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NEWS BRIEFS

Date Posted: May 14 2010

Job safety law full of flaws

WASHINGTON (PAI) – The Occupational Safety and Health Act is full of flaws, so much so, one prominent worker advocate says, “some employers have total and blatant disregard” for worker safety, as it “takes a back seat to production.”

That harsh judgment, from veteran AFL-CIO Occupational Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario, came at one of two congressional hearings on job safety and health.  The sessions, held April 27-28, marked Workers Memorial Day, while also exposing the act’s lack of enforcement and flimsy protections for whistleblowers.

The witnesses, including Seminario, Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, AFL-CIO General Counsel Lynn Rhinehart, Obama administration officials and several workers, spent their time urging senators and representatives to strengthen the law.

But prospects for that bill, the Protecting America’s Workers Act (PAWA), are uncertain.  The congressional schedule is jammed.  Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who heads the Senate subcommittee that would consider the bill, said the week before she did not know when – or if –  senators would consider it.  House approval is assumed.

And even if lawmakers try to rewrite the 40-year-old law to increase its fines, and to make accidents that seriously injure or kill workers into felonies and protect whistleblowers, they’ll still hit virulent employer opposition.

A statement from the so-called Coalition for Workplace Safety – sponsored, its stationery says, by the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers – called PAWA “unnecessary” because it emphasizes penalties rather than “working with employers.”

Seminario laid out a range of potential solutions in PAWA to improve job safety and health law.   They include increasing the fines – from $7,000 per standard violation to $12,000, and from $70,000 for serious or willful violations to $120,000.  The law would also impose 10-year or 15-year felony terms on corporate officials whose policy or negligence kills or seriously injures workers.  Right now, they face only 6-month misdemeanor terms – and only if a worker dies.

The witnesses retorted, in both hearings, that there are too many “bad apple” firms who disregard worker safety – and that low OSHA fines, lack of inspections and the criminal misdemeanor charges when a worker gets killed encourage the rogues.”