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OSHA’s Chief Resigns--Cleared of Conflict of Interest

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Times Staff Writer

Robert A. Rowland quit a stormy 10-month tenure as head of the Labor Department’s worker safety and health agency Friday, hours after ethics officials cleared him of conflict-of-interest charges involving stock holdings in companies the agency regulates.

Rowland’s resignation from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which takes effect July 1, openly pleased organized labor officials who had attacked him for refusing to issue long-sought rules covering farm and chemical workers.

Critics linked Rowland’s $1 million in stock holdings to his April 12 decision not to issue sanitation standards for agricultural field workers and to other decisions not to limit workers’ short-term exposure to several chemicals tied to cancer.

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Rowland owned stock in several agribusiness and chemical firms affected by those rulings. But the federal Office of Government Ethics cleared him Friday of any charges of conflict, saying he had been given a legal waiver from conflict-of-interest rules last fall by former Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan.

In resigning, Rowland said he was pleased by the office’s “clean bill of health” and called the allegations “baseless and without merit.”

Labor Secretary William E. Brock III, who had expressed his own displeasure over the controversies that dogged Rowland’s OSHA tenure, said that Rowland had “faced difficult and controversial issues while maintaining his commitment with integrity and diligence.”

But California Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, called on Brock to review Rowland’s regulatory actions anyway, saying that he expects reversals of the field sanitation decision and other controversial rulings.

Rowland, a Texas tax lawyer and prominent Republican, has been a frequent target of unions and some OSHA employees. Most recently, he was criticized for organizing an April management seminar in which top OSHA officials reportedly urged managers to “take names” in a crackdown aimed at ridding the long-troubled agency of dissident workers. High OSHA officials also reportedly likened some agency dissidents to “Commie” sympathizers.

Those and other problems led Brock to tell reporters earlier this month that Rowland’s role at OSHA was “under review.”

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Rowland said Friday that he was leaving office to pursue “hunting and fishing” in Texas and to spend more time with his family.

Jack McDavitt, special assistant to Rowland, said Friday that it was “coincidental” that he resigned the same day that he was cleared of financial conflict of interest charges.

It was not clear who would succeed Rowland in July. Margaret Seminario, associate safety and health director at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, called for President Reagan to “appoint a professional to the position who is . . . devoted to (the) protection of worker safety and health.”

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