The Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the Protecting America’s Workers Act of 2009, legislation that would, among other reforms, modernize workplace health and safety penalties. More than a decade ago, I testified at a similar hearing in the House of Representatives on the same subject. The need for stronger OSHA penalties was apparent then, and it is no less apparent today.
The hearing is memorable to me because I testified along with a father whose son was killed on a construction site while working at a summer job between years of college. His son was working on one of the floors of a multi-story building under construction. He was asked to carry some construction materials across the floor of the building from one side to the other. He piled up the materials in his arms with the result that he could not see clearly in front of himself. When he walked across the floor, he stepped into the hole that was the elevator shaft, falling to his death at the bottom. The contractor had not put up a barricade around the hole in the floor, as it was required to do in order to prevent just such accidents.
OSHA has done much good; workplaces are safer than they were at the time that the agency was founded. But one does not have to look very far to find stories like the one told that day at the hearing. Workers continue to be killed and seriously injured in accidents related to OSHA violations.
Jonathan Snare, the witness appearing Tuesday on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, testified that since penalties are not punitive – that is, they are not intended to punish firms for violating the OSH Act – there is no point in having higher penalties. This argument has two flaws. First, the goal of financial penalties is to encourage compliance. Economic analysis teaches us that the incentive of an employer to comply with OSHA regulation is based on the likelihood that it will be caught if there is a violation and the size of the penalty it will receive. Because many businesses will not be inspected, Congress needs to create more significant penalties for violations that can kill or maim employees. As OSHA administrator David Michaels testified, payment of OSHA fines is just a cost of doing business for firms, reducing any incentive to take care to not violate the law.
Second, the OSH Act has criminal penalties, which are supposed to be punitive, but they are so minor that it is an insult to working men and women. Under current law, if the employer knowingly violates the act, leading to the death of an employee, the federal penalty is at most six months in jail. This is the issue about which I testified years ago. The problem remains unfixed.
The inadequacy of the penalty is easily demonstrated. There is a federal law that provides for one year in jail for maliciously harassing a wild ass. You don’t even have to kill the burro to get a one-year sentence – just harass it.
The modernization of OSHA penalties is long overdue. I hope the hearing was the first step in accomplishing this goal.
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Sidney A. Shapiro | March 19, 2010
The Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the Protecting America’s Workers Act of 2009, legislation that would, among other reforms, modernize workplace health and safety penalties. More than a decade ago, I testified at a similar hearing in the House of Representatives on the same subject. […]
Shana Campbell Jones | March 18, 2010
Tuesday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released an Interim Progress Report of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, a group charged by President Obama in Executive Order 13514 to develop (by Fall 2010) […]
Yee Huang | March 17, 2010
This week Water Policy Report (subs. required) reported on EPA’s exercise of residual designation authority (RDA) over stormwater discharges and a pilot stormwater-reduction trading program in Massachusetts. Together, these actions have the potential to significantly reduce stormwater discharges into local waterways. If successful, this pilot trading program could be a template for similar trading programs […]
Ben Somberg | March 16, 2010
A few congressional hearings today we’re keeping an eye on: Catch Shares. The House Natural Resources’ Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife will discuss “catch shares” as a fisheries management policy. Previously, CPR Member Scholar Rebecca Bratspies discussed the limitations of catch shares, and in December applauded NOAA for moving forward cautiously. Protecting America’s Workers […]
Ben Somberg | March 15, 2010
The Wall Street Journal had what seemed like a major scoop over the weekend: A federal safety investigation of the Toyota Prius that was involved in a dramatic incident on a California highway last week found a particular pattern of wear on the car’s brakes that raises questions about the driver’s version of the event, […]
Ben Somberg | March 15, 2010
A year after the contaminated drywall story went big, a “test trial” over damages from the material begins today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The court has posted documents regarding the case here, and outlets covering the case include the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Bradenton Herald, and Palm Beach Post.
Holly Doremus | March 15, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. As Cara and Dan have explained, ocean acidification is the other big climate change problem. As atmospheric CO2 levels rise, more CO2 dissolves in the oceans. That in turn increases ocean acidity, which changes the ecology of the seas, most obviously by reducing the ability of corals and a variety of […]
Rena Steinzor | March 12, 2010
In a rare public appearance at the Brookings Institute Wednesday, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator Cass Sunstein is quoted by BNA’s Daily Report for Executives saying that his ambitious plans for revamping Executive Order 12,866 – the document that governs much of the process of regulating, and particularly OIRA’s role in it […]
Ben Somberg | March 12, 2010
This item, by Liz Borkowski, is cross-posted from The Pump Handle. Exactly one year ago, President Obama issued a memorandum on scientific integrity that gave the Office of Science and Technology Policy 120 days to “develop recommendations for Presidential action designed to guarantee scientific integrity throughout the executive branch” based on six principles that Obama […]