OSHA’s Four-Year Delay on Crane Safety Standard Highlighted in Wake of N.Y. Deaths

by Mike Hall, Mar 20, 2008

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that between 64 and 82 construction workers are killed and 263 are injured working around cranes and derricks each year.

The latest tragic evidence of the dangers construction workers face when working on and around the towering cranes that dot so many city skylines—sometime reaching several hundred feet in the air—came March 15. Six construction workers and an out-of-town visitor were killed when a 300-foot-tall crane collapsed on Manhattan’s East Side, severely damaging a 19-story apartment building and demolishing a four-story town house.

Initial reports indicate the collapse occurred as the workers were “jumping” or assembling a new section so the crane could extend higher as the project continued.

But just as OSHA has failed to issue so many vital safety standards during the Bush administration—combustible dust, personal protective gear, diacetyl (a cancer-causing chemical) and more—it has yet to issue a crane and derrick safety standard, despite the urging of both industry and unions.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, took to task OSHA chief Edwin Foulke for failing to protect workers and a “tragic pattern of inaction” on important safety rules. The remarks came at a recent hearing on the deadly Imperial Sugar Co. explosion that killed 13 workers in Georgia last month. (Click here to read Miller’s statement.)

The folks at OSHA Underground—a workplace safety blog run by OSHA employees who post anonymously to protect their jobs—have tracked the nearly four-year delay in issuing a crane and derrick standard.

In July 2004, a 23-member industry and union advisory committee that OSHA established issued its recommendations and a proposed standard on crane safety. It contains specific rules on crane assembly.

In June 2006, Foulke said:

I’ve been looking at cranes and derricks, because I want to move that along.

Later that month, he told the South Carolina Department of Labor that he will set a date for a crane standard “soon” and said he is a “firm believer in making a decision and moving on it quickly.”

In December 2006, Foulke said:

I am committed to getting the cranes and derrick standard through before the end of this administration.

In February 2007, he said that publishing a final rule on cranes is an OSHA priority. In April, he told the House Workforce and Education Committee that he is committed to moving the rule to completion.

In January, three and a half years after the industry/union advisory committee issued its proposed crane and derrick safety standard, OSHA has yet to even issue a proposed rule. Noah Connell, OSHA’s construction standards chief, defended the agency’s slow pace.

This is quite an enormous undertaking that takes an unbelievable amount of time.

The March issue of Professional Safety—The Journal of the American Society of Safety Engineers—reported Foulke’s promises that proposed rule be issued this year, likely in October.

If OSHA ever does issue its crane safety standard, it will be too late for construction workers Santino Gallone, Clifford Canzona, Wayne Bleidner, Brad Cohen, Anthony Mazza and Aaron Stephens, along with Odin Torres a visitor from Florida, who were killed when the Manhattan crane collapsed.

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