The Final Call

Are worker protections under attack?

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WASHINGTON—Being an American worker can be hazardous to your health with the failure by President Donald Trump to keep promises he made as a candidate to protect workers, according to a report released by Public Citizen.

As a candidate Mr. Trump promised, “The American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them.” However, as President Trump, according to the report, he has followed the dictates of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, rolling back fundamental protections at the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).

“Trump has betrayed America’s workforce, sacrificing lives at the altar of industry profits,” said Shanna Devine, health and safety advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division and author of the report. “Shamefully, the resources the administration has used to carry out the Chamber’s anti-worker agenda could have been spent advancing lifesaving protections.” The report was released Aug. 30.

It details how the Trump administration has delayed and rolled back long-awaited regulations, including protections against cancer-causing beryllium. It also has thrown OSHA into a staffing crisis, cutback on workplace inspections in underserved states, hampered enforcement activity and jettisoned critical federal advisory committees.

“The administration has scuttled or weakened several standards that help the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) protect workers. These were purely commonsense measures. One ensured that businesses could be fined for failing to record employees’ injuries as required by law. Another required employers to transmit to OSHA records of their employees’ injuries and illnesses, and would have allowed for non-personally identifying data to be posted on the web.”

OSHA is an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor. Its responsibilities includes insuring the safety and security of working conditions through regulations, training and outreach.

“Meanwhile, the administration has eroded a long-awaited rule to protect workers from beryllium, a cancer-causing toxic metal. Perhaps most outrageous of all, it worked to undo a requirement that employers comply with safety requirements as a condition for receiving federal contracts,” noted the report.

The report points out that there are many hazards that OSHA could address if the administration were not so intent on dismantling the regulatory system. For instance, it could protect workers from rising temperatures, health care employees from injuries related to handling patients and meatpacking workers from excessive line speeds. OSHA has recognized each of these examples as posing threats to workers.

For Desiree Henderson (name changed) getting injured on the job was her worst nightmare.  “I had just started as a bus driver.  I was putting a bike on the rack when I dislocated my shoulder,” she told The Final Call.  Luckily, she had great worker’s compensation and a union that backed her up.  For more than a month she was off work.  Her story is the good news of what can happen to the American worker if injured or incapacitated on the job.

For too many others the news is bad.  The report concludes that there are many priorities OSHA could undertake if it were dedicated to protecting workers rather than ingratiating itself to businesses.

Health care workers, for instance, suffer more injuries requiring time away from work than employees of any other industry. Solutions are available, and providers that have implemented them have typically recouped their costs in about four years.

But OSHA has not taken action according to the report.  Poultry workers, meanwhile, suffer from musculoskeletal injuries at rates several times those who work in other industries. But the poultry industry has been pressing for increasing line speeds—a leading contributor to musculoskeletal disorders—rather than addressing the epidemic of debilitating injuries.

OSHA has acknowledged those dangers but has rejected requests by worker safety advocates to slow down line speeds within slaughter plants, noted the report.