Workers’ Memorial Day: OSHA’s Michaels Testifies Before the Senate

http://ehstoday.com/standards/osha/workers-memorial-day-michaels-testifies-senate-5408/

Apr 28, 2010 4:06 PM, By Laura Walter

On the eve of Workers’ Memorial Day, OSHA Administrator David Michaels testified at a Senate hearing, where he stressed that the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act must be updated in order to better protect American workers from injuries and death.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing addressed mine safety in response to the recent Upper Big Branch Mine tragedy, which left 29 coal miners dead, as well as occupational safety in general.

“We must think seriously and act courageously to ensure that OSHA has the tools it needs to enforce safe working conditions,” Michaels said in his testimony. “Good jobs are safe jobs, and American workers still face unacceptable hazards.”

According to Michaels, too often, employers compare the benefits of not complying with safety laws to the costs of complying; if compliance costs outweigh the penalties for breaking the law, they “opt to gamble with their workers’ lives.”

In his written testimony, Michaels called this a ‘catch me if you can’ approach to safety and health – an approach Michaels said was apparent in the Upper Big Branch tragedy and “what we at OSHA see far too often in the workplaces we visit.”

The OSH Act and PAWA

For OSHA to accomplish its mission of protecting workers, Michaels said “major changes” must be made to the OSH Act, which has not been significantly modified in its nearly 40-year history. He discussed the proposed Injury and Illness Prevention Program that was introduced April 26 in the agency’s regulatory agenda and would require employers to create and implement a plan for identifying and remediating hazards. Michaels called this proposal a common sense rule that would ask employers to “Find and Fix” workplace safety and health hazards.

In addition, Michaels called attention to OSHA’s new initiative to modify outdated penalty formulas to raise penalties, as well as the new Severe Violators Enforcement Program, which would focus on “repeatedly recalcitrant employers.”

FULL story at link.

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