Poor Stallman

[2/2] >>449 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#21_October_2020_(OSHA) -- How [the wrecker] Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules. -- https://theintercept.com/2020/10/20/trump-osha-workplace-safety-covid/ -- How Trump Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules -- October 20 2020 -- Trump’s attack on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has left workers vulnerable to Covid-19.

“Employers now know that the likelihood of OSHA catching them is extremely low,” Michaels said. “I have no doubt that some employers have decided to not record cases.” Perhaps the deadliest choice OSHA has made under Trump was to kill a yearslong effort that was underway at the agency to require hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical workplaces to prepare for a pandemic exactly like the one we are now experiencing. Michaels became head of OSHA in December 2009, the year that the H1N1 pandemic started. And it was already clear that the health crisis sparked by that airborne flu virus, which killed 12,469 people in the U.S., would not be the last. So he and his staff began what would be six years of work creating a “standard” that would prepare workplaces to prevent the spread of airborne pathogens like the coronavirus. The effort was modeled on the bloodborne standard the agency issued in 1991 during the HIV crisis, which brought about the use of safe sharps containers. Health care facilities that fail to use safe sharps containers and adhere to the other elements of the standard can be fined; as a result, the number of needlestick injuries to health care workers declined. The airborne standard, which was drafted by 2012, called for health care institutions to create plans to minimize workers’ risk from infectious airborne pathogens, a category that includes the coronavirus, and to stockpile necessary PPE to protect them in the case of an outbreak. Masks were to have been central to the preparations. “We had long discussions with CDC about the need for N95s,” Michaels said.

The standard was written to apply to hospitals and other health care facilities but would have been “expandable” to other employers, according to Michaels. Had it passed, OSHA inspectors would have been able to fine hospitals and nursing homes that hadn’t prepared for an epidemic of an infectious airborne disease by stocking masks and other PPE well before the pandemic began. Although the airborne pathogen standard was put on the regulatory agenda in 2016 and was scheduled to be issued as a proposal the following year, the agency stopped work on it when Trump took office. Health care institutions were woefully unprepared for the pandemic. More than 250,000 health care workers have been infected with the virus and at least 1,700 health care workers have died from Covid-19, according to estimates from National Nurses United. But no one knows the exact number, in part because of the poor tracking that’s followed OSHA’s loosening of the record-keeping requirements. Since January, more than 84,000 nursing home residents and staff have died, and hundreds of nursing homes have reported shortages of both PPE and staff. In the absence of a permanent standard for airborne pathogens, labor groups have called on OSHA to issue an emergency temporary standard to protect workers from Covid-19. While Virginia enacted a temporary standard in July, after agriculture and meatpacking workers petitioned the governor, and several state OSHAs are working on their own enforceable standards that will help protect workers, the federal agency has continued to refuse to issue one. Instead, some of the guidance it has issued around the pandemic, such as its instruction to distance workers six feet apart “if feasible,” has been phrased as optional. Thousands of health care workers have reported dangerous conditions to OSHA during the pandemic. Yet under Trump the agency has taken action on only a tiny fraction of those complaints. Overall, OSHA has investigated fewer than 3 percent of the 9,488 coronavirus-related complaints it has received as of October 18 during the pandemic. And the majority of those investigations did not lead to fines or citations. In her email, the Department of Labor’s Sweeney wrote that “every single complaint has been investigated.”

As of August 4, the agency had also received 1,744 complaints from whistleblowers who felt they were retaliated against at work because they raised coronavirus-related safety concerns or requested OSHA inspections, according to the National Employment Law Project — a significant increase in whistleblower complaints. Yet the agency investigated just 2 percent of those complaints. As with the complaints about coronavirus-related workplaces hazards, most of the whistleblower complaints were also dismissed or closed [ https://www.nelp.org/publication/osha-failed-protect-whistleblowers-filed-covid-retaliation-complaints/ ] without investigation. An August report from the Department of Labor’s Inspector General found that OSHA cut the staff that handles these whistleblower complaints during the pandemic, even as the number of complaints was going up. Meanwhile, entire sectors of the workforce that have been devastated by the coronavirus have not received any intervention from OSHA. More than 147,000 agricultural workers have been infected with the virus, according to Purdue University’s Food and Agriculture Vulnerability Index, yet OSHA has not cited or penalized a single farm. Nor has it issued any citations or penalties to any retail establishments, nonresidential schools, or restaurants. While Kim Cordova asked OSHA to visit workplaces owned by six major companies, the JBS plant in Greeley plant was the only one that was inspected. JBS has made some changes to protect workers, including staggering start and break times to promote physical distancing, requiring the use of masks and face shields, erecting physical barriers, and “removing vulnerable populations from our facilities with full pay and benefits,” according to the statement from company, which says that it would have made these changes without intervention from OSHA. Nevertheless, according to Cordova, conditions there remain perilous. She acknowledged that the company installed some physical barriers, but she said that there were no such barriers on the “kill” side of the plant, where the freshly slaughtered animals arrive to be processed, and that workers continue to be forced to work “elbow-to-elbow” in part because the line speed is too fast to allow them to spread out. The union confirmed that workers who were over 65 or had conditions that made them particularly susceptible to Covid-19 were allowed to stay home for a time, but said that they were asked to return to work in August. And while the company has begun screening employees on their way into work, a medical assistant hired by JBS recently reported [ https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/investigations/whistleblower-says-covid-19-screening-process-at-jbs-plant-places-employees-in-danger ] that only about half the staff was actually being screened and that she was pressured to allow employees with concerning symptoms into the plant.

The union is now struggling to address these ongoing problems, but Cordova says she has no illusions that the federal workplace safety agency can help her do it. “It was OSHA’s job to protect people,” she said, “and they didn’t.”