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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (April 20, 2018)
PAGE 10 | April 20, 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS QUESTIONS FOR JORDAN BARAB If anyone knows the federal government’s record on worker safety, it’s Jordan Barab. For eight years, he was the number two official at OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Admin- istration) under Obama. Before that, he spent 16 years run- ning the safety and health program at AFSCME, five years at the Chemical Safety Board, three years as OSHA’s labor liaison and ergonomics coordinator during the Clinton Administra- tion, two years as Democratic policy adviser for the House Ed- ucation and Labor Committee, and a short stint at the na- tional AFL-CIO. Now semi-retired and freer than ever to speak his mind, he runs a blog about workplace safety called Confined Space. Don McIntosh of the Northwest Labor Press interviewed him by phone April 11. What do you think of the peo- ple the Trump Administration has put in charge so far, includ- ing Loren Sweatt, who re- placed you? Loren has been very, very low profile. I don’t think she’s made any speeches. I don’t think she’s conducted any interviews. OSHA’s basically been on autopilot. The career staff is basically running the place, which is not a bad thing. Have there been any changes to worker safety and health, posi- tive or negative, since Trump took office? Well, first we saw two regulations repealed shortly after the administration began. One of those dealt with record keeping: We really wanted to en- force accurate record-keeping. The other was a regulation that would have required federal con- tractors to report past violations of the law, including OSHA, be- fore they received any federal contract. It wasn’t blacklisting, as they accused us of, but it would at least have put federal agencies on notice that there had been vi- olations in the past. Both of those regulations were repealed by Congress. Since then what we’ve seen is a proposed rollback of OSHA’s beryllium standard at least as it applies to construction and maritime workers. Two years in a row, the Trump Administration has proposed the elimination of the Chemical Safety Board, which has an an- nual budget of just $11 million. You used to work for the Chemical Safety Board. What does it do, and what would be the result of its elimination? The Chemical Safety Board is a small independent government agency that investigates chemical plant explosions and chemical re- leases. They don’t have any en- forcement authority, but they do conduct root-cause investiga- tions, and they make recommen- dations then to entities such as EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] or OSHA, and to indus- try associations, labor unions, and sometimes state governments that may have a role in making the industry safer. It was created because experts in the field didn’t feel that OSHA or EPA were equipped to conduct thorough root-cause investigations. Mainly what OSHA’s concerned about is not necessarily the cause of an in- cident, but whether any OSHA standards have been violated. Sometimes there may be deeper causes of an incident than just a violation of standards. So what the Chemical Safety Board does is determine what the root causes are, and whether OSHA or EPA need to improve their existing standards or create new standards to protect worker and communi- ties around chemical plants. It’s a small agency. It receives a fair amount of support from labor and industry, so nobody could quite figure out why they wanted to get rid of it, except maybe some people in the industry didn’t particularly like the recom- mendations. It’s never been a par- ticularly controversial agency. And what would its elimination mean? Would we notice it? I don’t know if your average per- son would notice it, but they have done some very good investiga- tions that have led to improve- ments in OSHA standards and EPA standards, and improve- ments in industry consensus stan- dards. They also put out educa- tion videos, which everybody loves, explaining how these inci- dents happen and how to prevent them. They make an important contribution to chemical safety in this country. The Trump Administration has also twice proposed the elimination of OSHA’s Susan Harwood program of safety training grants, which is $10.5 million a year. Any idea why they’d want to look at some- thing so small and get rid of it? Susan Harwood grants are pro- vided to nonprofit organizations to provide hands-on training, of- ten bilingual training. The grants go mainly to associations that represent small employers, labor unions, other nonprofits and uni- versities. What Republicans have never particularly liked is that this is money that goes to labor unions. They like it even less than they used to because we really tried to focus the grants on ad- dressing the issues of vulnerable workers — day laborers, immi- grants, people whose first lan- guage is not English — the peo- ple that OSHA has a hard time reaching. The biggest worker safety cut the Trump Administration is proposing is to the National In- stitute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) at the Centers for Disease Control. The administration wants to cut $100 million out of its $300 million budget. That seems like an enormous cut. Can you ex- plain what NIOSH does, and whether that might possibly be a very bad idea? NIOSH is kind of like the research arm of OSHA. They also provide fund- ing to universities for training. They develop what they call ed- ucational resource centers. Those would be eliminated. NIOSH performs a very important func- tion. OSHA does not really con- duct research. NIOSH conducts all the major research on occupa- tional safety and heath issues, particularly in areas where OSHA doesn’t regulate yet. It could be musculoskeletal disor- ders, workplace violence, stress, hazards that affect workers. What are some other patterns you’re seeing with the Trump Administration on worker health and safety? At the begin- ning they basically stopped issu- ing press releases on large en- forcement cases. In our admin- istration, we had come under quite a bit of criticism for issuing press releases that allegedly shamed employers. Needless to say, the Obama Administration did not invent the press release, nor did we invent harsh language to use in a press release. But nev- ertheless they loved to criticize us for, again, “shaming” employers. which we didn’t expressly deny. We had a number of company at- torneys tell us that a lot of medium-sized and large employ- ers don’t really care about OSHA’s penalties — they’re too low to actually care about. But they care a lot about being named in an OSHA press release. They don’t like their reputation be- smirched. So these companies are asking their attorneys for ad- vice about how to stay out of an OSHA press release, and the at- torneys are saying, “Just make your workplace safe so you don’t get cited.” If that’s the result of our press release, then I’d say, “Mission accomplished.” OSHA has now resumed issuing press releases. We’re not quite sure what criteria they’re using. But they seem to have realized there’s some value in issuing press re- leases. I understand there’s also been steps taken to stop progress on new OSHA rules. There’s a whole list of them — com- bustible dust, styrene, noise in construction … can you speak to that? Yeah, first, in the early days of the administration, Trump issued the so-called “one in, two out” executive order re- quiring agencies to repeal two regulations for every one they added. So when you add to that the fact that Republican adminis- trations, whether Trump or previ- ously the Bush Administration, don’t like regulations at all, we didn’t have too much hope there was going to be a whole lot of regulatory activity in this admin- istration. On top of that, OMB [the White House Office of Man- agement and Budget] issues its Turn to Page 11
