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Sweeney: Bush OSHA Failure to Enforce Job Safety Law Cost Workers’ Lives |
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With 5,680 workers dying on the job each year, a new report shows just how callous the Bush administration was when it came to protecting workers. A report by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released yesterday reveals that the Bush administration’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) systematically failed to perform follow-up inspections for employers who put workers in serious danger. That failure could have led to nearly 60 deaths on the job.
According to the report, OSHA failed to, or was deficient in, following up on 97 percent of the cases in its Enhanced Enforcement Program, which, ironically, was designed to step up enforcement against serious violators. The OIG found that at 45 worksites where OSHA oversight was deficient, 58 workers subsequently were killed by job hazards.
Click here to read the OIG’s report.
In a statement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says there is “no excuse for OSHA’s failure to properly designate and inspect dangerous worksites, conduct follow-up inspections and enforce enhanced settlement provisions.”
This report is an indictment of the Bush administration’s unwillingness to protect and safeguard America’s working men and women. It also demonstrates that many employers, including some of the country’s biggest companies, are failing to meet their responsibility to protect workers.
Fortunately, America has a new Secretary of Labor who is committed to putting the needs of working families at the forefront of her agenda. This report underscores the need for strong leadership and a renewed commitment to protecting workers’ safety and health at OSHA.
Read Sweeney’s full statement here.
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Dear Union Brothers and Sisters,
There is no question that the Bush Administration and OSHA put working Men and Women at risk at work. In addition to the 5,680 workers that die every year, there are the tens of thousands that are injured and disabled at work that must find a path to live on.
These already injured and disabled Brothers and Sisters of our Union Body are then forced into another FAILED SCHEME called Workmen’s Compensation. The VOICE needed to REFORM this area of Health Care Delivery to our Injured Workers remains too “S I L E N T” within this current Opportunity which is focused on Reform to Health Care for ALL. Where is the VOICE that Stands-Up to Protect and provide Health Care Treatment and Benefits to our Injured Workers?
There has never been a more important time or opportunity to raise and reform this well known Disaster of Protection and Failed Workplace Health Care Delivery System, than in this current fight for CHANGE and Reform before us Today!
PLEASE, Brothers and Sisters, ALL Members of Organized Labor, and to all Labor Leaders and Friends of Labor, Stand -Up, STAND-UP NOW!! We must bring reason and responsible conduct into this critical aspect of Workplace Safety so we can protect ALL Members of our Working Families.
Where is the VOICE of Reason for the Injured Worker?
Where is the LEADERSHIP and Beacon of Hope, the pathway for our Injured Workers?
The collective S I L E N C E is Killing us every day, and time is not the friend of the Injured Worker!
Your comments and Feedback are most Welcome!
Craig Michie
NvVIAW@aol.com
Nevada Voters Injured At Work
“We came here to Work, Not to DIE!”
It is not 5680 worker deaths each year. Why? Because the number of worker fatalities recorded by BLS is grossly under-reported.
Worker deaths from toxic exposures, other work illnesses are conservatively estimated by NIOSH and other researchers at 50,00 to 60,000 deaths each year, or ten times the number of fatalities from work injuries. 1, 2, 3. It is a disaster of monumental proportions that goes largely unrecorded. The United States has no comprehensive occupational health data collection system.
As we have lagged behind other nations in our lack of a national comprehensive medical and statistical database on occupational illnesses, occupational injuries; we have lagged behind in the research into the causes and consequences of occupational illnesses that would lead to improved diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and ultimately prevention, of occupational toxic exposures and resultant diseases.
While the United States has set permissible exposure limits on less than 500 of the hundreds of thousands of chemicals in use in workplaces throughout our country, the EU regulates 30,000 chemicals utilized in their workplaces, and many that we allow here have been banned for years in the EU.4 Even the small number of chemicals, upon which exposure limits have been set in the US, are grossly out of date based on more recent scientific data.
It is a major and costly health issue – costly in lives, and costly in dollars. The economic burden for occupational illness, injury and death in our country is an estimated $170 billion annually. It is an economic burden that falls mainly on families (44%) and on taxpayers (18%); with only 27%, on average, being paid by workers’ compensation. 5.
There has been very little general public awareness of this system that maims and kills with impunity. The time is long overdue to re-evaluate a structure that evolved over one hundred years ago; and which clearly doesn’t meet the needs of seriously injured, ill, or toxic chemical-exposed workers, or the families of workers who died from their work – a system that has fostered devastating and lasting damage to families, to communities, to our environment.
Increasingly as a nation, we have been all too willing to push corporate costs onto workers and taxpayers; and all too willing to cut protections for workers, communities, and the environment.
Occupational illness deaths are now the eighth leading cause of death in the US, more than many of the diseases that receive far more government, public, and media attention. 6 We need to right this terrible, continuing American tragedy.
By Patrice Woeppel, Ed.D.
Author: Depraved Indifference: the Workers’ Compensation System
References:
1. Leigh, J. Paul; Markowitz, Steven; Fahs, Marianne; Landrigan, Philip. Costs of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses. University of Michigan Press, 2000.
2 U.S. House of Representatives. Hidden Tragedy: Underreporting of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses. A Majority Staff Report by the Committee on Education and Labor. Honorable George Miller, Chairman, June 2008.
3.Steenland, Kyle; Burnett, Carol; Lalich, Nina; et al.Dying for Work: The Magnitude of US Mortality From Selected Causes of Death Associated With Occupation, American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Vol 43, pp 461-482, 2003.
4. Regulation EC 1907/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), http://eur-lex.europa.eu.
5. op. cit. Leigh, et al, 2000.
6 LaDou, J., M.D. Occupational and Environmental Medicine in the United State: A Proposal to Abolish Workers’ Compensation and Reestablish the Public Health Model, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in the United States. 2006; 12 (2) 154-168; and US Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Vital Statistics System, National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol 53, Number 5. Deaths: Final Data for 2002, Table 10 and Worktable I, pp. 1585, 1634, 1662, 1703, 2220-2224, at cdc.gov/hchs/data/dvs/mortfinal2002_workipt2.pdf.