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What Obama Isn't Telling American Workers, By Shamus Cooke, October 11, 2009
What Obama Isn't Telling American Workers, By Shamus Cooke, October 11, 2009
A lot is happening in the tumultuous realm of global economics. The “Great Recession” has caused tectonic shifts internationally, with outcomes that will dramatically change the lives of millions of people in the U.S. and beyond. And while Obama is acknowledging this fact with repeated references to “a new world order,” he isn’t explaining how this adversely affects working-class Americans. The truth would be far too “controversial.”
The first unmentionable fact is the inevitable, long-term decline of the dollar, a phenomenon that can now be considered government policy. The business magazine Forbes comments:
“The Treasury Department would never admit this, but for the time being it's in the country's interest to keep its currency low because it stimulates exports for the economy's manufacturing base and lowers the value of the debt that the Treasury is piling up.” (October 5, 2009)
These policies are essentially economic attacks on foreign corporations and governments, and U.S. workers.
A cheaper dollar means an off-shoring of America’s debt onto countries like China and Japan — and foreign corporations, who are large buyers of U.S. currency and/or debt. These foreign entities have already issued public warnings about this dynamic and will not sit forever as their investments turn to mush. Economic retaliation should be expected.
A cheaper dollar also antagonizes foreign corporations in another way. U.S. corporations benefit from dollar deflation because it lowers the price of their goods/exports on the global marketplace. But foreign competitors can play this game too, and the result would be economic warfare.
Most importantly, a cheaper dollar lowers the living standards of U.S. workers, since the price of foreign goods will become inflated. With a catastrophic U.S. debt, inflation will continue for years to come. Obama’s silence on the issue equals a premeditated plan to pursue the above objectives. Workers will thus be forced into demanding wage increases that match this new inflation.
Another big secret Obama is keeping from workers is also U.S. debt related (keep in mind much of U.S debt is the result of fighting foreign wars and bailing out banks). Under Obama these policies will continue; “sacrifices” are going to be made in other areas. Obama has already talked at length in favor of “reforming entitlement programs,” without mentioning loudly that these include Social Security, Medicare, and other valuable and much needed social programs. The Democrats' priorities are perverse; money for war and banks, but not for those who really need it.
Obama’s secrets were partially revealed at the recent G-20 summit. There, Obama pushed a plan that aimed “to reform the global architecture to meet the needs of the 21st century.” Part of the plan said that “G-20 members with sustained, significant external deficits [the U.S.] pledge to undertake policies to support private savings and undertake fiscal consolidation while maintaining open markets and strengthening export sectors.”
In plain English this means that the U.S. will reduce its debt by slashing domestic consumption and increasing exports. “Slashing domestic consumption” is another often-used codeword for lowering the standard of living of U.S. workers through lower wages and the elimination of “entitlement programs.” Once workers' wages have been reduced low enough, U.S. corporations will be able to export more on the global marketplace, the other key to Obama’s G-20 plan.
These plans are not mere schemes for conspiracy theorists; they’re already being implemented. Massive unemployment has a direct, negative impact on workers' wages. The Democrats know this and are using it as a tool to enforce the pro-corporate G -20 policy. What else explains the deafening quiet from Obama around unemployment — already a social catastrophe ruining the lives of millions of people?
Another way the G-20 plan is already being enforced is by the restriction of credit for workers and small businesses. A recent Forbes article was titled, "The ‘Democratization of Credit' Is Over — Now It's Payback Time." (October 10, 2009) The “democratization of credit” simply means that workers and low-income people had access to credit if they needed it. No more. Credit that was once used to cover end-of-the-month expenses and emergencies will once again be a privilege of the highly paid and wealthy.
Workers must understand that the current effects of the Great Recession are to become the new rules of the “reformed” U.S. economy. The living standards of the past are to stay in the past. Before, U.S. workers took out enormous amounts of debt to maintain their standard of living, since wages and benefits were steadily shrinking. The hope was that the economy would improve, and better times would return. The reality is far different.
The U.S. economy is losing its place of total dominance in world affairs. And instead of the U.S. government reacting to this by adding social programs, they are taking them away. Government money will continue to bail out banks when needed while funding trillion-dollar wars.
Once the reality of the above situation can no longer be denied and is recognized by U.S. workers as simply a corporate and government attack on their collective standard of living simply for the sake of profits, they can begin to act. Workers without unions will fight to organize them. Those organized workers will push their unions to fight back by building united coalitions — representing the majority of working people — to organize massive demonstrations, protests, and strikes to demand a recovery plan to benefit the vast majority and not the wealthy minority. The conditions that led to the large U.S. workers' struggles of the 1930s and 40s are reappearing, and workers will act accordingly.
About the Author: Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action.
Other recent articles about the economy, from a working class point of view
Shared via AddThis
A lot is happening in the tumultuous realm of global economics. The “Great Recession” has caused tectonic shifts internationally, with outcomes that will dramatically change the lives of millions of people in the U.S. and beyond. And while Obama is acknowledging this fact with repeated references to “a new world order,” he isn’t explaining how this adversely affects working-class Americans. The truth would be far too “controversial.”
The first unmentionable fact is the inevitable, long-term decline of the dollar, a phenomenon that can now be considered government policy. The business magazine Forbes comments:
“The Treasury Department would never admit this, but for the time being it's in the country's interest to keep its currency low because it stimulates exports for the economy's manufacturing base and lowers the value of the debt that the Treasury is piling up.” (October 5, 2009)
These policies are essentially economic attacks on foreign corporations and governments, and U.S. workers.
A cheaper dollar means an off-shoring of America’s debt onto countries like China and Japan — and foreign corporations, who are large buyers of U.S. currency and/or debt. These foreign entities have already issued public warnings about this dynamic and will not sit forever as their investments turn to mush. Economic retaliation should be expected.
A cheaper dollar also antagonizes foreign corporations in another way. U.S. corporations benefit from dollar deflation because it lowers the price of their goods/exports on the global marketplace. But foreign competitors can play this game too, and the result would be economic warfare.
Most importantly, a cheaper dollar lowers the living standards of U.S. workers, since the price of foreign goods will become inflated. With a catastrophic U.S. debt, inflation will continue for years to come. Obama’s silence on the issue equals a premeditated plan to pursue the above objectives. Workers will thus be forced into demanding wage increases that match this new inflation.
Another big secret Obama is keeping from workers is also U.S. debt related (keep in mind much of U.S debt is the result of fighting foreign wars and bailing out banks). Under Obama these policies will continue; “sacrifices” are going to be made in other areas. Obama has already talked at length in favor of “reforming entitlement programs,” without mentioning loudly that these include Social Security, Medicare, and other valuable and much needed social programs. The Democrats' priorities are perverse; money for war and banks, but not for those who really need it.
Obama’s secrets were partially revealed at the recent G-20 summit. There, Obama pushed a plan that aimed “to reform the global architecture to meet the needs of the 21st century.” Part of the plan said that “G-20 members with sustained, significant external deficits [the U.S.] pledge to undertake policies to support private savings and undertake fiscal consolidation while maintaining open markets and strengthening export sectors.”
In plain English this means that the U.S. will reduce its debt by slashing domestic consumption and increasing exports. “Slashing domestic consumption” is another often-used codeword for lowering the standard of living of U.S. workers through lower wages and the elimination of “entitlement programs.” Once workers' wages have been reduced low enough, U.S. corporations will be able to export more on the global marketplace, the other key to Obama’s G-20 plan.
These plans are not mere schemes for conspiracy theorists; they’re already being implemented. Massive unemployment has a direct, negative impact on workers' wages. The Democrats know this and are using it as a tool to enforce the pro-corporate G -20 policy. What else explains the deafening quiet from Obama around unemployment — already a social catastrophe ruining the lives of millions of people?
Another way the G-20 plan is already being enforced is by the restriction of credit for workers and small businesses. A recent Forbes article was titled, "The ‘Democratization of Credit' Is Over — Now It's Payback Time." (October 10, 2009) The “democratization of credit” simply means that workers and low-income people had access to credit if they needed it. No more. Credit that was once used to cover end-of-the-month expenses and emergencies will once again be a privilege of the highly paid and wealthy.
Workers must understand that the current effects of the Great Recession are to become the new rules of the “reformed” U.S. economy. The living standards of the past are to stay in the past. Before, U.S. workers took out enormous amounts of debt to maintain their standard of living, since wages and benefits were steadily shrinking. The hope was that the economy would improve, and better times would return. The reality is far different.
The U.S. economy is losing its place of total dominance in world affairs. And instead of the U.S. government reacting to this by adding social programs, they are taking them away. Government money will continue to bail out banks when needed while funding trillion-dollar wars.
Once the reality of the above situation can no longer be denied and is recognized by U.S. workers as simply a corporate and government attack on their collective standard of living simply for the sake of profits, they can begin to act. Workers without unions will fight to organize them. Those organized workers will push their unions to fight back by building united coalitions — representing the majority of working people — to organize massive demonstrations, protests, and strikes to demand a recovery plan to benefit the vast majority and not the wealthy minority. The conditions that led to the large U.S. workers' struggles of the 1930s and 40s are reappearing, and workers will act accordingly.
About the Author: Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action.
Other recent articles about the economy, from a working class point of view
Shared via AddThis
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
: Information Clearing House - ICH
Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude
By Mike Konczal
October 13, 2009 "The Atlantic" -- The Wall Street Journal ran a post over the weekend about a new credit crunch among low income borrowers, noting it is now 'payback time.' What they didn't go into is that their primary interviewee is drowning not on expensive cars loans but student loans. This former student's debt is far from extraordinary. It is, in fact, tragically ordinary, as student loans have become the 21st century version of indentured servitude.
From The Wall Street Journal, The 'Democratization of Credit' Is Over -- Now It's Payback Time. Check out the lead:
NEW YORK -- Karen King owes nearly $36,000, more than she's ever earned in a year.
All day long, bill collectors call. She hunts for a second job, sometimes skips meals, and stays with other family members at a grandfather's crowded apartment, trying to get out of debt and turn her life around.
She largely holds herself at fault. "Years ago, I lived for now. It was so stupid," the 28-year-old says. "It's depressing, but I can't live that life anymore." Now, she says, "I basically want to live for the future."
Now go about halfway through.
Her biggest chunk of debt, $26,000, stems from student loans to pay for her two-year associate's degree from a community college -- loans now in the hands of collectors. The remaining $10,000 or so includes old credit-card balances, debt to a store that rents furniture, utility bills and back taxes. Another obligation is $400 a month she contributes to the rent on her grandfather's two-bedroom apartment, where her mother, uncle and sister also live.
Rolfe Winkler caught this too. In addition to pointing out how the current recession is focused in large part on men, it's also worthwhile to note that the current recession is devastating the young. Here's BusinessWeek on "The Lost Generation."
But let's go back to the person in question here: How should we judge this young person profiled in the Wall Street Journal? Is going into a large debt load to pay for college the post-Risk-Shift American Dream? Or is it a form of Living For Now, and being irresponsible and short-sited? According to FinAid.org, the average cumulative debt among graduating seniors is about $22,500. She's ahead of that ($26K/2 years), but what is an acceptable amount of debt to carry to educate yourself? As as Krugman notes, education is a key to our country's successes. Why should we think of her as irresponsible, instead of someone rationally going into debt peonage, like a 17th century indentured servant, in order to take a small shot at bettering oneself - the new middle class dream?
The New Indentured Servitude
Jeffrey Williams, in Dissent Magazine, wrote Student Debt and The Spirit of Indenture, provocatively referred to student loans as the new form of indentured servitude.
Why is this the new form of indentured servitude? Williams gives some reasons: The prevalence of this debt, especially among the young and the poor/working classes, the transformation from a rounding error amount to a significant burden amount over the past 30 years, the length of term, the idea of mobility and "transport" to a job, debt secured not by property but by personhood, and limited legal recourse. All these characteristics are similar. The limited legal recourse is noteworthy here, since unlike most debt, it isn't dischargeable under bankruptcy, thus it doesn't have a natural protection for the consumer receiving credit (a protection, the original synthetic put option, that our Founders were aware of enough to make sure it was provisioned for in the Constitution).
This is not to soft-peddle indentured servitude. Indentured servitude was a violent contract, with physical torture used to coerce labor. As economist DW Galenson noted, "The Company clearly felt that [beaten workers running away] threatened the continued survival of their enterprise, for they reacted forcefully to this crime. In 1612, the colony's governor dealt firmly with some recaptured laborers: 'Some he apointed to be hanged. Some burned. Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shott to death.'" But let's put on our Galenson Economic Historian googles and think of it as an economic efficiency problem. Indentured servitude, like student loans, are a form of consumption smoothing. And one thing that is needed for consumptions smoothing is good information about the future.
Learning Your Earning
Here's a graph from University of Minnesota macroeconomist Fatih Guvenen's Learning Your Earnings:
Think of these two lines as a dial between perfect knowledge and no knowledge. In this model, a consumer who knows what he'll make over his or her life will consumption smooth (perfect, or 'full', knowledge, flat consumption line); one who is uncertain about what will happen next will rationally not. So if you know exactly how much you'll be making in the future, large loans aren't really a problem.
Now we are currently asking children, 17, 18 or 19 years old, to try and assess how much of a student loan debt burden they can handle vis-a-vis their future income over their entire lives. But, especially compared to their grandparents, uncertainty is so much greater now. The consumption smoothing line invokes a world where everyone with a college degree will get a stable, solid job with certainty (and your employer will, of course, pick up the health care tab).
The person in the Wall Street Journal article almost certainly had no realistic idea for what would be awaiting her on the other side of the associate's degree, and she misjudged this terribly. And, from an efficiency point of view, it's what makes this more perverse than the indentured servitude contract - people under indentured servitude had the job waiting for them. The clock was ticking for the firms who had set up the contract, and they needed to get their value. With student loans, they can sit there for decades, never dischargeable, always getting paid regardless of recession or job market.
Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude
By Mike Konczal
October 13, 2009 "The Atlantic" -- The Wall Street Journal ran a post over the weekend about a new credit crunch among low income borrowers, noting it is now 'payback time.' What they didn't go into is that their primary interviewee is drowning not on expensive cars loans but student loans. This former student's debt is far from extraordinary. It is, in fact, tragically ordinary, as student loans have become the 21st century version of indentured servitude.
From The Wall Street Journal, The 'Democratization of Credit' Is Over -- Now It's Payback Time. Check out the lead:
NEW YORK -- Karen King owes nearly $36,000, more than she's ever earned in a year.
All day long, bill collectors call. She hunts for a second job, sometimes skips meals, and stays with other family members at a grandfather's crowded apartment, trying to get out of debt and turn her life around.
She largely holds herself at fault. "Years ago, I lived for now. It was so stupid," the 28-year-old says. "It's depressing, but I can't live that life anymore." Now, she says, "I basically want to live for the future."
Now go about halfway through.
Her biggest chunk of debt, $26,000, stems from student loans to pay for her two-year associate's degree from a community college -- loans now in the hands of collectors. The remaining $10,000 or so includes old credit-card balances, debt to a store that rents furniture, utility bills and back taxes. Another obligation is $400 a month she contributes to the rent on her grandfather's two-bedroom apartment, where her mother, uncle and sister also live.
Rolfe Winkler caught this too. In addition to pointing out how the current recession is focused in large part on men, it's also worthwhile to note that the current recession is devastating the young. Here's BusinessWeek on "The Lost Generation."
But let's go back to the person in question here: How should we judge this young person profiled in the Wall Street Journal? Is going into a large debt load to pay for college the post-Risk-Shift American Dream? Or is it a form of Living For Now, and being irresponsible and short-sited? According to FinAid.org, the average cumulative debt among graduating seniors is about $22,500. She's ahead of that ($26K/2 years), but what is an acceptable amount of debt to carry to educate yourself? As as Krugman notes, education is a key to our country's successes. Why should we think of her as irresponsible, instead of someone rationally going into debt peonage, like a 17th century indentured servant, in order to take a small shot at bettering oneself - the new middle class dream?
The New Indentured Servitude
Jeffrey Williams, in Dissent Magazine, wrote Student Debt and The Spirit of Indenture, provocatively referred to student loans as the new form of indentured servitude.
Why is this the new form of indentured servitude? Williams gives some reasons: The prevalence of this debt, especially among the young and the poor/working classes, the transformation from a rounding error amount to a significant burden amount over the past 30 years, the length of term, the idea of mobility and "transport" to a job, debt secured not by property but by personhood, and limited legal recourse. All these characteristics are similar. The limited legal recourse is noteworthy here, since unlike most debt, it isn't dischargeable under bankruptcy, thus it doesn't have a natural protection for the consumer receiving credit (a protection, the original synthetic put option, that our Founders were aware of enough to make sure it was provisioned for in the Constitution).
This is not to soft-peddle indentured servitude. Indentured servitude was a violent contract, with physical torture used to coerce labor. As economist DW Galenson noted, "The Company clearly felt that [beaten workers running away] threatened the continued survival of their enterprise, for they reacted forcefully to this crime. In 1612, the colony's governor dealt firmly with some recaptured laborers: 'Some he apointed to be hanged. Some burned. Some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shott to death.'" But let's put on our Galenson Economic Historian googles and think of it as an economic efficiency problem. Indentured servitude, like student loans, are a form of consumption smoothing. And one thing that is needed for consumptions smoothing is good information about the future.
Learning Your Earning
Here's a graph from University of Minnesota macroeconomist Fatih Guvenen's Learning Your Earnings:
Think of these two lines as a dial between perfect knowledge and no knowledge. In this model, a consumer who knows what he'll make over his or her life will consumption smooth (perfect, or 'full', knowledge, flat consumption line); one who is uncertain about what will happen next will rationally not. So if you know exactly how much you'll be making in the future, large loans aren't really a problem.
Now we are currently asking children, 17, 18 or 19 years old, to try and assess how much of a student loan debt burden they can handle vis-a-vis their future income over their entire lives. But, especially compared to their grandparents, uncertainty is so much greater now. The consumption smoothing line invokes a world where everyone with a college degree will get a stable, solid job with certainty (and your employer will, of course, pick up the health care tab).
The person in the Wall Street Journal article almost certainly had no realistic idea for what would be awaiting her on the other side of the associate's degree, and she misjudged this terribly. And, from an efficiency point of view, it's what makes this more perverse than the indentured servitude contract - people under indentured servitude had the job waiting for them. The clock was ticking for the firms who had set up the contract, and they needed to get their value. With student loans, they can sit there for decades, never dischargeable, always getting paid regardless of recession or job market.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
----- Thank you Jordan Barab and Steve Sallman
Yesterday I attended a meeting at the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor–OSHA inWashington D.C.
Yesterday I attended a meeting at the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor–OSHA in
Sadly, the main conference room I was in had approximately 15 photos on the wall. Your brother was one of them. I took two pictures with my cell phone before leaving the room and I have attached them to my email. I hope the photos give you a feel for their size and the meaning of them on the wall (unfortunately, my pictures didn't turn out very well – Sorry).
If you would like to send
I hope that you can take comfort in this information I'm sending you – I can only imagine how hard it is for you. Please know that your strength and activism is making a difference and I encourage you to stay strong.
I look forward to seeing you again at the 2010 Workers Memorial Day Committee meeting.
Take care,
Steve Sallman
United Steelworkers
Health, Safety & Environment Department
Five
Phone: (412) 562-2590
Fax: (412) 562-2584
Email: ssallman@usw.org
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Peg Mullen, 92, Who Fanned Her Anger Over Son?s Death Into Antiwar Drive, Dies - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com
Monday, October 05, 2009
Little Has Changed To Protect Workers
Little Has Changed To Protect Workers
Little Has Changed To Protect Workers
Editorial
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Twenty months of investigations and reports on the causes of the explosions and fire at Imperial Sugar in February 2008 that took so many lives and injured many more lead to one conclusion: there is no pro-active mandatory and punishable state or federal inspection process in place to protect workers.
What occurred at Imperial Sugar, based on this week's report by the CSH, is a disgusting picture of corporate abuse of workers at its worse.
The potential for explosions and fires from industrial dust are prevalent in many Georgia plants, not just the food-processing industry, and should cause Georgia lawmakers and our congressional delegation to get aggressive in addressing the disjointed and ineffective labyrinth of regulations, directives and laws now in place.
Understanding what went wrong at Imperial Sugar begins with a fundamental understanding of who is responsible for the safety of the workplace.
The Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 states that employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthy workplace for their employees. Do the right thing appears to be the approach of our federal government, even though hundreds of lives are lost every year in industrial accidents.
OSHA's role is to promote the safety and health of America's working men and women by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual process improvement in workplace safety and health.
But is there pro-active inspection of plants to insure compliance with known industry research on workplace hazards? The answer appears to be "No."
Ask the average guy on the street what OSHA does, and you'll hear a basic belief that this federal agency goes into every U.S.manufacturing plant and inspects the plant for a number of safety issues that could affect the lives or health of workers. Not so.
As an aid to Sen. Saxby Chambliss said to me last Thursday night after the CSB's presentation in Savannah, "That would be an impossible task. We would have to have an enormous federal agency to do that."
Neither of Georgia's U.S. senators, Chambliss or Johnny Isakson, will join with Congressman John Barrow in calling for immediate changes in OSHA regulations, and needed changes. They produced a double-speak statement Thursday night, declining his invitation to sign on to legislative changes he has proposed.
Current laws require that every employer provide their workers with a place of employment that is free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm. The Department of Labor is allowed to conduct inspections and to issue citations and proposed penalties for alleged violations. The worst penalty authorized, however, is a misdemeanor....another problem in the sea of what is wrong. And inspections only take place when complaints are made.
That workers have to complain...forced to regulate their employers...appears to be the approach of current OSHA regulations. Or the a number of workers have to be sick at a plant before an inspection takes place, it seems. Too often, workers are not going to speak up for fear of losing their jobs, of course.
On Friday morning, Feb. 9, 2008, the day after the fires broke out at Imperial Sugar, the Savannah Business Journal called the regional OSHA office located in Savannah and made a Freedom of Information request for any OHSA reports regarding Imperial Sugar and any complaints filed by workers at the plant.
We were told that there were no recent OSHA inspections. The local director explained that manufacturers file quarterly reports on worker's wellness, and unless workers are getting sick, OSHA does not inspect a plant.
The local OSHA office had, however, received a complaint from an employee at the plant in November 2007, three months before the explosion, about conditions at the plant.
OSHA is required to investigate complaints. It stated that it had done so, and there were no violations cited. It provided us with a picture that had been sent by the employee of old wooden floor beams, as one thing that the employee was concerned about.
The plant has had a number of fires over the past few years, fires that started for a number of reasons, according to the CSB, and because none of them resulted in a major explosion, and all of the fires were able to be extinquished, the company was lulled into a state of complacency.
That's another problem in the issue of industrial safety. Many of the fire protection regulations of the state and federal government are supposed to be carried out and enforced by the local fire chief. Just how do we all see that playing out in Port Wentworth?
Congressman Barrow appears to be the lone voice in Georgia seeking to force OSHA to put in place the recommendations of the CSB, made in 2006, to improve the standards for industrial dust procedures. But enforcement of standards and penalties for managers who allow workers to stand in dust inches deep is also sorely needed.
We learned this week from the CSB that a notice was sent out in October 2007, four months before the explosion at Imperial Sugar, to manufacturers emphazing the hazards of industrial dust, which was supposed to have been reviewed with workers.
Perhaps it was that directive that caused a worker at Imperial Sugar to file a complaint with OSHA. We'll never know.
Shared via AddThis
Little Has Changed To Protect Workers
Editorial
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Twenty months of investigations and reports on the causes of the explosions and fire at Imperial Sugar in February 2008 that took so many lives and injured many more lead to one conclusion: there is no pro-active mandatory and punishable state or federal inspection process in place to protect workers.
What occurred at Imperial Sugar, based on this week's report by the CSH, is a disgusting picture of corporate abuse of workers at its worse.
The potential for explosions and fires from industrial dust are prevalent in many Georgia plants, not just the food-processing industry, and should cause Georgia lawmakers and our congressional delegation to get aggressive in addressing the disjointed and ineffective labyrinth of regulations, directives and laws now in place.
Understanding what went wrong at Imperial Sugar begins with a fundamental understanding of who is responsible for the safety of the workplace.
The Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 states that employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthy workplace for their employees. Do the right thing appears to be the approach of our federal government, even though hundreds of lives are lost every year in industrial accidents.
OSHA's role is to promote the safety and health of America's working men and women by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual process improvement in workplace safety and health.
But is there pro-active inspection of plants to insure compliance with known industry research on workplace hazards? The answer appears to be "No."
Ask the average guy on the street what OSHA does, and you'll hear a basic belief that this federal agency goes into every U.S.manufacturing plant and inspects the plant for a number of safety issues that could affect the lives or health of workers. Not so.
As an aid to Sen. Saxby Chambliss said to me last Thursday night after the CSB's presentation in Savannah, "That would be an impossible task. We would have to have an enormous federal agency to do that."
Neither of Georgia's U.S. senators, Chambliss or Johnny Isakson, will join with Congressman John Barrow in calling for immediate changes in OSHA regulations, and needed changes. They produced a double-speak statement Thursday night, declining his invitation to sign on to legislative changes he has proposed.
Current laws require that every employer provide their workers with a place of employment that is free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm. The Department of Labor is allowed to conduct inspections and to issue citations and proposed penalties for alleged violations. The worst penalty authorized, however, is a misdemeanor....another problem in the sea of what is wrong. And inspections only take place when complaints are made.
That workers have to complain...forced to regulate their employers...appears to be the approach of current OSHA regulations. Or the a number of workers have to be sick at a plant before an inspection takes place, it seems. Too often, workers are not going to speak up for fear of losing their jobs, of course.
On Friday morning, Feb. 9, 2008, the day after the fires broke out at Imperial Sugar, the Savannah Business Journal called the regional OSHA office located in Savannah and made a Freedom of Information request for any OHSA reports regarding Imperial Sugar and any complaints filed by workers at the plant.
We were told that there were no recent OSHA inspections. The local director explained that manufacturers file quarterly reports on worker's wellness, and unless workers are getting sick, OSHA does not inspect a plant.
The local OSHA office had, however, received a complaint from an employee at the plant in November 2007, three months before the explosion, about conditions at the plant.
OSHA is required to investigate complaints. It stated that it had done so, and there were no violations cited. It provided us with a picture that had been sent by the employee of old wooden floor beams, as one thing that the employee was concerned about.
The plant has had a number of fires over the past few years, fires that started for a number of reasons, according to the CSB, and because none of them resulted in a major explosion, and all of the fires were able to be extinquished, the company was lulled into a state of complacency.
That's another problem in the issue of industrial safety. Many of the fire protection regulations of the state and federal government are supposed to be carried out and enforced by the local fire chief. Just how do we all see that playing out in Port Wentworth?
Congressman Barrow appears to be the lone voice in Georgia seeking to force OSHA to put in place the recommendations of the CSB, made in 2006, to improve the standards for industrial dust procedures. But enforcement of standards and penalties for managers who allow workers to stand in dust inches deep is also sorely needed.
We learned this week from the CSB that a notice was sent out in October 2007, four months before the explosion at Imperial Sugar, to manufacturers emphazing the hazards of industrial dust, which was supposed to have been reviewed with workers.
Perhaps it was that directive that caused a worker at Imperial Sugar to file a complaint with OSHA. We'll never know.
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Friday, October 02, 2009
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