Federal Commitment to Worker Safety Criticized by Institute

A study released over the Labor Day weekend by a nonprofit watchdog agency argues that the Reagan Administration has failed to adequately protect blue-collar workers in high-risk jobs.

“For men and women in manufacturing, steel making, mining, construction and agriculture, the danger at work has increased significantly” in recent years, according to the report by the Chicago-based National Safe Workplace Institute.

The study estimates that nearly 6,000 workers in high-risk jobs who died in the first half of the 1980s would still be alive if the workplace fatality trends prevalent at the start of the decade had continued. That conclusion was based on an analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Safety Council. Although overall workplace fatalities have declined, deaths among workers in high-risk occupations have risen inordinately, according to the institute analysis.

High-risk workers are involved in 82% of the workplace deaths although they constitute a minority of the total U.S. work force, the study says.

“These people, highly vulnerable in our society, have been rendered expendable by a failed public policy and the inability of regulators and public leaders to make safety a priority,” said Joseph A. Kinney, executive director of the institute.

He said he started the foundation-funded institute last year in an attempt to improve workplace safety after his younger brother, Paul, was killed in Denver when a scaffold on which he was working collapsed.

A former aide to the late Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.), Kinney, 38, attributes most of the increased deaths to alleged failings of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “We don’t feel OSHA has done a good job of standard setting, targeting or imposing penalties, particularly criminal penalties,” he said in a telephone interview.

“The U.S. government has been lulling people into thinking” that these workers are safe because the overall trend of workplace fatalities has leveled off, said Rosalie R. Day, research chief of the institute and co-author with Kinney of the report. She said there is safety only for employees in low-risk jobs, like service workers.

OSHA spokesman Terry Mikelson said he cannot assess the particular charges made by the report on high-risk workers. He added that overall workplace safety is improving, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources.

‘Grim’ Decade

Kinney acknowledged that death rates in low-risk jobs have improved. He said, however, that “the 1980s have been grim” on the safety front for blue-collar workers, who are disproportionately black, Latino and young.

The institute’s report makes a number of recommendations for improving workplace safety and accuses OSHA of:

- Being “notably weak in the fines it charges” to violators of federal safety and health laws.

- Allowing employers long delays before fines are paid.

- Frequently failing to verify that employers have corrected hazards discovered by agency inspectors.

- Writing rules and regulations that often are ineffective in producing safer and healthier workplaces.

The institute report says, for example, that OSHA’s regulations concerning scaffolding “are so complex even civil engineers have difficulty comprehending them.”

‘Faulty Construction’

The study also criticizes the changes OSHA has proposed on its scaffolding regulations. It notes that the agency’s proposal acknowledges that if there is full compliance with the new regulations, only 10 to 15 lives a year would be saved, less than 10% of the 220 deaths attributable to scaffolding incidents yearly.

The report notes that most scaffolding deaths result either from worker falls or from scaffolding collapses and makes two proposals to reduce injuries and deaths.

“Since virtually every collapse is related to faulty construction, and faulty construction is due to incompetent or improperly trained scaffold builders, the way to address the collapse problem is through licensing,” the report concludes. “Licensed technicians should be required by law for the construction of all scaffolds higher than 10 feet.”

The report also recommends that OSHA adopt Japanese practices on scaffolding, since that country has virtually eliminated scaffolding fatalities. The Japanese use tightly hung netting below and around each floor of a scaffold to save workers who fall.

Mikelson, the OSHA spokesman, defended the proposed scaffolding regulations, saying they are more performance-oriented than current rules and would give employers and employees more flexibility.

‘Right on Target’

John B. Moran, director of the division of safety research for the government’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, agreed with the report’s conclusions and recommendations. “They’re right on target,” he said.

Mikelson also defended the agency’s policies on fines, noting numerous large levies in the 1 1/2 years that William E. Brock has been secretary of labor. He also said the agency is limited by statute in the size of civil fines it can impose.

In that regard, the report recommends that the current limit of $1,000 for a serious violation and $10,000 for a willful or repeat violation set in 1970 be raised by the Congress to $5,000 and $50,000, respectively.

The report also criticizes the Justice Department for failing to take a more aggressive role on workplace safety.

“The federal government has yet to achieve imprisonment for any case involving OSHA violations in the 17 years since Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” the study says. In June, Kinney sent a letter to the Justice Department making a similar criticism.

‘Share Your View’

William F. Weld, assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, responded.

“We share your view that criminal enforcement is an important component of the OSHA enforcement scheme,” Weld wrote, although disagreeing with Kinney’s assessment of the Justice Department’s performance. Weld also said the department does not share Kinney’s view that it should set up a specific unit to deal with OSHA-related cases, as have some state attorneys general and district attorneys.

Weld’s letter also noted that a little-known law passed in 1984 raised the fines that can be imposed in a criminal misdemeanor case stemming from an OSHA violation resulting in a loss of human life from $10,000 to $250,000 for an individual and from $10,000 to $500,000 for a corporation. “We welcome these enhanced penalties and would be happy to see a comparable increase in the period of imprisonment authorized for a criminal violation of OSHA safety standards,” Weld added.

The report said it finds the Justice Department’s “new stance” encouraging but sees little evidence of action reflecting that stance.

In order for the Justice Department to file a criminal case on a workplace safety violation, it has to get an initial referral from OSHA. The report criticizes OSHA for referring only a small number of cases to the Justice Department.

More Civil Cases

In a recent interview, John A. Pendergrass, the assistant secretary of labor who heads OSHA, indicated that there would not be a marked increase in criminal referrals in the near future. “Most of our involvement will be with the civil side,” he said in response to a question.

OSHA’s overall performance is scheduled to be investigated in oversight hearings by both the Senate and the House this fall.

At about the same time, in mid-October, a California appeals court in Sacramento will hold a hearing on challenges to Gov. George Deukmejian’s abolition of Cal/OSHA earlier this year. Deukmejian vetoed an $8-million appropriation by the state Legislature that would have been used to continue funding of the state agency.

DEATHS AMONG HIGH--RISK WORKERS A National Safe Workplace Institute study of workplace deaths among high-risk occupations (construction, mining, steel making, agriculture, manufacturing) suggests that there has been an inordinate incease in worker deaths over six years. The study says these deaths are in excess of those anticipated by trends at the end of the 1970s.

Year The Number of Unanticipated Deaths 1980 335 1981 590 1982 877 1983 1072 1984 1339 1985