Molina to Seek Restoration of Factory Checkups : Safety: The county supervisor will ask for a feasibility study on reinstituting the inspections. Rep. Becerra says he intends to hold federal public hearings to examine the status of Latino industrial workers in the Southland.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina plans to introduce a resolution next week asking that officials consider restoring an industrial health program that critics say would benefit Latinos and others who toil in factories countywide, Molina’s spokesman said Friday.

Responding to a Times report on Latino factory workers, Molina “found it deplorable that government has turned its back on workers under the guise of budgetary constraints,” spokesman Robert Alaniz said.

Los Angeles County had an industrial health unit but dismantled it amid budget concerns more than 10 years ago--in apparent violation of state law, The Times found.

Molina’s resolution will ask that the county’s chief administrative officer and the Department of Health Services study the feasibility of reinstituting the program and funding its operations, at least partially, through inspection fees paid by employers, Alaniz said.

Meanwhile, in another development Friday, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) said he intends to hold public hearings to examine the status of Latino industrial workers in Southern California.

Becerra, a member of the House subcommittee on labor-management relations, said he believes that testimony could lead to enactment of greater “whistle-blower” protection for undocumented Latinos who often are afraid to speak out about working conditions for fear of being fired or deported.

Federal hearings, Becerra said, would “hopefully light a fire under Cal/OSHA,” the state’s health and safety agency, and persuade its officials to assign more inspectors to Southern California.

California state legislators this week announced plans to hold investigative hearings, perhaps as early as October, scrutinizing Cal/OSHA’s performance.

Latinos, who make up nearly half of all factory help in Los Angeles County, suffer death and injury at rates disproportionate to their numbers in the workplace, The Times reported this week. Hamstrung by limited resources, Cal/OSHA health and safety experts inspect few factories, which rely on Latino workers, until after accidents occur. Moreover, because Latinos do not often complain openly about working conditions, proportionately far fewer Cal/OSHA inspectors are assigned to Southern California.

A state law passed in 1968 required that Los Angeles County maintain an industrial hygiene program staffed by at least 10 full-time health professionals. The unit, according to former members, routinely visited small, non-unionized factories where undocumented Latinos often work and monitored for possible overexposures to toxic substances and other hazards while educating workers and employers on how to protect themselves.

County administrators dismantled the unit by 1982 to save money and because they feared that its efforts would overlap those of Cal/OSHA.

Last year, records show, Cal/OSHA industrial hygienists inspected 227 manufacturing facilities--about 1% of the total in Los Angeles County--for possible toxic hazards.

This year, California legislators passed a law temporarily suspending the requirement that California’s financially strapped counties operate their own occupational health programs. The requirement is to be reinstated next July.

“Certainly, Cal/OSHA is not able to do the job it’s supposed to do,” Alaniz said. “It would probably be much cheaper for the taxpayer to reinstate this (occupational health) program and comply with the law than it would be to have workers continue to be injured and end up being treated” at county-funded hospitals.

Dr. Paul J. Papanek, chief of Los Angeles County’s toxics epidemiology program, said he was delighted with the possibility of the occupational health program being reinstated. Such a move, he said, would “at a minimum prevent thousands of cases per year of occupational disease in Los Angeles County.”

“There’s a gap in public health right now,” Papanek said.