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OSHA to publicly shame job safety violators

Date Posted: June 25 2010

(PAI) – The Occupational Safety and Health Administration “will use not just our normal inspection system, but regulation by shaming” against notorious job safety and health violators, its administrator says.

In a June 15 telephone press conference/emergency meeting in Pittsburgh on the issue with Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, OSHA Administrator Dr. David Michaels added that the targets of the shaming would be “those companies that aren’t playing by the rules” on worker safety and health.

“We have every right to call the CEO of any company and tell them what we want, and we will,” Michaels added.  And he urged workers to report violations.

Gerard, Roberts and Michaels spoke at an emergency safety conference of oil workers USW called in Pittsburgh, after a string of fatal oil refinery accidents – even before the deep-sea well blew up – and after deaths of 37 coal miners so far this year.

Michaels said he has already called the oil companies’ lobby on the carpet to justify its practices, after the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil well fire, explosion and sinking in the Gulf of Mexico almost two months ago.  The blast at the mile-deep well killed 11 workers and has spewed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf in the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Oil and mine disasters show the need for stronger job safety laws, and stronger enforcement, both union leaders said.  “There’s got to be an equal consequence” for companies when their laxity or refusal to protect workers costs lives, Gerard said.

“We need stronger laws, bigger penalties and criminal penalties for executives who commit these acts,” Roberts added.

Both unions are leading labor’s fight for the Protect American Workers Act (PAWA), a measure to strengthen the 40-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Act.

It would increase fines, let OSHA impose separate fines for each violation, and change violations that kill workers from criminal misdemeanors that carry maximum 6-month jail sentences to felonies that carry 10-year and 15-year terms, among other things.

The Obama administration OSHA, led by Michaels, also endorses PAWA, but the measure is marooned in Congress, victim of a jammed schedule.  Business and congressional Republicans also strongly oppose the legislation.  The oil majors also don’t want to do anything about safety, citing money, says Steelworkers Vice President Gary Beevers, who is in charge of bargaining with the oil firms.

His statements were backed up, the same day, by documents released by congressional committees investigating the Gulf of Mexico disaster.  They show BP, which buys the oil from Deepwater Horizon, stinted on safety.  But the documents also showed the other oil majors also have large safety problems and lack plans for them.