OSHA: It's Still Bush's Bureaucracy

Posted by Barbara O'Brien at 1:40 PM on April 7, 2009.

During the eight long years of the Bush Administration, Washington bureaucracies were filled with political hires more interested in serving an agenda than in serving the people. The change in administration didn’t make these ideological worker bees disappear, and the results continue to vex us.

Take the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), for example. Today Kerry Hall of the Charlotte Observer reports that OSHA improperly paid more than $680,000 to a consultant and acquaintance of the then-agency’s director, Edwin Foulke Jr. Now the agency cannot show exactly what the consultant, Randy Kimlin of South Carolina, did for the money. Products? Deliverables? Nothin’.

OSHA also botched an investigation into a deadly upper East Side crane collapse last May. Brian Kates writes for the New York Daily News,

The heavily censored report by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration got the time of the May 30 tragedy at 333 E. 91st St. wrong by five hours and even misstated what the massive crane was doing when it collapsed, according to lawyer Bernadette Panzella.

Ms. Panzella represents the family of Donald Leo, the crane’s operator, who was killed in the disaster. Leo was days away from getting married at the time of his death. Panzella had to file a Freedom of Information Act petition to get the report at all, and the report she finally received was heavily redacted and riddled with errors. Panzella believes the Manhattan District Attorney’s office is influencing OSHA.

Elsewhere in the news — late last year, Buffalo News sportswriter Tom Borrelli fell while climbing the steep stairs to the press box of a high school football stadium. Borrelli died of his injuries. This week OSHA fined — wait for it — the Buffalo News. Not the school. Brilliant.

What’s the matter with OSHA? Last week the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report that faulted OSHA’s Enhanced Enforcement Program (EEP), which the Bush Administration initiated in 2003. EEP was supposed to devote attention and resources to improving safety in companies with a history of workplace fatalities. However, EEP was mismanaged so badly that OSHA did not comply with its own requirements 97 percent of the time. The report says 58 workers were killed by job hazards in workplaces where OSHA failed in its oversight duties.

It gets worse. A 2008 study by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee found that OSHA rarely seeks criminal charges against employers. Even when it does, the penalties are absurd. A willful safety violation that results in a worker’s death carries a six month sentence. By contrast, a conviction for mail fraud comes with a maximum 30 year sentence.

OSHA also lets employers get away with no penalties at all, even fines. At the time of 2008 study, more than $27 million in penalties in cases involving fatalities remained unpaid. And it’s not as if the government doesn’t need the revenue!

When workers are killed instantly on a job it makes news, but most workplace fatalities come from the slow effects of toxic substances such as asbestos. Deadly asbestos-related diseases include lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis.

But OSHA’s standards are so lax it hasn’t even protected its own workers. In 2002, an OSHA official named Adam Finkel became concerned that some OSHA inspectors were being exposed to dangerous levels of the toxic metal beryllium, which like asbestos causes serious lung disease.

But OSHA refused to offer the inspectors blood tests. Finkel leaked the story to news media, and on the day the story appeared he was demoted. He eventually won a “whistle blower” settlement and left OSHA.

Eventually, OSHA began testing employees for beryllium poisoning, and nearly 4 percent of those tested had positive results. Many inspectors and retirees remain untested, however.

According to Carole Bass, writing for AlterNet, by late in 2008 the Bush Administration’s OSHA had issued only one new health standard, and that came about because of a court order. And a long list of health and safety regulations begun during Bill Clinton’s presidency were withdrawn under Bush.

Since January 2009, Deputy Assistant Secretary Donald Shalhoub has been acting head of OSHA. I have seen nothing that ties Shalhoub to any wrongdoing, and as far as I know he is an honest and capable administrator. The point is, however, that the staff and management of OSHA are still Bush’s staff and management, and it’s going to be some time before that changes.

Tagged as: bush administration, federal government, osha, occupational safety

Barbara O'Brien is the owner/proprietor of The Mahablog. She writes about Buddhism for About.com and and now blogs on behalf of the Mesothelioma and Asbestos Awareness Center on their new mesothelioma blog. She has guest blogged at the Take Back America Conference and for Crooks and Liars.