{"id":1093,"date":"2017-05-23T15:51:33","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T19:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2017-05-23T16:05:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T20:05:00","slug":"1093","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2017\/05\/23\/1093\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump FY 18 Budget Slashes Research, Kills Harwood Training Program and Chemical Safety Board"},"content":{"rendered":"

The budget is not just a collection of numbers, but an expression of our values and aspirations. — Jacob Lew<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We previewed the budget late last week and that preview was pretty accurate. OSHA’s budget is essentially the same as the recently passed FY 2017 budget — flat except for the proposed elimination of the Susan Harwood Training Grants. \u00a0The FY 18 budget, like the FY 17 budget also calls for a $2 million (10%) cut in the standards budget from 2016 — the same cut we saw in the FY 2017 budget. The administration may regret that when they realize that it takes as many or more resources to roll back standard as it takes to issue them in the first place. And remember that because of inflation and other increasing expenses, a flat budget is actually a budget cut. OSHA will have less staff and do fewer inspections next year.<\/p>\n

MSHA’s budget also remains flat.<\/p>\n

\"\"Susan Harwood Training Grant Program<\/h3>\n

Trump proposes to eliminate the tiny $10 million Susan Harwood Training Grants<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>program. The program dates back to OSHA\u2019s New Directions grants of the Carter administration. Although OSHA is primarily an enforcement agency, OSHA also has an active training and compliance assistance programs because a workforce educated in safety and health is essential to saving lives and preventing occupational disease. Although Trump’s budget calls the program “unproven,” it is highly successful and has been proven effective in protecting the lives of this country’s most vulnerable workers. Some of its success stories can be found here <\/a>(at least for now.)<\/p>\n

The Harwood program is a labor-management training program, providing grants to non-profit organizations whose members work in\u00a0high hazard industries. The grantees\u00a0provide hands-on classroom and field training for workers about hazards in the workplace and their rights under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Universities, labor unions, COSH Groups and industry associations have been the recipients of these grants over the past 40 years. \u00a0Over the past several years it has particularly focused on vulnerable and hard to reach workers \u2014 those whose first language is not English, day laborers, temporary employees \u2014 and others in high hazard industries. Most of the grantees provide\u00a0train-the-trainer programs, significantly multiplying the resources that OSHA invests in them. The value of the grants lies in the fact that these programs, and the training they provide reach workers that OSHA can\u2019t easily reach by working with groups that have access to vulnerable workers. (Note: we are collecting success stories that describe how the Harwood grants save lives and prevent injuries. Send what you have to confinedspace2017@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Who needs Research?<\/h3>\n

Aside from the proposed demise of the valued Harwood program, the real disaster in this budget are significant cuts in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.\u00a0<\/strong>The NIOSH budget has been cut an astounding 40%, from $339.1 million to $ 200 million. NIOSH was created\u00a0by the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act to be the research arm of OSHA. Despite all of the politics around workplace safety and health, establishing good policy that will effectively protect workers from chemicals, machine hazards, musculoskeletal disorders, workplace violence or the thousands of other hazards that maim and kill workers every day depends on good science, and good science is a product of adequate funding for the kind of research that NIOSH performs. \u00a0To make matters worse, the announcement of these proposed catastrophic NIOSH cuts come just before the Liberty Mutual Institute for Safety<\/a>\u00a0closes its doors.<\/p>\n

Chemical Safety Board RIP?<\/h3>\n

And then there’s the Chemical Safety Board<\/a>.<\/strong> The budget provides about $8 million for funeral expenses — funding \u00a0for the Board to use to shut down its operations. The President’s budget <\/a>claims that the CSB is “duplicative” and that it “overlaps with other agency investigative authorities.” As with most justifications in the budget, this is wrong. \u00a0The CSB, as we have said (and will continue to say) performs a unique (and at less than $12 million per year, an inexpensive) function that no other Federal agency performs. The CSB is able to conduct in-depth root cause analyses of major chemical incidents and issue recommendations to government agencies (like OSHA and EPA), industry associations (like the American Petroleum Institute) and labor unions (like the United Steelworkers).<\/p>\n

In addition, where OSHA and EPA can only look into specific violations of their standards and regulations, the CSB can look at deeper causes that aren’t covered by any regulations — things like the effect of worker fatigue or organizational changes on workplace hazards. \u00a0And while the CSB is not an enforcement agency and cannot issue citations, its recommendations can form the basis of changes in standards or on industry consensus guidelines. While OSHA has sometimes found some of their regulatory recommendations impractical considering how long it takes OSHA to issue standards, many of the CSB’s recommendations have formed the basis of OSHA’s current work on revising its Process Safety Management standard.<\/p>\n

Because the CSB is not tied to any specific enforceable laws or regulations, it can explore the inter-relationship of federal regulations, state laws and industry standards to develop a much more comprehensive picture of chemical safety problems and their solutions. \u00a0A recent CSB investigation, for example, following an explosion at a refinery in Torrance, California<\/a>, not only pointed to the cause of that explosion, but also noted that the refinery narrowly avoided a much more catastrophic incident: “An 80,000-pound piece of flying debris came just a few feet from a huge tank containing highly toxic hydrofluoric acid that could form a vapor cloud and travel for miles. Even small amounts can be lethal.”<\/p>\n

And if that’s not bad enough<\/h3>\n

The rest of the Department of Labor’s budget does nothing to help workers. Here is a short summary (thanks to former DOL Deputy Secretary\u00a0Seth Harris <\/a>for the quick analysis)<\/p>\n