Job Safety Experts Protest ‘Secret Rule’ in House Subcommittee Hearing

by Mike Hall, Sep 17, 2008

For nearly eight years, the Bush administration has buried or delayed every possible proposed rule—usually at the behest of its Big Business allies—that would protect the health and safety of workers.

Now, with time running out, Bush’s Department of Labor is bull-rushing a new standard that is “unfounded, unsound and harmful to workers,” AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario told the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee this morning.

The controversial “secret rule” could lead to increased exposure of workers to dangerous chemicals and toxins by changing the way worker exposure is measured. The proposed rule also would make it more difficult for the next administration to enact new safety rules and, said Seminario, add as much as two years of

delay to an already glacial process and result in unnecessary death and disease for workers.

The rule was pushed by Bush political appointees over the objections of career health and safety professionals and kept secret until media reports in July revealed the plan.

Subcommittee Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) asked why the proposed rule has

leapfrogged ahead of many other worker protection standards that OSHA should have been working on for the last eight years.

The Bush administration has failed to act on several major workplace safety standards, including a crane safety standard, as well as rules to protect workers from exposure to dangerous substances and chemicals such as silica (which can cause serious respiratory disease), diacetyl (a flavoring additive linked to “popcorn lung”) and beryllium (a light metal that can cause lung damage, especially to metal and dental workers).

Leon Sequeira, assistant U.S. labor secretary for policy, claimed the new rule wasn’t a major new standard, as nearly every workplace safety expert believes, but more a matter of tweaking an already existing rule.

Tougher new workplace standards are needed to protect workers from dangerous toxic substances, said Dr. Celeste Monforton, from the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at George Washington University. But it already takes far too long to implement new safety standards, and the Bush secret rule would only add further delays. Said Monforton:

Our nation’s system for protecting workers from harmful substances that cause injuries, illnesses and deaths is paralyzed. Thousands of workers are exposed every day to chemical compounds and physical hazards that are known to be harmful, yet these exposures are permitted by outdated or non-existent OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] and MSHA [Mine Safety and Health Administration] standards. This is a sloppy piece of work that will impede, not improve, protection for workers.

Said Seminario:

It is shameful that after refusing to take action to protect workers from serious well-recognized health hazards for seven-and-a-half years, that the Bush administration is spending its last months and taxpayer money to lock in place rules that would prevent the next administration from taking prompt action.

When the rule was finally published Aug. 29 in the Federal Register, the Labor Department allowed a mere 30-day comment period and did not post the many vital background and research documents typically available for workplace safety experts to examine. Nor has it called for any public hearings on the proposed rule.

In letter to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Sen. Barack Obama urged Chao to extend the comment period on the proposed rule and also release the background and research documents.

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