Dukakis Attacks Bush’s Record on Safety in Workplace

Michael S. Dukakis launched a blistering attack Thursday on Vice President George Bush’s record on workplace safety as the Democratic presidential nominee pushed his newly populist message: “We’re on your side.”

With his suit jacket off and loudspeakers blaring the battle theme from “Rocky,” Dukakis told an enthusiastic rally here that he is “fighting for workers” who have lost their lives or are threatened by dangerous workplace conditions.

With 12 days until Election Day, the embattled Democrat focused on Bush’s role as chairman of President Reagan’s Regulatory Relief Task Force. Critics long have charged that the White House group weakened workplace standards after it was created in 1981 to review rules and set policy for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and other agencies.

Dukakis appeared to blame “Mr. Bush’s task force” for the cyanide poisoning of a Chicago man in 1983, for a meatpacking accident that killed another man last year in Colorado and for lax asbestos exposure standards.

Asked if Dukakis was blaming Bush for the deaths, campaign deputy issues adviser Victoria Rideout replied: “George Bush is responsible for heading a task force that gutted environmental and workplace regulations. And those decisions cost lives.”

Senior adviser Kirk O’Donnell said Dukakis’ goal was to “take on Bush on his priorities and force him to react, so our ‘we’re on your side,’ theme can take hold.”

In his speech at North Harlem High School here, Dukakis said: “We’re fighting for people like Stefan Golub, a 61-year-old immigrant from Poland, killed by cyanide poisoning after Mr. Bush’s task force told OSHA to ease up on the kinds of inspections being made at plants like his.”

Golub died in February, 1983, from exposure to cyanide used at Film Recovery Systems Corp. of Chicago, a Cook County court found. The case drew national attention in 1985 when the court convicted three company officials of homicide in Golub’s death.

Skips Plant Inspection

OSHA inspectors had checked the company’s records two months earlier, but under guidelines developed by Bush’s task force, the agency skipped an on-site inspection. When an inspection was ordered after Golub’s death, OSHA found numerous safety violations at the plant.

“We’re going to have an OSHA whose inspectors make those inspections as if their lives depend on it,” Dukakis promised.

Dukakis also fired at the Reagan Administration for requiring all new health and safety regulations to undergo a cost-benefit analysis by the Office of Management and Budget. Bush’s task force had recommended that step.

Critics say the cost-benefit rule stopped OSHA from requiring special locking devices on dangerous machinery and allowed broader standards for exposure to cancer-causing asbestos.

Dukakis cited the death of a worker “killed by a grinding machine” at a meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., in April, 1987, because “Mr. Bush’s task force” had obstructed OSHA from requiring the new locks.

“We’re fighting for workers exposed to asbestos because the Administration actually sat down and figured out how many people would die from cancer as a result of exposure to asbestos,” he continued. “Set a price tag of $200,000 on each life. And decided it wasn’t worth the price” to reduce asbestos exposure.

“And they talk about a kinder, gentler nation,” Dukakis added. “In a Dukakis-Bentsen Administration, we’re going to put safety first and people first.”

A report in October, 1985, by the House Energy and Commerce Committee blasted OMB for interfering with the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to regulate asbestos. After several years of delay, the Administration issued new asbestos rules in 1986 that required companies to reduce asbestos exposure by 90%, estimating that the move would cost industry $460 million.

Dukakis appeared buoyed by the presence of his wife, Kitty, and by an apparent surge in at least one national poll. NBC News reported Dukakis 9 points behind Bush, at 51% to 42%, an improvement from the same poll’s 17-point gap a week ago. Campaign aides said that internal tracking polls also showed a closing margin.

Dukakis delivered spirited speeches on a blustery autumn day that began in a South Chicago suburb and ended with a televised “town meeting” in Harry S. Truman’s hometown of Independence, Mo. Dukakis was also interviewed by Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News.

During the interview, Dukakis said his philosophy was to “see government on the side of average people.” He said his “passion is in public service.” And he admitted that he was slow to respond “as quickly as I should have” when Bush began attacking his record.

During the day’s speeches, Dukakis intensified his attacks on Bush’s proposed capital gains tax plan and ridiculed the vice president’s assertion that the plan would create jobs.

Bush’s proposal would reduce taxes on income from the sale of stocks, bonds and other capital assets. The plan would benefit only people earning more than $40,000, and Dukakis has called it a “tax break for the rich” because most of the benefit would go to people earning more than $200,000.

“A jobs program? Who’s he kidding?” Dukakis asked several thousand people who crowded in a hotel ballroom in Evergreen Park, south of Chicago, early in the morning. “What are they going to do with the extra money? Hire a second butler? A lifeguard for the pool?”

Kitty Dukakis introduced her husband at both rallies, saying she wanted to speak about his “passion and his priorities.”

He “stood by my side” when their first child died moments after delivery, Mrs. Dukakis said. And, she said, he had not objected when she decided to quietly seek treatment for a 26-year dependency on diet pills in the middle of his 1982 reelection campaign for governor in Massachusetts.

“His answer was, ‘You’re more important than my reelection,’ ” she told the crowd. “Is that compassion? Is that caring? Is that sensitivity?

“And, when my husband is elected President of the United States, I’m going to have the same husband I had when this campaign began 19 months ago,” she continued. “Not a facsimile. Not somebody manufactured. Not somebody molded in the vision of someone else. With the same integrity and dignity. I’m so proud of the way he has campaigned.”