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two regulations repealed shortly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regulations were repealed by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
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