Sun editorial:

A life-and-death issue for the nation’s workers

Congress should focus on human cost, not the false arguments in worker safety debate

Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

By the Labor Department’s count, on average, 15 people are killed each day on the job and about 11,000 suffer occupational illnesses or injuries.

Labor Department officials and business interests crow about the numbers because, they say, the numbers are declining.

Many economists and safety experts question that claim, noting that the government fails to count millions of injuries every year.

Regardless, just taking the official numbers, can it really be a success that more than 5,400 people are killed every year on the job and more than 4 million are injured?

For years safety advocates and labor unions have complained about the failure of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and for years little has been done about it.

“It’s not like somebody is opposed to protecting workers on the job,” says Joseph Dear, who ran OSHA in the early 1990s. “It’s ‘How do you do that?’ ”

That question has largely stalled Congress because of the polarized factions in the debate. There has been little common ground between business interests, which have worked against government regulation and enforcement, and union and health advocates, who want to see government take an active role protecting workers.

As a result of the tension, OSHA has become a bureaucratic quagmire, where regulations take a decade or more to make and where priorities consistently shift.

As well intended as the attempts to correct the problem have been, they have been barely incremental, in deference to the political volatility over worker safety.

In the latest effort to improve OSHA, Democrats have introduced a bill in the past two sessions of Congress called the Protecting America’s Workers Act. The bill has been hailed as a good step toward improving worker safety because it would raise fines and stiffen penalties. That is certainly needed, but the bill fails to address the systemic problems of OSHA that have kept the agency from truly protecting workers. Congress should be working toward a complete overhaul of the agency to better protect the working public. There are several areas Congress should address:

• Budget: OSHA has never had an adequate budget to handle its task of setting health and safety standards, much less to enforce them. Congress should make a financial commitment to the agency, whose budget hasn’t kept up with the rate of inflation, to give OSHA the money it needs.

• Regulation: Decades of adverse court decisions and political changes have left the agency hobbled. It takes years and millions of dollars to set a basic safety or health standard. Any new law should peel back the regulatory hurdles, give the agency clear guidance and allow it to reasonably set necessary standards to protect workers.

• State OSHA: Under the current law, states are allowed to have their own agencies, outside of federal purview, as long as they uphold federal OSHA’s minimal standards. That provision is predicated on the hope that state agencies can be more innovative and responsive in dealing with local industries. But of the 24 states, including Nevada, that have their own agencies, only California and Washington are said to come close to the ideal. The rest have been pale imitations of what was supposed to be. State legislatures pay little attention to them, either in providing oversight or money to supplement their federal funding. And federal funding for state programs hasn’t kept up with the rate of inflation. Congress should either find a way to provide oversight and additional money or end the state programs.

• Philosophy: OSHA’s enforcement role has been under fire since the agency came to life in 1971. Safety advocates want a watchdog; business interests want a toothless watchdog. Business groups have advocated the agency’s “voluntary partnership” programs, which give companies protection from most fines and citations. Studies of the partnership programs have shown that they don’t succeed without strong enforcement efforts. OSHA has to provide a deterrent, but its only weapons now are meager penalties and fines. Inspectors should have the power to shut down a dangerous work site, and the agency’s penalties should be dramatically increased — including making criminal those willful violations of safety laws that result in injury.

• Standards: The agency has failed to set regulations for hundreds of toxins, hazards and other dangers because it does not have the staff or the budget to do the job. As a result, tens of thousands of people are sickened every year after being exposed to hazardous chemicals and toxins. OSHA both makes the rules and enforces them, and those dual duties have split the agency and its focus. Congress should turn standard-setting over to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which develops information on handling of toxic substances and issues recommendations on health and safety standards.

• Statistics: It is well accepted by leading economists and experts that the federal government’s statistics for injuries and illnesses are grossly underreported. The Labor Department’s system of collecting numbers fails to count millions of injuries each year and some experts say the number of occupation injuries could be as high as 13 million annually. With all of those injuries, it looks as if OSHA is doing much better than it really is. Congress should mandate a full accounting of the numbers.

Overall, the health and safety system is inadequate, and it will take a huge political effort to make the necessary changes.

Over the past eight years, the Bush administration’s policies have been wildly biased toward business interests at the expense of workers’ health and safety.

Congress should see that the cost of such policies has been too great in any way it can be measured — human life, pain and suffering, and the economic drain on taxpayers and businesses.

The Obama administration and the Democratic Congress will need to stand firm against business interests, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that have fought worker safety laws and falsely say the cost of safety programs hurts businesses and the economy. Good health and safety programs actually save money for businesses and taxpayers.

The real measurement of a health and safety program, however, is not in dollars and cents. As Joseph Dear, the former head of OSHA, puts it:

“A success in health and safety means nothing happens. A mother or father goes home. That’s so good.”

Indeed. And that’s what lawmakers should focus on: helping more mothers and fathers go home unharmed.

Discussion: 13 comments so far…

By KDR81

12/4/08 at 9:01 a.m.

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OSHA's regulatory cost to business is conservativly estimated $46 billion a year!

Workplace injuries will happen with them or with out them, but how many lives are they "Saving" for $46 billion.

Workplace fatalities have fallen about by 800 year over the last decade and OSHA's funding hasn't changed (and it had nothing to do with OSHA anyway). If we assumed that fatalities double if OSHA never existed that would mean an additional 5,400 fatalities a year or a cost of $8.5 million per life saved per year.

In reality deaths may increase by 800, meaning it is costing us about $58 million per life saved.

Yes we save a life today at the expense of a life in the future. We lower our standard of living today, lower our economic growth today in exchange for a life today and a bleaker future tomorrow.

Think about the jobs that could be created for $58 million. Think about how many people that could be fed for $58 million. Do you not care about them?

If you think as clear and deep as a mud puddle then maybe the trade off is worth it.
By jbarab

12/4/08 at 9:39 a.m.

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Not sure where you got that $46 billion figure -- probably from a corporate think tank. Those figures are always exagerated and always wrong.

You may also be interested in these figures, quoted earlier in a Sun editorial: "Professor J. Paul Leigh, a leading health economist at the University of California, Davis, conservatively estimates that workplace injuries and illnesses tallied $163.3 billion in costs in 2005. (In comparison, cancer was estimated to cost $210 billion.) But only 34 percent of the total cost of injuries is picked up by workers' compensation insurance."

The fact is that OSHA standards and enforcement save lives, just as traffic laws and enforcement prevent accidents and save lives. And they save money. Sounds like a win-win prospect.
By redferret

12/4/08 at 10:34 a.m.

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Also are you going to be that big of an a$$ and put a number on a human life? I would ask would you like a number applied to your life and see how cheap it makes you feel.
By KDR81

12/4/08 at 2:23 p.m.

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A study from Washington University of St. Louis updated for inflation.

The real question is how many lives do they save and at what cost to the economy. If it costs $58 million per life saved then that is alot of people we harm to save that life.

That isnot fair.
By KDR81

12/4/08 at 2:27 p.m.

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Red, it would probably be about $50,000.

I'm not an a$$ for assigning a value for a human life, its not an attractive thing to do but think objectivly for a moment.

Money represents our time and the value of our product.

If a life costs $58 million to save and that life only produces $50,000 in utility think of all the productivity we've destroyed.

To put it in words you might understand, maybe that means there is less money going to pay for someones food, or shelter, or education, or medical research.

Maybe in that money would have saved 1,000 lives in the future if it had not been spent on 1 today.

We know that we can save a life today and that makes us feel good but we'll never know how many lives we destroy or how many people we let die because we spend extra resources saving lives at a very high cost.
By redferret

12/4/08 at 2:56 p.m.

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You skate dangerously close to Hitler's concept of ballast exististen/Social Darwinism with your concept of putting price tags on life/ humans. I just hope that you never have to face your own rhetoric and have someone say they don't want to spend the money on you to preserve you or keep you healthy. That's how we talk about our dogs when it's their time to be put down. Remember that.
By KDR81

12/4/08 at 4:28 p.m.

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That is a stretch to say the least.

All I'm saying is what is worth more 1 life today or untold lives tomorrow.

You've placed a value on 1 human life today without even acknowledging it.

You may not like the concept but you subconsciously do it.
By jfnance32

12/4/08 at 4:46 p.m.

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They could require all cars withstand a 140 mph impact (70 mph, 2 cars, head-on).

That would save 10,000's of lives each year.

I doubt that anybody could afford the cars.

There has to be reasonable cost-benefit decisions made.

Humans have limited resources. We have not achieve the Star Trek utopia.
By redferret

12/5/08 at 7:42 a.m.

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I agree nance that that is unrealistic, but KDR's constant spouting of cost vs people is ludicrous. I'll put the idea on its head, how many "future" lives are we saving with the money we would rip away from OSHA? More importantly, since it's obvious you never worked construction, what about the dismembered workers who get money for industrial accidents? Should they just rot? You seem way too content to sit in an ivory tower and say how you know how money can be better spent. I doubt it, and your ludicrously rightwing slant shows. These people build the things you can't or won't. They should be protected.
By safetyone

12/5/08 at 9:56 a.m.

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NO AMT OF MONEY WILL COVER THE LOSS OF A LIFE
MOST SAFETY PERSONS ARE UNDER THE THUMB OF SECUITY OR A TIGHT FISTED MGR. OTHERS ARE DESK JOCKEYS.

IF THE SAFETY PERSON WHO IS INTERESTED IN SAFETY BEFORE THE FACT WE WOULD HAVE A LOT LESS INJURIES AND DEATHS W/O OSHA.
By redferret

12/5/08 at 1:44 p.m.

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It's sad when a person can only look at PEOPLE in terms of worth and dollars/cents.
Safetyone is right. You can't put a real number on a human life. How much money is it worth for a worker's kids to see him again, to have him there at graduation, to give the daughter away at her wedding? How much money is it worth for a husband to die as the sole/primary breadwinner for a family? How much is it worth for a worker to come home every day with all of this appendages, knowing the next day he can still do everything he used to?
Priceless.
By SafetyNow

12/10/08 at 7:24 p.m.

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I think that perhaps the most difficult part of having suffered such a traumatic loss aside from settlement issues are the many inconceivable actions taken by most corporate entities to avoid any and all substantial penalty payouts by placing blame/fault to the defenseless victims giving the public a false sense of why they should not be held liable or allow themselves to be publicly flawed. Did you know for instance that if a corporation is successful in the applet process even if that success is only able to reduce the amount of the fines from citations issued. From then on the corporation is LEGALLY able to publicly claim that they had no time lost to injury or illness for the same job that may have cost a worker his/her life. Hows that for a slap in the face?
By SafetyNow

12/10/08 at 7:47 p.m.

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One last thought of helpful knowledge I'd like to share with your readers...
JUST IN CASE A LOVED ONE IS KILLED ON THE JOB
It is the first rule of corporate trickery used for the soul purpose of preventing family members from taking a public stand against them following a fatality.
It is their job to prey on your already weakened emotional state by issuing small hints of possible blame to the victim as not only does this tactic add to your grief it has almost a 98% success rate of making you and/or any information you may possess to the contrary as being viewed/labeled as emotionally unreliable hearsay. And understanding their intent from the beginning is trust me more than half the battle.
Mary Vivenzi

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