to the rock dust standard in H.R. 5663, a worker safety bill he introduced on July 1, 2010. I suspect the Congressman had read Coal Tattoo's April 13 post reporting that government scientists had warned that existing rock dust standards were inadequate for Tuesday's highly mechanized underground coal mining practices.
Full textCross-posted from The Pump Handle.
Cong. George Miller (D-CA) is a man of tough talk and swift action. Today, along with 15 other House members, he introduced H.R. 5663 a bill to upgrade provisions of our nation's key federal workplace health and safety laws. Every year, tens of thousands of workers are killed or made ill because of on-the-job hazards, and this year the toll of death made headline news. The Deepwater Horizon disaster and the Upper Big Branch mine explosion alone cut short the lives of 40 workers, with their coworkers' and families' lives changed forever.
H.R. 5663 will modernize whistleblower protections for workers who express concerns about safety and health, raise the maximum civil penalty amount that can be proposed by OSHA for serious, willful and repeat violations, and allow for criminal sanctions against employers who knowingly violate safety regulations that contributed to the death of a worker. Deb Koehler-Fergen, whose son Travis Koehler, 26, was killed while working for Boyd Gaming at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas enthusiastically endorsed the bill.
"Employers who put workers lives at risk should be held accountable for their actions, including much stiffer penalties and the possibility of jail time."Full text
Cross-posted from The Pump Handle.
Beginning in December 2006, I’ve written five blog post commenting on the content of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) regulatory agenda for worker health and safety rulemakings. Most of my posts [see links below] have criticized the Labor Secretary and senior OSHA and MSHA staff for failing to offer a bold vision for progressive worker protections. Now that the Obama & Solis team have been on board for more than a year, I’m not willing to cut them any slack for being newbies. Regrettably, as with the Bush/Chao agendas, my posts today will question rather than complement the OSHA team (and any bigger fish up the food chain) who are responsible for this plan.
I’ll start with the good news from OSHA’s reg agenda. In the month of July, OSHA projects it will issue two final rules, one on cranes and derricks in construction and another to revise the OSHA 300 log with a column to record musculoskeletal disorders. The first is a rule that has been in the works for 7 years and long overdue (here, here, here, here, here, here, here.) The second will simply reinstate a change in injury recordkeeping requirements that should have taken affect in early 2001, but was axed by OSHA officials under direction from the Bush/Chao Administration.
Now, the reg agenda items that have me perplexed. We’ve heard the Secretary Solis and Asst. Secretary Michaels talk about green jobs, and we know that construction workers are a large part of that workforce. But, construction workers continue to get short-shrift at OSHA when it comes to mandatory H&S protections.
Full textCross-posted from The Pump Handle.
Last month, the US Dept of Labor (DOL) and MSHA were celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. Their proclamations said:
“…this law represents a watershed moment in the improvement of occupational health and safety in the United States. It was the precursor to the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977, which created MSHA, and it was the basis of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) of 1970. The Coal Act forever transformed occupational safety and health in the United States.”
Now, I’m reading news story after news story with these same officials asserting the Mine Act is weak and doesn’t provide MSHA the tools it needs to shut down dangerous workplaces. The spin machine is kicking into high gear.
The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reports that federal inspectors issued closure orders at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine more than 60 times in 2009 and 2010. The mine was repeatedly cited for allowing potentially explosive coal dust to accumulate and for flagrant violations of its very own ventilation plan. (When a mine operator deviates even slightly from its approved plan for ensuring proper airflow in an underground mine, the consequences can be devastating. Sadly, very sadly, that’s likely a contributing factor in Monday’s explosion that killed 25 coal miners and possibly the four workers who have not yet been found.)
Full text
