{"id":4402,"date":"2019-01-03T16:11:30","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T21:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=4402"},"modified":"2024-05-02T14:06:06","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T18:06:06","slug":"2018-safety-health-year-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2019\/01\/03\/2018-safety-health-year-review\/","title":{"rendered":"2018: The Workplace Safety and Health Year in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

As we sit here mired in yet another pointless government shutdown stranding tens of thousand of workers without paychecks, we pause to reflect over the past year in workplace safety and health. The madness in Washington DC continues, and while we can’t make any guarantees for the White House or the Senate, things are at least looking up in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\r\n

Meanwhile, the indefatigable Confined Space team (of one) has posted almost 250 times over the past year, talking about the carnage in American workplaces, but also the victories of unions, activists and dedicated government officials. I can’t honestly say I did it ALL by myself. I was aided by the many of you who sent me articles and story ideas that I never would have noted, and those of you who give me the inspiration to go on when I’d really rather be binge-watching some some addictive Netflix series, reading a book or riding my bike. (Actually, I manage to do enough of that as well.)<\/p>\r\n

The real story, of course, continues to be the more than five thousand workers who go to work and never come home, the tens of thousands who die each year from occupational diseases like black lung, silica-related disease and work-related cancers, and the millions of workers who are seriously injured every year in preventable incidents.\u00a0 The struggle continues as we hope that the lessons of 2018 will help make 2019 a better one for this nation’s working people.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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  1. A New and Improved Congress (or at least the House):<\/strong>\u00a0The long awaited Blue Wave hit the House of Representatives full force last November, bringing with it real oversight hearings, better budgets and legislation: Donald Trump — along with the Department of Labor and OSHA — don’t know what’s about to hit them<\/a> come the new Democratically controlled congress and its ability to exercise its oversight function to ensure that Labor Department agencies actually work to fulfill the mandate that Congress has given them.\u00a0 In a symbolic move, the House has already changed the committee name back to the Committee on Education and Labor<\/em>, instead of the rather anodyne in impotent “workforce.” But real work is on deck. Workplace safety and health hearings are already being planned, as well as legislation to move improve worker protections. While it’s unlikely that any pro-worker legislation will pass the Senate or be signed by the President, we can expect new ideas and new energy: Rumor has it that a record number of new Democratic House members want to be on the Education and Labor Committee. Something to look forward to.

    <\/li>\r\n
  2. \"OSHA\"A Headless Agency:<\/strong> By the end of January, OSHA will move into its third year without an Assistant Secretary — a new record in the 48-year history of the job-protection agency. The confirmation of Trump nominee Scott Mugno<\/a> remains mired down<\/a> in a fight between HELP Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) and Republicans who don\u2019t want to confirm Democratic nominees for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC.) The lack of an Assistant Secretary hits particularly hard as other OSHA veterans like Region 8 Administrator Greg Baxter and long-time Director of Enforcement Tom Galassi<\/a> also retire.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Deputy Assistant Secretary Loren Sweatt continues to labor on, almost alone in the once hyper-active Assistant Secretary’s office — no doubt looking forward to testifying at OSHA oversight hearings this year.\u00a0

    <\/li>\r\n
  3. Inspectors down, enforcement units down, penalties down:<\/strong>\u00a0The number of OSHA inspectors has hit an all-time low according to data compiled by\u00a0Bloomberg Environment<\/a>\u00a0Reporter Bruce Rolfsen in November. \u201cThe agency ended fiscal 2018 with 753 inspectors, compared to 860 at end of fiscal 2014, the personnel data, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show.\u201d And that means fewer serious injuries being investigated.\u00a0 And last June,\u00a0The National Employment Law Project (NELP) issued a report<\/a>\u00a0showing that worksite enforcement activity by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is declining under the Trump administration.\u00a0Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta likes to boast that OSHA conducted slightly more inspections in the last two fiscal years than they did in the last year of the Obama administration, but NELP points out that in FY 2017 OSHA changed the way it counts inspections. Instead of just counting the number of inspections conducted, OSHA moved to counting Enforcement Units. And those numbers under Acosta don’t look quite as good as they did under Obama. Things also don’t look too good for workers in at least one state plan state, Kentucky<\/a>, which suggests that OSHA’s oversight over state plans (which run almost half the country’s OSHA programs) may be weakening as well.\u00a0

    \r\n
    \"mine
    Photo by Earl Dotter www.earldotter.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<\/li>\r\n
  4. Return of Black Lung<\/strong>:\u00a0After almost being eradicated in the late 1990s, black lung is back, with a vengeance.\u00a0Epidemiologists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health say they\u2019ve identified the largest cluster of advanced black lung disease ever reported,\u00a0according to an NPR story<\/a>\u00a0by Howard Berkes last January. The cause is not just coal dust, but also silica exposure, caused by cutting through more quartz rock as the coal seams get smaller.\u00a0 Berkes recently filled out the story<\/a> alleging that the failure of regulatory agencies to understand what was happening and respond are largely to blame for the new epidemic. Meanwhile, making things worse, the state of Kentucky is killing the messenger<\/a> by no longer allowing radiologists to diagnose black lung. Only pulmonologists will be allowed to review black lung cases, but there are only six pulmonologists in Kentucky that have the federal certification to read black lung X-rays and four of them routinely are hired by coal companies or their insurers.

    <\/li>\r\n
  5. Brett Kavanaugh<\/strong>: Republicans confirmed a Supreme Court justice who, in addition to his questionable behavior around women, displayed shockingly little knowledge<\/a> of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and even less understanding of workers’ struggle to survive in the workplace. After a Orca (aka “Killer Whale”) dismembered and drowned a SeaWorld trainer, Kavanaugh dissented in a court case challenging the resulting OSHA citation. Kavanaugh wrote that OSHA had paternalistically interfered in a worker\u2019s right to risk his or her life in a hazardous workplace, that OSHA had violated its long-standing precedent not to get involved in sports or entertainment, that the agency had no authority to regulate in the sports or entertainment industries and that Congress \u2014 and only Congress \u2014 could give OSHA that authority. While none of this was true, Kavanaugh nevertheless\u00a0doubled down<\/a> on these assertions during his Senate confirmation hearing. Kavanaugh’s opinion related to other workers’ rights issues<\/a> were not much better.\u00a0 Nevertheless, today he sits on the Supreme Court.\u00a0

    <\/li>\r\n
  6. Regulatory Rollback<\/strong>: OSHA is struggling valiantly to roll back regulations that protect workers and slow down those under way, to fulfill the visions of Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress, and Corporate America. Happily, the curse of OSHA — how impossibly long it takes to issue any single health and safety standard — has become a blessing for workers because it takes almost as long to repeal a standard as it takes to issue a new one.\u00a0 Nevertheless, OSHA is in the process of attempting to weaken beryllium protections for construction and maritime workers, and striving to roll back a major section of the “electronic recordkeeping” regulation. The good news is that the courts not only upheld OSHA’s silica standard, but also told the agency to add more worker protections or at least explain its decision not to.

    While the road to roll back regulations is long and difficult, the agency’s chance of stopping any significant new workers protections from being finalized is much better. Standards to protect workers from infectious diseases and chemical plant hazards languish on the agency’s “long-term agenda,” while other standards are unlikely to see the light of day anytime in the near future because of Trump’s “one-in, two-out” regulatory budget.\u00a0
    Other agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture, also contribute to increase hazards for workers by allowing poultry processing facilities to increase line speeds. And EPA is close to repealing Obama era chemical plant safety protections, and the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour division is in the process of allowing 16-year-olds to operate potentially hazardous patient lifts.\u00a0 Bad news not only to workers, but to residents living near chemical plants — and granny in the nursing home.

    <\/li>\r\n
  7. Methylene Chloride<\/strong>:\u00a0 The Obama administration had proposed to ban the use of Methylene Chloride due to the deaths of numerous workers and citizens who weren’t aware of the highly hazardous properties of the solvent in enclosed spaces.\u00a0\r\n

    \"\"<\/p>\r\nTrump’s EPA, under former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, agreed with chemical manufacturers, and decided that a ban wasn’t a very good idea. Obviously, if consumers and workers couldn’t read between the lines of the ineffective warnings on the containers, they deserved to die.\u00a0 After some hard questioning at Congressional hearing, and meeting with family members of the victims of methylene chloride, Pruitt reversed himself<\/a> and sent the ban to the White House for review. Although the ban has not yet emerged from the dark, dank dungeons of the White House, family members and other organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund Green Chemistry and Commerce Councils, and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, aren’t waiting around. They have succeeded in pressuring retailers like\u00a0Lowes<\/a>, Home Depot<\/a>, WalMart<\/a>, Sherwin Williams<\/a>, Home Hardware<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0True Value<\/a> to stop selling<\/a> the product. Organizing and citizen action works, even in Trump times.


    <\/li>\r\n

  8. \"\"The Fate of the Labor Movement<\/strong>: A strong labor movement is good for workers and good for workplace safety. This year has seen ups and downs for the fate of American labor movement.\u00a0 On the down side, in June, the Supreme Court handed down its Janus decision<\/a> fulfilling the dreams of corporate America in its quest to weaken not just public employee unions, but the labor movement in general. But public employee unions are not going gentle<\/a> into that good night. They are fighting back, convincing their members that union membership is the best bargain<\/a> they’ll find.\u00a0 And, as labor reporter Steve Greenhouse describes<\/a>, 2018 saw “a startling surge of strikes in both the private and public sectors” — tens of thousands of teachers in West Virginia, Arizona,\u00a0Colorado, Kentucky, and North Carolina went on strike and hotel workers struck in Chicago,\u00a0Boston, Detroit, Honolulu, and San Francisco. And “15,000 patient-care workers, including radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, and pharmacy workers, held a three-day strike against the University of California\u2019s medical centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Irvine, and Davis. An additional 24,000 union members, including truck drivers, gardeners, and cooks, struck in sympathy.” Even 20,000 Google workers walked out to protest how the company handled sexual harassment accusations against top managers.

    The other bad union news was the elimination of the health and safety offices in the     Service Employees International Union<\/a> and the American Federation of Teachers, continuing the general reduction of health and safety staff still working in American labor unions — not a good thing for the health and safety of American workers, organized or unorganized.\u00a0

    <\/li>\r\n
  9. Journalism:<\/strong> American workers continue to suffer and die in obscurity and the agencies tasked to protect them remain seriously underfunded and legally handicapped. The only hope for many of these workers lies with the excellent investigative pieces published by this country’s dwindling corps of investigative journalists, especially those who focus on labor and health & safety issues. Longtime labor Charleston Gazette-Mail labor reporter Ken Ward<\/strong> received a McArthur Genius Award<\/a> for his reporting about labor and environmental issues in West Virginia. Ward is teaming up with ProPublica<\/a> for more hard-hitting pieces in the future.\u00a0 Retiring National Public Radio reporter Howard Berkes<\/strong> has produced two powerful investigative pieces on the return of black lung disease among the nation’s coal miners. (Here<\/a> and here<\/a>.) He will be missed. Veteran investigative reporter Jim Morris<\/strong>\u00a0at the Center for Public Integrity<\/a> continues his excellent work, most recently with a story on the deaths of oil field workers<\/a>\u00a0and problems at Kentucky OSHA<\/a>.\u00a0 Jamie Satterfield<\/strong> at the Knoxville News Sentinel published a hard-hitting piece on the health problems suffered by workers who cleaned up the massive coal-ash spill<\/a> at the Tennessee Valley Authority\u00a0Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant. \"\"You can listen to an interview with Satterfield here<\/a>.\u00a0Antonia Juhasz<\/strong> of\u00a0Pacific Standard\u00a0about the workers\u00a0working and dying on the Dakota Access Pipeline<\/a>\u00a0and how difficult it is for OSHA to enforce safe working conditions.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Will Evans<\/strong>\u00a0of Reveal<\/a> and the Center for Investigative Reporting has focused relentlessly on electric car maker Tesla and documented how the company put style and speed over safety<\/a>, was\u00a0hiding injuries<\/a> and ignoring the concerns of its own safety professionals.\u00a0\u00a0Eli Wolfe<\/strong> of\u00a0Fair Warning<\/a>\u00a0wrote a devastating piece about worker deaths on small farms and how Congress prohibits OSHA from investigating incidents\u00a0on farms that comprise about\u00a093 percent<\/a>\u00a0of U.S. farms with outside employees, employing more than 1.2 million workers. ProPublica’s<\/a> Kara Feldman<\/strong> penned an investigative piece<\/a>\u00a0into the death of\u00a0Mouctar Diallo, age 21, a Guinean immigrant crushed to death in 2017 by a 40 ton garbage truck, and the plight of New York’s unorganized and mostly immigrant garbage collectors.\u00a0Chemical and Engineering News reporter Jeff Johnson<\/strong> keeps us up-to-date on goings-on at the Chemical Safety Board here<\/a> and here<\/a>. And\u00a0Kartikay Mehrotra, Peter Waldman<\/strong> and Jonathan Levin<\/strong>\u00a0of Bloomberg News have written a long piece<\/a> on how the growing threat of deportation is causing immigrant workers\u00a0endure abuses in jobs Americans don\u2019t want.

    And I just want to give a shout-out to some of my favorite labor\/OSH\/environment reporters:\u00a0\u00a0Labor reporter     Steve Greenhouse<\/a><\/strong> who continues his eloquent defense of workers even (or especially) after his retirement from the New York Times.\u00a0 And then there’s Juliette Eilperin<\/strong> and the team at the Washington Post,\u00a0David Kay Johnston\u00a0<\/strong>who follows worker issues at\u00a0DC Report<\/a>,\u00a0 Suzy Khimm<\/a> at NBC,\u00a0Mike Elk<\/strong>\u00a0of\u00a0Payday Report,\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0Wooty Sixel<\/strong> at the Houston Chronicle. And honorable mention of those who labor for labor at various news bureaus: Rebecca Rainey<\/a> who has graduated from Inside OSHA<\/em> to heading up the team at Politico’s Morning Shift<\/a>. Rebecca’s replacement at Inside OSHA, Ariana Figueroa<\/strong>, and, of course the Bloomberg labor\/OSHA team: Josh Eidelson, Sam Pearson, Bruce Rolfson, Peter Waldman.

    <\/strong>And while they\u2019re not exactly journalists, this is probably a good place to recognize those academics and public interest people (some of whom are former colleagues) who are continuing the battle for worker justice by providing the research and perspective that go into many of the above pieces. My old OSHA colleagues\u00a0David Michaels<\/strong>, now at     George Washington University<\/a> and\u00a0Debbie Berkowitz<\/strong>, now working at the\u00a0National Employment Law Project<\/a>, both of whom write prolifically in defense of workers\u2019 right to a safe workplace. And, of course,\u00a0Sharon Block<\/strong>,\u00a0Executive Director, Labor and Worklife Program<\/a> at Harvard Law School who writes frequently in\u00a0OnLabor<\/a>\u00a0(along with many colleagues), Shanna Devine<\/strong> at Public Citizen<\/a>,\u00a0Katie Tracy<\/strong> of the\u00a0Center for Progressive Reform<\/a> and former Labor Deputy Secretary, rising pundit and my favorite Twitter contributor<\/a>\u00a0Chris Lu.

    <\/strong>And finally, while it’s not exactly great journalism,     my appearance on MSNBC<\/a> last January marked the longest cable television coverage of OSHA issues all year.<\/li>\r\n
  10. The Bottomless Swamp<\/strong>:\u00a0This year happily saw the resignation of two of the Trump administration’s leading swamp monsters: Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke — as well as the resignation and firing of a record number of other high administration officials either because they could no longer look themselves in the mirror in the morning, or because Trump tired of whatever residual residue of integrity they had left. Are things better now. Not so’s you’d notice.\"Acosta\"\u00a0As New York Times reporter Eric Lipton tweeted<\/a>, “As of Thursday, DOD will be run by a former senior Boeing executive. EPA is run by a former coal lobbyist. HHS is run by a former pharmaceutical lobbyist. And Interior will be run by a former oil-industry lobbyist. Welcome to 2019.”\u00a0 Meanwhile, even the Mr. Clean of the Trump Administration, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta had a bit of a bumpy road in 2018 as the Miami Herald<\/a> detailed how he gave\u00a0Palm Beach multimillionaire sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein a legal break when Acosta was\u00a0Miami\u2019s top federal prosecutor. What will this mean for the comparatively moderate<\/a> Acosta? Who knows? But even if he survives as Labor Secretary, his chance of ever seeing a coveted federal judicial appointment seems all but vanished.\u00a0 Oh well, we could have worse Labor Secretaries<\/a>.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

     <\/p>\r\n

    So that’s it for 2018. I’m sure I’ve missed a few significant happenings and great people. But that’s why we have comments, below. Feel free to use them to supplement my musings.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

     <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    2018 is gone and buried. What happened in the world of workplace safety and health? 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