Worker safety system in obvious need of repair

Terence M. O’Sullivan

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 | 2:01 a.m.

The odds are that by the end of today in America, 15 working people will be killed on the job, victims of government and corporations which for too long have accepted workplace hazards as the cost of doing business.

In 2007 alone — the most recent year for which Labor Statistics Bureau data are available — 5,657 workers were killed on the job, and 50,000 to 60,000 more died of job-related diseases. An estimated 4 million were injured. In Nevada, 71 workers were killed and 46,500 were injured in 2007.

As reported by the Las Vegas Sun, 12 construction workers in Las Vegas were killed on the job in an 18-month period. Heavy work schedules, weakened safety requirements, reduced enforcement and small penalties for violations contributed to the deaths. Four of the workers were members of the Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 872.

For the past eight years the previous administration in Washington, D.C., extended its “on-your-own” philosophy to issues of life and death on job sites across the country.

As a result, a death on the job today costs the typical corporation only $3,675. The average penalty for a serious violation of OSHA law is a mere $921. And nearly 40 years after workplace hazards were recognized as a serious problem with the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, nearly 9 million workers, including public service employees, are left out of OSHA’s protections altogether.

While deaths and injuries continue, dangerous substances, including cancer-causing silica that many construction workers inhale, remain virtually unregulated. Risks for repetitive strain injuries, which account for a third of injuries and cost employers and taxpayers billions of dollars a year, remain unregulated. And workers who are courageous enough to blow the whistle on job-site hazards have little protection from retaliation by their employers.

It’s not the fault of OSHA — under the Bush administration, the agency was systematically stripped of its enforcement apparatus and aligned with the interests of businesses, whether they were concerned about worker safety or not. Today federal OSHA has fewer inspectors than in 1980, with the ability on average to inspect every workplace only once every 137 years. OSHA’s stagnating budget means it has an average of $3.89 available to protect each worker in America. Nevada OSHA has about 40 inspectors to cover the entire state.

In addition to ruined and lost lives, the economic cost of hazardous workplaces is enormous. Workers’ compensation costs alone are estimated at $1 billion a week, according to OSHA.

The outrage is that so many deaths and injuries could be easily prevented. As we commemorate Workers’ Memorial Day today, our country can do more than mourn those who are killed and injured. We can begin to solve the problem.

Congress is expected to mark Workers’ Memorial Day with hearings on the Protecting America’s Workers Act, a bill to modernize the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The act would strengthen whistleblower protections for workers who report workplace hazards and give OSHA protections to many of the public service and other workers currently exempt. The bill would increase penalties for employers who ignore serious job-site hazards that cause death or injury, providing a real deterrent to neglect. It would require OSHA to investigate every serious injury or workplace death. And the bill would enforce requirements for employers to provide workers with proper safety equipment.

There is still tremendous work to be done beyond legislation, including more education and information, more labor-management cooperation and better training so that safer workplaces are seen as not only morally right, but a matter of good business sense.

The Protecting America’s Workers Act won’t solve the entire problem, but it will go a long way toward preventing many injuries, saving lives and sending the message that in America, the price of going to work each day must not be death or injury on the job.

Terence M. O’Sullivan is the international president of the Laborers union.