Synergist - August 2010

that injure, kill, or sicken workers.”
AIHA’s participation in the hearing
was a major success in two ways. “First,
it’s very rare to be asked to testify at a
full Committee hearing,” Trippler ex-
plains. “The second thing is that you had
eight witnesses testify, and AIHA was
the only one that had no political
agenda.” While representatives of labor
and industry groups staked out their po-
litical positions, Brandt explained why
Congress should increase penalties for
workplace safety violations (which De-
mocrats support) and maintain OSHA’s
Voluntary Protection Program (which
appeals to Republicans).

“We were telling them what’s right on
both sides,” Trippler says. “We came
across as more of an educational resource,
the good guys in the white hats, because
they know we’re not after anything.”
As Congressional staff drafted legisla-
tion to address mine safety, PAWA’s
prospects dimmed. According to Trippler,
“It would be almost unheard of that [Con-
gress] would pass both” a mine safety bill
and a general workplace safety bill in the
same session. AIHA and other stakehold-
ers lobbied for inclusion of PAWA’s crimi-
nal penalties provisions in the mining
bill, then crossed their fingers.

Their hopes were realized on July 1, when the Miner Safety and Health Act was introduced. The legislation includes PAWA’s provisions increasing OSHA penalties and whistleblower protections. However, the Act goes much further, expanding the rights of families of injured workers to participate in settlement hearings, and requiring employers to abate hazards even while they are contesting serious violations. Trippler says that the bill stands a reasonable chance of passage in the House, but describes its prospects in the Senate as “probably pretty dim.”

I2P2

Michaels has indicated that OSHA’s biggest priority is instituting an injury and illness prevention program (I2P2). An I2P2 rule would shift the burden of identifying workplace hazards from agency enforcement officers to employers. “We believe it should be required for employers to assess and abate hazards” in their workplaces, Michaels said at AIHce 2010 in Denver, Colo.

While many details of I2P2 have yet to be worked out, its core ideas are not

new. The often-discussed but ill-fated safety and health management system standard was a forerunner of I2P2. AIHA first expressed support for requiring employers to institute safety management systems in 1998. The rule never got off the ground at OSHA, but Trippler thinks things may be different this time.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that
it’s needed,” Trippler says of I2P2. “And
it’s very, very important to AIHA. It’s be-
coming, right behind PELs, a top issue
for us.”
While nothing concrete has been pro-
posed, OSHA has held preliminary dis-
cussions and stakeholder meetings about
I2P2. AIHA has had representatives and
observers at each meeting.

Whether Michaels will see his ultimate goal become reality probably depends on the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. “If Obama’s reelected, then yeah, they’ll probably push this early in his second term,” Trippler says. “If he’s not, I would say it’s dead.”

Permissible Exposure Limits

In its forty-year existence, OSHA has succeeded in adopting PELs for only two hundred substances, and most of those were promulgated in the 1970s. Despite concerns that the original PELs were not protective enough, OSHA could not overcome the political, legislative and judicial hurdles blocking reform.

In 2002, AIHA convened a task force of stakeholders from industry and labor that held serious discussions about a possible legislative fix to OSHA’s rulemaking process. But after several years of trying, the task force could not reach consensus and disbanded. One lesson that AIHA drew from this experience is that efforts to reform OSHA had to be led by OSHA—stakeholders could take the process only so far.

Nevertheless, AIHA was prepared to try again. Last year it assembled an advisory group of AIHA members to discuss ways to move the issue of PEL updates at OSHA. AIHA also gauged other stakeholder organizations’ interest in pressing OSHA to move forward on PELs and other reforms. All the while, AIHA continued to bring up PELs in meetings with agency and Congressional staff.

That persistence has finally paid off.
In talks earlier this year, the Budget
Committee announced its intention to
appropriate additional funds to NIOSH
for the purpose of studying ways to up-
date PELs. NIOSH has confirmed that it
is interested in pursuing that project. But
perhaps the most positive development
was OSHA’s appointment of an internal
working group to discuss possibilities for
PEL reform.

Faith and Credibility

Other issues of importance to AIHA remain to be addressed, such as promotion of professional certification, which OSHA favors but hasn’t had the money to advance. The fate of Voluntary Protection Program remains to be seen; recently introduced legislation would make it illegal for OSHA to cut the program. And a fierce battle between labor and industry may threaten to grind agency activity to a halt if OSHA, as some observers suspect, were to pursue an ergonomics standard.

Trippler is keeping a cautiously optimistic perspective about the prospects for OHS issues at OSHA: “You’re seeing a lot of activity, but it remains to be seen whether you see any results.” Still, Trippler credits OSHA for changing people’s perceptions about the agency. “It had kind of started to lose its credibility,” Trippler says. “People had no faith in it anymore, and I think that has been restored.”