OSHA Complaints and Shortfalls

 #The New Yorker, October 26, 2020.

"Under Alex Acosta, the Labor Department eliminated some Obama-era rules, but hard-liners such as Mick Mulvaney, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, were dissatisfied with the pace of change." Several sources said that when the 'Miami Herald' revealed Acosta's favorable plea deal with Epstein, the furor served as an excuse to fire Acosta. Mick Geale, Acosta's chief of staff, was also fired. 

As of early October, "OSHA has received more than 10,000 complaints alleging unsafe conditions related to the coronavirus. It has issued just two citations under the General Duty Clause."  

"OSHA has also reduced its personnel. According to a report published in April by the National Employment Law Project, which drew on data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, OSHA hasn't had so few inspectors in forty-five years. And forty-two per cent of the agency's leadership positions, including that of the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health are vacant."

Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia has written articles disparaging unions. "In a 2000 op-ed for the 'Wall Street Journal', he depicted OSHA's proposed ergonomics regulations [as forcing] companies to give more rest periods, slow the pace of work, and then hire more workers ( read: dues-paying members)." "In a speech last November before the Federalist Society, the conservative legal association, he [Scalia] boasted that the Trump administration had 'cut at least eight regulations for every one added.' " 

"On October 5th, the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies released a working paper that examined why the per capita mortality rate from COVID-19 is five times higher in America than it is in Germany. The paper found a correlation between complaints to OSHA in various regions of the country, and local spikes in mortality roughly seventeen days later." "In failing to safeguard these workers, the Labor Department has signaled that their lives don't matter as much as those of desk workers in whiter, more rarefied professions." "Under Scalia's rule, employees can be denied paid sick leave if their employers determine that they do not 'need' them to work; no documentation is required to justify an employer's decision."

"A survey conducted in May by the National Employment Law Project revealed that one in eight workers 'has perceived possible retaliatory actions by employers against workers in their company who have raised health and safety concerns.' The survey found that Black workers were more than twice as likely as white workers to have witnessed such retaliation. Three months later, an audit by the inspector general revealed that this was false: even as whistle-blower complaints have surged during the pandemic, the agency has left five whistle-bower positions vacant, inhibiting OSHA's ability to handle the caseload." "This outcome doesn't surprise Barbara Roper, the director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. 'The Secretary of Labor' she suggests, 'has, in effect, become the Secretary of Employers.' She observed 'Secretary Scalia's former clients should be very happy with him.' " 

Getting back to President Obama's Genera Duty Clause, it was designed to shine a light on companies that behaved recklessly. "According to Matthew Johnson, a Duke economist, and the author of 'Regulation by Shaming,' a study of the policy's deterrent effects, such messages targeted at local media and trade publications led to a thirty per cent reduction in violations at nearby facilities in the same industry."  

#Katha Pollitt, "Getting  Out of Court," The Nation, November 2-9, 2020.

Katha Pollitt opines that "the politically clever thing to do" would be to leave 'Roe v. Wade' "technically in force while approving every restriction that crosses their desks." She adds that "there are too many things for them to like about Republicans: white supremacy, anti-intellectualism, superpatriotism, machismo, gun rights, and let's not forget taking away people's health care, including their own." "However, as Joan C. Williams, writer of the New York Times' opinion piece, 'The Case for Accepting Defeat on Roe,' acknowledges, most women who have abortions are already mothers and are poor (they are also disproportionately Black,) although she doesn't mention that, -- hardly the privileged careerists of popular fantasy."