President Obama’s approval rating is up to 50 percent for the first time in two years after a stellar period of national reconciliation and the safeguarding of Obamacare, his signature, and truly momentous, achievement. The president, in fulfillment of his noble promises to help the middle class, is about to put his weight behind a Labor Department rule that would hike minimum earnings needed to earn overtime pay, a proposal that would affected 5 million Americans. These accomplishments remind people why they voted for him in the first instance and returned him to office by a very comfortable margin.
But for those of us who believe that people should be able to go to work without getting sick or dying, a remarkable series of stories by the Center for Public Integrity can only strengthen the despair that has been building slowly since the president took office. The series describes an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) so impotent with respect to pervasive workplace hazards that it is fair to ask whether this 45-year old institution is fundamentally irrelevant to most American workers. Consider the following “dispiriting facts” reported by editor Jim Morris and reporters Jamie Smith Hopkins and Maryam Jameel:
Apart from chemicals and other hazardous substances like silica, as we’ve written before, OSHA has also shoved its head far into the sand on ergonomic injuries, the other cause of workplace misery. Chastened by Congress (what else is new?) at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, OSHA has effectively abandoned the field, even as the problems grows to intolerable proportions in health care facilities and meatpacking plants.
When interviewed for the Center’s series, agency head David Michaels blamed the “very, very complex, onerous process” he must go through to promulgate chemical exposure standards. Dr. Michaels, of course, is an extraordinarily talented epidemiologist who wrote the path-breaking book, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. When he went to OSHA riding a wave of hope from labor advocates, he knew very well what it would take to lead the agency out of its doldrums. So it’s distressing to hear the sense of resignation to a too-weak statute and a too timid bureaucracy in his remarks. After all, the last time OSHA waded into the chemical exposure problem was during the Reagan Administration. Surely endangered workers could expect far more from a “transformative” president.
Of course, in fairness to Dr. Michaels and his beleaguered staff, industry allies in Congress have done everything possible to undermine OSHA, beginning and ending with untenable appropriations that leave the agency at the same level of resources as it had four decades ago. Funding shortfalls bite deep, and demand the most creative and focused response OSHA has ever mustered. For example, we pleaded with OSHA staff years ago to launch enforcement of high-profile general duty clause cases against the most dangerous employers. Such prosecutions would charge that employers are exposing workers to toxic chemicals at levels much higher than everyone knows are safe. A concerted effort in this less expensive, equally effective arena is not discernible.
Given the stakes and the scope of the failures, it’s fair to ask why President Obama has ignored OSHA so systematically. Being well enough to go to work is, after all, the condition precedent to bringing home a paycheck. Yet Michaels has hurled himself against the White House gates to no avail. The united front presented by the president and his top advisors has sucked all the air out of OSHA, leaving behind a series of erratic enforcement cases against egregious violators but failing to prevent the large majority of workplace illness and injury.
A cynic might suggest that the president and his political advisors simply are not willing to fight off the squads of industry lobbyist who saddle up every time OSHA contemplates marginally more aggressive behavior. Admittedly, such fights are a profoundly unpleasant way to spend one’s time and, for reasons that remain mysterious, the president may simply have overlooked the devastating effects of industry greed and OSHA dysfunction. Yet if the president is serious about restoring grace in our public spaces, surely those suffering most greatly among us must not be left behind.
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Rena Steinzor | June 30, 2015
President Obama’s approval rating is up to 50 percent for the first time in two years after a stellar period of national reconciliation and the safeguarding of Obamacare, his signature, and truly momentous, achievement. The president, in fulfillment of his noble promises to help the middle class, is about to put his weight behind a […]
Lisa Heinzerling | June 30, 2015
In Michigan v. EPA, the Supreme Court reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to regulate power plants under section 112 of the Clean Air Act. Section 112 is the provision regulating toxic air pollutants, such as mercury. The question before the Court was whether EPA reasonably interpreted the Clean Air Act to allow EPA to decline […]
Robert Verchick | June 29, 2015
Today the Supreme Court blocked a key effort by the Obama administration to keep unsafe levels of mercury and other toxins from spilling into our air. The ruling, issued in Michigan vs. EPA, is a loss for the EPA and public health advocates. But the damage can be contained and will hopefully not prevent the agency from […]
Thomas McGarity | June 29, 2015
In a sweeping display of judicial activism the Supreme Court has made it much harder for the EPA to protect Americans from the dangers of exposure to mercury emissions. The Supreme Court today tossed out EPA’s regulations protecting the American public from mercury and other hazardous emissions of power plants. Justice Scalia refused to defer […]
Lisa Heinzerling | June 26, 2015
The Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Burwell is, of course, most important for its central holding that the Affordable Care Act’s federal subsidies are available even on federally established health exchanges. The decision preserves health insurance subsidies for millions of people who have begun to benefit from them and avoids the ridiculous spectacle of taking the […]
Erin Kesler | June 26, 2015
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2576, an update to the long-outdated Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which governs regulation of toxic chemicals. CPR Member Scholar and University of Richmond Law School professor Noah Sachs and CPR Executive Director Matthew Shudtz wrote a piece for The Hill, highlighting some crucial problems with the bill the House […]
Rena Steinzor | June 25, 2015
Anyone who cares about the development of sound public policy has grown distraught over congressional gridlock. The House and Senate are dysfunctional to an extent not seen in modern times. Neither is able to develop bipartisan legislation to deal with a slew of urgent social problems, from immigration and the minimum wage to the strengthening […]
Evan Isaacson | June 24, 2015
TMDL. The first four posts cover the region as a whole, and then Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland. Future posts will explore the progress of the remaining three jurisdictions. So far, we have evaluated progress of the three core jurisdictions in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed in reducing nutrient and […]
James Goodwin | June 23, 2015
When your public approval rating has hovered at or below 20 percent for the last several years, maybe the last thing you should be doing is maligning other government institutions. That didn’t stop a group of Senators from spending several hours doing just that today during a joint hearing involving the Senate Budget and Homeland […]