Poor Stallman

[1/2] 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.

The coronavirus had already begun tearing through the JBS Foods beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, when Kim Cordova wrote to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late March. Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, asked the federal agency to send inspectors to that plant, where 3,000 members of the union work, as well as to five other businesses where members of the local work. Many of the JBS workers, who cut, process, and package the meat from the newly slaughtered animals, had begun to fall sick with Covid-19. Yet JBS hadn’t provided the workers with masks and in some cases had advised specifically against wearing them, according to Cordova. The workers didn’t have enough room to distance themselves from their co-workers in the cafeteria, the locker rooms, or elsewhere around the plant. Although Cordova had been in direct communication with the management at JBS about the health hazards at the plant, the largest of its kind in the country, talks had recently hit a wall. A few days later, Cordova received a call from OSHA letting her know that help was not on the way. “He said they didn’t have the staff and they weren’t doing any on-site visits. They just didn’t have any direction,” she recalled. “And I told them, people are going to die in this facility.” Cordova’s prediction proved true on April 7, when Saul Sanchez, a 78-year-old production worker became the first worker at JBS Greeley to die of Covid-19. Eventually five of his co-workers — Eduardo Conchas De La Cruz, Way Ler, Daniel Avila Loma, Tibursio Rivera Lopez, and Tin Aye — also died of the disease, as well as a seventh employee, whom JBS identified as “one of our corporate colleagues.” So far, at least 292 workers at the plant have been infected with the virus, and 51 workers have been hospitalized with Covid-19. Cordova said she knows of at least three family members of JBS Greeley workers who also died as a result of the outbreak. On May 14, OSHA finally sent an inspector to the beef plant. But according to Cordova, the visit was brief. “They did a quick walk-through, more like a run-through,” she said. Although the union suggested that OSHA interview workers who had been sick with Covid-19, the inspectors declined to do so. “I understand that you can’t talk to the workers who are dead,” Cordova said. “But what about the ones who almost died?” And while the local offered interpreters so the inspectors could communicate with the workers, who speak dozens of languages, Cordova said the OSHA representatives declined.

Problems at the plant persisted after the visit, and the union filed a formal complaint with OSHA in July. On September 11, the agency issued a citation to JBS, finding that “the employer did not furnish employment or a place of employment which were free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees.” For this “serious violation” of the law as well as one “other-than-serious” violation, OSHA issued a fine: $15,615. JBS, the biggest meat processing company in the world, with more than $51 billion in revenue last year, refused to pay the fine. In an emailed statement, Cameron Bruett, head of corporate affairs for JBS USA, wrote “the OSHA citation is entirely without merit. It attempts to impose a standard that did not exist in March as we fought the pandemic with no guidance. When OSHA finally provided guidance in late April, one month after the beginning of the citation time period, our previously implemented preventive measures largely exceeded any of their recommendations.” While more than 1,000 meatpacking, food-processing, and farming facilities have reported cases of Covid-19, resulting in 269 deaths as of October 15, according to Food and Environment Reporting Network [ https://thefern.org/2020/04/mapping-covid-19-in-meat-and-food-processing-plants/ ], OSHA cites only two: JBS and Smithfield Foods. Smithfield, which operates a pork-processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where at least 1,294 employees contracted the virus and four died of Covid-19, was hit with an even smaller fine than JBS: just $13,494, or about $10 for each worker at the plant who fell sick. Smithfield, which is owned by the WH Group, the largest pork company in the world with more than $25 billion in revenue last year, also refused to pay the fine and is contesting its OSHA citation.

In an emailed statement, Keira Lombardo, executive vice president of corporate affairs and compliance at Smithfield, described the OSHA citation as “wholly without merit.” The statement also said that the company “took extraordinary measures on our own initiative to keep our employees as healthy and safe as possible so that we could fulfill our obligation to the American people to maintain the food supply. OSHA then used what we had done as a model for its April 26 guidance. We have incurred incremental expenses related to COVID-19 totaling more than $500 million to date.” In an emailed response to questions about JBS, Department of Labor spokesperson Megan Sweeney said that the Department of Labor does not comment on pending litigation. OSHA was founded in 1971 to protect Americans from industrial accidents, poor ventilation, fires, and many other perils of the workplace. And while it has been hobbled by insufficient funding and staffing at various points over the years, the agency has reached its weakest state during the current pandemic, when the nation needs it most. Under Donald Trump, while a deadly disease has been spreading through America’s workplaces, OSHA has had fewer inspectors than at any point since the 1970s. The International Labor Organization recommends having one labor inspector for every 10,000 people; the U.S. now has one for every 83,207. Meanwhile, Trump has tried to slash OSHA’s funding in every one of his budget proposals (Congress has repeatedly restored it) and has never bothered to nominate a leader for the agency. Almost half the senior positions at OSHA remain vacant.

Without an assistant secretary of labor to guide the agency, the direction of OSHA has fallen to the Secretary of Labor, Eugene Scalia, the son of the late conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. Eugene Scalia, an attorney who replaced Alexander Acosta after he stepped down amid the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, may be best known for attacking worker protections [ https://www.epi.org/blog/why-eugene-scalia-is-the-wrong-person-for-the-job/ ], including a rule that would have prevented 600,000 repetitive strain injuries each year. During the pandemic, while masks have been essential in protecting workers from infection, the labor secretary has repeatedly appeared in public without a mask. Scalia and his wife, Trish, also attended and did not wear a mask at the superspreader event at the White House in September; she later tested positive for Covid-19. Asked about Scalia’s failure to use of face masks, the Department of Labor’s Sweeney wrote in an email to The Intercept, “Secretary Scalia follows the latest recommendations from health experts and medical professionals, including social distancing and wearing a mask where social distancing or other precautions are not able to be taken.” Sweeney also wrote that, “Since February 1, 2020, OSHA inspections alone have helped to ensure more than 634,000 workers are protected from COVID-19. The claim that OSHA is not enforcing its standards and the OSH Act with respect to COVID-19 is patently false.” Fines for serious occupational violations doubled under the Obama administration, but they have fallen since Trump took office to the point of being meaningless. OSHA recently touted the fact that it has levied $1,222,156 in what it refers to as “proposed penalties” to 85 establishments for “coronavirus violations.” But that averages out to less than $15,000 each, a trivial amount for many large companies.

“OSHA was invented to ensure that workers are safe. And here you have this unprecedented crisis and OSHA has been absolutely silent,” said David Michaels, who led the agency during the Obama administration and is the longest serving assistant secretary of labor in OSHA’s history. “It’s beyond unfortunate that this country has faced a massive worker safety crisis when OSHA has no leadership and is weaker and less resourced than it has been in its history.” According to Michaels, who is now a professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the George Washington School of Public Health, OSHA could easily have levied sizable fines to the meat plants and other businesses that would actually deter the kinds of violations that are fueling the ongoing spread of the virus throughout American workplaces. “The political leadership has made the decision in each one of these inspections that OSHA will issue at most one citation for violating the general duty clause,” said Michaels, referring to the section of the Occupational Safety and Health Act that requires employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards. “That’s a choice. They could issue multiple citations at the same worksite and they could classify those violations as willful, which allows them to multiply the size of the fine by 10.” The administration made another decision that has devastated the government’s ability to respond to the pandemic. Early in 2017, Trump worked with congressional Republicans to repeal [ https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-resolution/83 ] an Obama-era OSHA rule that had required employers to maintain records of work-related illnesses. Without that rule, the agency cannot issue a citation for failure to record a Covid-19 case if more than six months has passed since the case appeared. The result has been shoddy record-keeping that’s left the country without an accurate count of workers sickened and killed by Covid-19.