Brock Promises to Review Issue of Sanitation

Labor Secretary-designate William E. Brock III, questioned closely at his confirmation hearing about the Labor Department’s worker safety programs, promised Tuesday to review a controversial decision by the department not to issue a rule requiring farmers to provide field workers with sanitation facilities.

Brock gave no indication of whether the decision, announced April 12 by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, might be reversed. But when pressed, he reluctantly told a Senate committee that he personally believes that farm workers should have toilets, pure drinking water and clean water for washing themselves in the fields.

Pleading unfamiliarity with most problems facing the department, Brock avoided answering almost every specific question asked by members of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, which met to consider President Reagan’s appointment of Brock to replace former Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan. Donovan resigned March 15 after a New York state judge refused to dismiss pending charges of larceny and fraud against him.

Confirmation Expected

Despite his generalized answers, all members of the committee praised Brock, whose early confirmation by the full Senate is expected.

Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) first asked Brock if he would consider overruling the decision announced by OSHA Administrator Robert A. Rowland that farmers would not be required to provide field workers with sanitary facilities.

That decision has been protested not only by labor unions, which have promised to continue a bitter 13-year fight over the issue in the federal courts, but also by five Labor Department aides who have studied legal and medical testimony in the case for several years. In a signed letter to Rowland, the aides had said the decision “can only bring discredit to the agency and ourselves.”

But Brock, refusing to be pinned down by Metzenbaum on what action he might take, replied only that he would review the decision when he takes office.

Personal Opinion

Still pressing, Metzenbaum then asked Brock “not for an official decision, but in your personal opinion, do you think field workers should have toilets, pure drinking water and fresh water to wash in?”

Brock hesitated briefly, but then answered clearly: “Yes, I do.”

The department has been ordered by a federal appeals court to decide whether a federal sanitation rule for farm workers should be issued. In the last year alone, there have been five public hearings on the issue.

Public health specialists have testified that because farmers frequently refuse to provide workers with sanitation facilities, more than half a million American farm workers suffer rates of infection and disease comparable to those of Third World peasants. Only 13 states, including California, have some form of field sanitation requirement.

Brock was unequivocal in responding to two questions asked by committee members: He favors a subminimum wage for teen-agers as a means of helping them get jobs and believes that employment of workers in their own homes, instead of in offices and factories, will grow rapidly and inevitably.

The AFL-CIO labor federation long has fought the concept of a teen-age minimum wage below the current $3.35 and also has opposed “home work.”