Word: osha
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...frayed system is the 21-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal body that attempts to oversee the nation's 6 million workplaces with just 1,200 inspectors -- down from a high of 1,388 in 1980. A strained operation at best, OSHA was stretched to the breaking point by Ronald Reagan, who came to office persuaded that businesses should police themselves. Under him, OSHA's budget fell one-fourth...
...OSHA has begun a turnaround under Gerard G. Scannell, a former safety chief at Johnson & Johnson who was chosen to head the agency in 1989. After years in which it rarely issued safety guidelines, OSHA has begun adopting them wholesale -- though critics complain it too often approves rules drawn up by the industries it is supposed to supervise. Scannell has also brought eye- catching fines against offenders, including $3.5 million against Arco Chemical and a record $4 million against Phillips Petroleum, after giant explosions at their plants left 40 dead. The agency "is more effective today than it has been...
...OSHA still lacks the clout to protect most American workers. By one important measure, the jobsite is safer: work-related fatalities have dropped from 12,500 ten years ago to 10,500 last year. But that is partly because there are fewer jobs these days in some of the most lethal industries, including steel, shipbuilding and logging. Meanwhile, job-related illnesses and crippling injuries are on the increase. "The walking wounded are a part of the cost of doing business," says Bruce Raynor of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union...
...Some want an independent investigative body, like the National Transportation Safety Board, with the power to examine accident sites and set in motion industry-wide changes to save lives in the future. Another proposal in the Ford bill is more to their liking. It would make it easier for OSHA to bring criminal charges against individual employers who are repeat offenders. "Everyone knows that the subway worker who killed five people in New York was indicted for murder," says Joseph A. Kinney, executive director of National Safe Workplace Institute in Chicago. "When are we going to be asking for indictments...
...didn't feel we needed to make an inspection," said John V. DiRienzo, an OSHA safety complaints officer."It is probably something that has to do withdrains backing up in bathrooms. It should behandled by University maintenance...