Are You Ready for What's Coming?

By all estimations, interesting times lie ahead as the Obama administration gets serious about its occupational safety and health agenda. Gone, it seems, are the emphases on alliances and consultations, set aside in favor of an increased focus on enforcement and higher fines.

Here we are only six months into the Obama administration, and already we have seen:

• A national emphasis program on combustible dust that names the recycling industry, among others, one of their targets for enforcement action;

• A national emphasis program on record keeping that is built on the administration's suspicions that occupational illnesses and injuries are on the order of three times greater than are shown by current reporting criteria;

• A regional emphasis program in OSHA's Region IV (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) to focus "on health hazards related to operations involving scrap and waste materials, including recycling/reclaim facilities";

• A budget that includes hiring 160 new OSHA compliance officers in the coming year.

The above are likely only the beginning. The Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA), about which I wrote a few months ago, still has a strong pulse. This is the legislation that would raise fines dramatically across the board and would elevate certain willful violations of the OSHA standards from misdemeanors to felonies, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

It's interesting to note that the last time PAWA wandered through Congress, its cosponsors included then-Rep. (now Labor Secretary) Hilda Solis, and then-Sen. (now President) Barack Obama. On the senate side, the name at the top of the sponsors' list was Edward Kennedy, the ailing elder of the Democratic Party. In fact, according to my attorney friend, the phrase, "Sen. Kennedy's legacy" has been invoked repeatedly in association with PAWA.

Thus far, however, no one has reintroduced the Protecting America's Workers Act, and experience teaches that what looks to be a "sure thing" in Washington never is until the ink is actually on the paper. Maybe the new regulations will never make it to the floor.

Just for the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that the future is here, and OSHA regulations have been installed with a new set of teeth. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? The first reaction, I think—the knee-jerk reaction—is to think negatively. There's enough regulation in our lives, thank you very much; who needs more? The mind conjures squadrons of compliance officers flooding our workplaces and sticking their noses into operations they don't understand while insisting that the impossible be accomplished.

That's the panic response. A more reasoned fantasy could be that of workers who otherwise might have been injured or killed at work returning home to their families at night.

It seems to me that fears of new regulation reflect a number of emotions that really don't have all that much to do with the nature of the subject being regulated. First, there's the annoyance factor-the reams of paper and hours of time necessary to turn regulations into reality. When you're already working 12 hours a day, even another 15 minutes can seem like a lot of time.

Then there's the "gotcha" factor that's attendant to all unannounced inspections, whether by OSHA, EPA, or the IRS. The truism goes, everybody's doing something wrong if you look hard enough for it, and it's hard to admire the guy whose job it is to dig that deeply.

Okay, fine. Human nature is human nature. But we're being unfair if we don't consider the opposite side of the equation, as well. Let's begin with the foundation upon which OSHA regulations are built: to ensure a safe and healthful workplace for every American worker. I personally don't believe that increased regulation ever leads to better safety cultures, but if fears of bankrupting fines and long jail terms make people do the right things for the wrong reasons, I can't argue with the results.

Let's also consider the fact that OSHA's General Industry Standards will celebrate their 40th anniversary next year. That's two-fifths of a century. Twenty Congresses. Eight presidencies. I was in sixth grade. We're talking a long time. So if, after all that time, the requirements of OSHA remain unfamiliar to slices of an industrial sector, mightn't that be prima facie evidence that increased enforcement is overdue?

Forgive me for over-simplifying what I know can be a very complicated chore, but the best bulwarks to defend oneself against the imagined squadrons of enforcers are built of simple acceptance and cooperation. Maybe we should just try compliance.

If you haven't already availed yourself of ISRI Safety's slate of outreach programs, I suggest that now might be a good time to do so. Our ISRI Safety Blueprint, OSHA 10-Hour Training, and Transportation Ride-Along programs are all available free of charge to any Safety Pledge-signing ISRI member.

Although it seems nearly certain that a new day of enforcement is coming, it's equally certain that ISRI Safety will do everything we can to help you meet the challenges.

—John Gilstrap,
Director of Safety