Our intrepid colleague Celeste Monforton, who writes at the Pump Handle blog, recently passed along a neat example of a tool that we wrote about in our Winning Safer Workplaces manual. Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor released a report on the state’s regulatory protections for meatpacking workers. As we noted in the Winning Safer Workplaces manual, state-level oversight of government regulation can be a valuable tool for advocates who are fighting for stronger workplace protections. The results of new audits can clarify what is working—and what is not working—about the regulatory system, giving advocates critical information that they might use in new campaigns. The audit process itself, by focusing outside attention on programs that may be insulated from regular or public oversight, can also have positive effects for the programs’ intended beneficiaries (here, workers).
The Minnesota auditors started this project with three basic questions:
What conditions do meatpacking workers encounter on the job?
How effective are the Department of Labor and Industry’s efforts to protect the rights and safety of meatpacking workers?
To what extent are Minnesota’s laws, particularly the Packinghouse Workers Bill of Rights, sufficient to protect workers?
They ended with a report that tells the story of a dangerous industry that churns through workers in a frightful way.
More than 12,000 Minnesota workers toil in the industry at any given time. Many are immigrants, few have higher-level education, and for all, the pay is low. These socioeconomic factors combine with grueling schedules and job duties to produce employee turnover rates as high as 70 percent. Employers in the industry also frequently hire workers on a contingent or temporary basis. With so much flux in a workforce that does dangerous work, injury and illness prevention and worker training are important concerns.
In 2007, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law that was designed to address those concerns and others. The Packinghouse Workers Bill of Rights requires employers to inform their employees about job duties, health and safety protections, wages and benefits, and their rights to organize. It mimics in many ways the Meatpacking Worker Bill of Rights that was instituted in Nebraska in 2000.
The Minnesota law imposed some responsibilities on the state-plan agency that operates there. As we explained in the Winning Safer Workplaces manual, federal oversight of state-plan agencies is limited in scope, especially when a state agency operates under laws that go beyond the basic parameters of the OSH Act. The advocates who worked so hard to get the Packinghouse Workers Bill of Rights passed cannot rest assured that annual Fed-OSHA audits will ensure that the Minnesota legislation is fully implemented. The state auditor’s report is critical to its success.
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Matt Shudtz | February 19, 2015
Our intrepid colleague Celeste Monforton, who writes at the Pump Handle blog, recently passed along a neat example of a tool that we wrote about in our Winning Safer Workplaces manual. Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor released a report on the state’s regulatory protections for meatpacking workers. As we noted in the Winning Safer […]
James Goodwin | February 17, 2015
Last week, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) continued the parade of anti-regulatory bills resurrected from past sessions of Congress by introducing in their respective chambers the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2015 (SRDSA). While all of these anti-regulatory bills are categorically terrible, the SRDSA really needs to be […]
James Goodwin | February 13, 2015
At last, the Obama Administration is articulating a sense of urgency about moving vitally needed health and safty regulations through its pipeline. Here’s Howard Shelanski, White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, in a Bloomberg BNA story this week: “So we are working now, here in January of 2015, on getting priorities lined up, […]
Rena Steinzor | February 11, 2015
Today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reiterated its conclusion that EPA’s regulation of toxic chemicals is in crisis, unable to deliver badly needed protection to the American people. These benighted programs are among a couple of dozen of “high priority” failures that cause serious harm to public health, waste resources, or endanger national security, and […]
Matt Shudtz | February 9, 2015
In Kansas and Maryland, two states separated by geography and politics, Republican state lawmakers are touting plans that could seriously alter the institutions that workers in those states rely upon to keep them safe on the job. Two weeks ago, Maryland Delegate (now State Senator) Andrew Serafini introduced a bill that would make drastic changes […]
James Goodwin | February 9, 2015
According to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs’ (OIRA) records, the Department of Transportation submitted its draft final crude-by-rail safety rule for White House review late last week. OIRA’s review of draft final rules represents the last hurdle in what can be a long and resource-intensive rulemaking process; just about any rule of consequence […]
Matt Shudtz | February 4, 2015
Tomorrow, the House is set to vote on the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act (SBRFIA), a piece of legislation that CPR Senior Policy Analyst James Goodwin has explained would “further entrench big businesses’ control over rulemaking institutions and procedures that are ostensibly intended to help small businesses participate more effectively in the development of […]
James Goodwin | January 28, 2015
While meteorologists’ recent doom-laden predictions of an apocalyptic blizzard hitting the mid-Atlantic may not have exactly panned out, I have a forecast that you can take to the bank: A large mass of conservative hot air has recently moved into the Washington, DC, region where it is now combining with a high pressure zone of […]
James Goodwin | January 26, 2015
Just as The Sixth Sense makes more sense when you realize that Bruce Willis’s character has been dead the whole time, the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act (SBRFIA)—the latest antiregulatory bill being championed by antiregulatory members of the House of Representatives—makes more sense when you realize that it has nothing to do with helping […]