OSHA’s Michaels Vows Action
Shocking Series of Worker Deaths Addressed at ASSE
BY CHRIS SANFORD
Addressing the “shocking series of
worker deaths,” in the past few months,
OSHA Administrator David Michaels,
Ph.D., quoted Mother Jones, saying,
‘mourn for the dead, but fight like hell
for the living,’ at the annual ASSE Professional
Development Conference held
in Baltimore last month.
In a plenary session, Michaels addressed
safety of workers involved in the
Gulf oil spill clean up, criminal penalties
for fatal worker injuries, ineffectiveness of
incentive safety programs, chemical standards,
distracted driving, high state and city
worker injury rates, and combustible dust
explosions.
He cited a Delaware worker who died
when he fell into a vat of acid. The employer
was slapped with a $175,000 fine.
“But what gets me,” said Michaels, is that
the company was fined $10 million dollars for the same incident for causing pollution
and killing fish and crabs. “So how do we
tell the family of this worker who died that
fish and crabs are worth more than his life?”
asked Michaels.
He said hundreds of OSHA workers
are in the Gulf helping monitor the occupational
safety and health risks for the
clean-up workers.
There are about 13,000 workers helping
with the BP oil spill clean-up. We are on
land and in boats all over the area checking
for and providing solutions to possible
harmful exposures, such as chemicals, heat
and fatigue. If we find any we tell BP and
they correct them,” Michaels said. “We’re
not there to hand out citations, but to protect
workers, prevent injuries and illnesses.”
He said, “prevention must be part of the
normal every day workplace culture,” and
“we need a modernized data collection effort” in order to mitigate “21st Century
Hazards.”
ASSE members are very appreciative of
the fact that Dr. Michaels not only listens
to our concerns and suggestions when it
comes to enhancing work safety, but also
acts. He actively reaches out to ASSE and
our members, experts in the area of occupational
safety and health, early in the
process for expertise in many areas and on
many issues,” ASSE President C. Christopher
Patton, CSP, said today after Michaels’
speech.
Michaels said the
Protect America’s Workers Act (PAW) before Congress
would provide occupational safety and health
coverage for state and local workers countrywide and
for federal workers. ASSE members and Dr. Michaels
noted that local and state workers have much higher
injury rates than the private sector.
FSM
