NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | April 17, 2015 | PAGE 3
Federal OSHA’s Silica Neverland
Six years after Obama took office,
workers are still waiting for pro-
tection from deadly dust
By Don McIntosh
Associate Editor
You wouldn’t think sand could
kill.
But more than 2 million
American workers breathe mi-
croscopic silica particles in con-
struction, roadbuilding, ship-
yards, and elsewhere, and an
estimated 700 die each year as a
result of longterm chronic expo-
sure. Silicosis — caused when
the inhaled silica scars lung tis-
sue — is the world’s oldest oc-
cupational disease, and it’s not
the only condition caused by
tiny crystalline silica particles.
The list also includes pulmonary
tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis,
emphysema, and lung cancer.
Workers are at risk when they
cut, saw, drill, chip, bore, blast
and crush concrete, brick, and
stone—or use sand in sandblast-
ing, glassmaking or foundry
work. All those activities gener-
ate airborne microscopic crys-
talline silica particles that are 100
times smaller than ordinary sand,
so they aren’t caught by the
body’s filter mechanisms, and in-
stead go right into the lungs.
So why isn’t OSHA — the
Occupational Safety and Health
Administration — doing some-
thing to better protect workers
on the job? That’s the agency’s
purpose — “to assure safe and
healthful working conditions …
by setting and enforcing stan-
dards.”
The answer: moneyed inter-
ests have become expert at
slowing and stopping OSHA
from doing its job.
“It’s a really broken awful
process,” says Peg Seminario,
longtime Safety and Health di-
rector for the national AFL-CIO.
The silica rule is a 40-year
saga. OSHA in 1972 set a max-
imum allowable workplace ex-
posure of silica, but the rule did-
n’t require employers to monitor
or train or reduce exposure. Two
years later, the National Institute
for Occupational Safety and
Health concluded that OSHA’s
rule was insufficient. And in the
decades since then, even the air
sampling method that OSHA re-
quires in its silica rule has be-
come obsolete.
OSHA started – and stopped
– work on an improved silica
rule in the 1990s and again in
the 2000s. In 2009, the newly
If a defective product
causes your work
injury you may be
able to sue the
manufacturer for
damages in a
products liability claim.
installed Obama Administration
announced that an OSHA rule
on silica would be one of its reg-
ulatory priorities. But OSHA
didn’t release a draft of the rule
until 2011, and at that point it
entered regulatory limbo — “re-
view” by the White House Of-
fice of Management and
Budget. The review was sup-
posed to last 90 days. Instead, it
took two-and-a-half years.
It was pure politics, Semi-
nario says: “They were being
pushed by the business commu-
nity not to do this rule.”
Now, it appears that White
House delay may have killed the
chances for a new silica rule for
the foreseeable future. True, the
White House finally released
the rule, after members of Con-
gress complained and AFL-CIO
president Rich Trumka publicly
shamed the administration for
“inexcusable and heartless” de-
lay.
And on Aug. 23, 2013,
OSHA presented details of the
proposed rule: Where workers
are exposed to microscopic sil-
ica, employers would have to
monitor air, provide periodic
medical checkups to test for ex-
posure, and train workers how
to reduce risk. They’d also have
to use water to dampen the dust,
vacuum systems to remove it, or
enclosures to limit its spread, or,
where none of those methods
are practical, provide respirators
or other protective gear. OSHA
estimated compliance with the
rule would cost about $1,037
per employer.
As soon as the rule was re-
leased, dozens of business
groups and industry associations
swung into action, writing and
testifying with objections.
OSHA announced a 90-day
period of public comment,
which was extended another 47
days, and another 15. Hearings
were held in March and April
2014, and OSHA gave partici-
pants until June 3 to submit fur-
ther comments, and until Aug.
18 to submit further final argu-
ments. Eight months later,
OSHA staff are still reading and
thinking about all those com-
ments.
As Department of Labor
spokesperson Laura McGinnis
put it, the silica rule is “in the
comment review stage.”
Seminario thinks OSHA will
finish the silica rule in early
2016.
The trouble is, while OSHA
and the White House dilly-dal-
lied for six years, Congress
changed hands.
The AFL-CIO now expects
Republican House and Senate
majorities to do what they’ve
done before, Seminario says:
Use their spending power to
block the rule. When Congress
passes the next massive funding
“The delay in job safety
protections for silica is
inexcusable and heart-
less.”
— Feb. 13, 2013.
“ The final silica rule
should be issued as fast
as humanly possible.”
— Aug. 23, 2013
— AFL-CIO President
Richard Trumka
bill for “Labor, Health and Hu-
man Services, Education, and
Related Agencies” — which in-
cludes the OSHA budget — it
could add a rule that none of the
money can be spent implement-
ing the silica rule. That’s what
they did with ergonomics back
in 2001, which is why U.S. em-
ployers to this day face no out-
right requirement to prevent
repetitive motion injuries like
carpal tunnel. If that happens
with the silica rule, and Obama
signs it, workers will have to
wait for another president, and
another Congress, for OSHA to
protect them.
KGW unions to take to
Pioneer Square April 25
KGW-TV’s three unions are going public about a standoff
with management negotiators for parent company Gannett.
At noon on Saturday, April 25, they’ll assemble at Pioneer
Courthouse Square — where the station has an office — for
a public town hall.
All three unions are having a tough time negotiating new
collective bargaining agreements with the station: Interna-
tional Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local
600, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
(IBEW) Local 48, and the Screen Actors Guild-American
Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).
The big sticking point is a proposal by Gannett to eliminate
union jurisdiction. As union negotiators understand it, that
would mean contract terms would apply only to current union
members, and the company could hire new employees to do
the same work under different terms.
Blues musician Norman Sylvester will perform at the event.