Northwest labor press., April 20, 2018, Page 16, Image 16

PAGE 16 | April 20, 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
... Trump record on worker safety
From Page 4
1-bromopropane, and an update
to permissible exposure limits to
hazardous substances.
Meanwhile, new rules devel-
oped during the Obama Admin-
istration have had their enforce-
ment officially delayed,
including rules on exposure to
silica and beryllium.
Putting business in charge of
regulating business
Worker safety doesn’t appear to
be a priority for the Trump Ad-
ministration. The administration
had been in office six months
before it sent anyone at all to
lead OSHA. It wasn’t until Sep-
tember 2017 that Trump an-
nounced a nominee to head the
Mine Safety and Health Admin-
istration — former coal mine
executive David Zatezalo. And
it wasn’t until the end of Octo-
ber 2017 that he announced a
nominee to head OSHA —
Scott Mugno, an executive at
FedEx who chaired the safety
policy committee at the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. Mugno
has yet to be confirmed by the
Senate.
Burying the dead — deep in
OSHA’s web site
Until the Senate confirms
Mugno, White House appointee
Loren Sweatt — a former ad-
viser to Republican members of
the House Workforce Commit-
tee — is in charge of OSHA.
Thus far, Sweatt has acted in
small, revealing, symbolic
ways. Two weeks after she took
charge of OSHA in July 2017,
the agency removed a con-
stantly-updated list of the names
and details of workers killed on
the job from the home page of
its web site, and replaced it with
a new feature: “OSHA Working
With Employers.” The agency
also took down a video on how
to file a complaint.
Trump’s worker safety wish
list: cuts to research, training,
and accident investigation
In its budget request to Con-
gress, the Trump Administration
also called for dramatic budget
cuts or the outright elimination
of several safety programs:
■ NIOSHThe National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health is part of
the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). With
1,300 employees and an annual budget of
$335 million, NIOSH is the nation’s top
source of research on work-related injury
and illness. It operates or funds research
centers and training programs around the
country, including Seattle, Portland, and
Spokane. In 2017 and again in 2018, the
Trump Administration proposed to cut the
NIOSH budget by 40 percent, to $200
million.
■ U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard
Investigation Board — an
independent federal agency with a
budget of $11 million and a staff of 42 —
investigates industrial chemical accidents.
In 2017 and again in 2018, the Trump
Administration proposed to eliminate it,
saying it duplicates work by other
agencies.
■ OSHA’s Susan Harwood Grant
program gives grants to unions, business
groups, and other nonprofits to pay for
worker safety trainings. It’s been around
almost 40 years, and its budget is $10.5
million a year. In Portland, it pays the Voz
Workers’ Rights Education Project to
provide a monthly worker safety training.
In Seattle, it recently paid for fall
prevention training for 550 Spanish-
speaking construction workers. A national
grant to the Laborers union has funded
training for over 7,300 mostly young,
minority, entry-level workers who work as
flaggers in dangerous highway work
zones. In 2017 and again in 2018, the
Trump Administration proposed to
eliminate the Susan Harwood grant
program. Why? The administration’s
official note to Congress says OSHA has no
evidence the program is effective, and that
it’s not clear the trainings wouldn’t
happen without federal subsidy; the
administration proposes to replace it with
unspecified training provided by OSHA
employees.
“We have to do more with
less,” Trump’s Secretary of La-
bor Alex Acosta told a Congres-
sional committee last June about
the proposed cuts to safety pro-
grams. [This is the same admin-
istration that asked the Pentagon
to do less with more — boosting
military spending $80 billion
while drawing down troops in
Iraq — and that signed a set of
tax cuts that will cost the federal
treasury $2.3 trillion over the
next 10 years.]
The Republican-led Congress
rejected the Trump Administra-
tion’s proposed cuts to worker
safety budgets, and instead
passed omnibus budget bills in
2017 and 2018 that froze federal
workplace safety budgets at
their previous levels.
America’s most
dangerous jobs
(most fatal injuries per
100,000 workers)
#1 Loggers 135.9
#2 Fishing workers 86.0
#3 Aircraft pilots 55.5
#4 Roofers 48.6
#5 Garbage/recycling collectors
34.1
#6 Structural iron and steel
workers 25.1
#7 Truck drivers 24.7
#8 Farmers/ranchers 23.1
#9 Construction foremen 18.0
#10 Landscapers 17.4
Figures are deaths per 100,000 full-
time equivalent workers, according to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Census of
Fatal Occupational Injuries for 2016,
the most recent year for which
statistics are available.