OSHA: A Unique Weapon for Labor

Steve M. Haynes December 2007

There is a tendency among U.S. trade union leaders, shop stewards and rank-and-file activists to strongly distrust federal and state agencies charged with protecting workers' health and safety — and therefore not to utilize them.

While there are good grounds for suspecting government agencies of anti-worker bias and wrongdoing, there are also ample reasons for not allowing big employers and right-wing political officials to destroy the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and its counterparts on the state level.

Let's step back 35 years to 1970 when the workplace was much more dangerous. Based on OSHA statistics there were 14,000 worker deaths a year from job related accidents. Close to 2.5 million workers would become disabled that year and cases of occupational diseases totaled 300,000. It was pretty clear that something had to be done about these grim statistics. To address worker deaths, disease and disabilities, the United States Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (Act), which led to the formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The Act covers all employers and employees in the United States and its territories. There are exceptions for self-employed people, farms that have only family members working, and situations where there is regulation by other federal agencies under other federal statutes. There are also OSHA regulations that provide individual states with the capability of developing state safety and health standards.[1]

The golden period of OSHA was in the late 1970s. During those years, the agency aggressively sought to enforce its rules and regulations. Around the same time, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), responding to mass pressure, recommended additional proposals to protect workers on the job.

Unions were very involved in the development of these proposals. And when OSHA was doing its work properly, labor unions had another tool to protect their members from the ravages of asbestos, lead, industrial solvents and many other hazards.

But starting with the election of Ronald Reagan, 12 years of Republican rule dealt OSHA and NIOSH punishing blows. The Reagan and first Bush administrations stripped OSHA of many of its powers and forced NIOSH to use corporate-paid researchers to write occupational safety and health rules. Labor was removed from any policy-making positions. State agencies were weakened, too.

The Clinton years restored some muscle to OSHA and NIOSH, but now, after eight years of George W. Bush's rule, the credibility of the two agencies is almost completely shot.

It's with this background in mind that one should assess the recent victory of the Unite Here union, which represents garment and hotel workers, in winning an OSHA-ordered $2.8 million fine against Cintas, the giant laundry company. Unite Here has been trying to organize the workers at Cintas for several years now.

The penalty stems from an incident last March, when Eleazar Torres Gomez, a 46-year-old Cintas worker, was killed in an accident at the company's Tulsa, Okla., plant. Torres Gomez was caught on a conveyor belt used to transfer uniforms from washers to dryers, and he died inside a 300-degree dryer. The company said it was his own fault.

In response to this incident, Unite Here's staff and activists directed their organizing power against Cintas nationwide. They went to OSHA and demanded it take action. They believed that within OSHA, below the Bush-appointed, anti-worker leadership, some civil servants wanted to do their jobs. And they were correct.

In short order, Cintas' plants in Oklahoma, Alabama, Ohio, Washington, California and Pennsylvania were subjected to OSHA inspections. The net result was the multimillion-dollar fine against the company in the Tulsa case and additional fines for safety violations elsewhere.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose statistics are not completely reliable, nonetheless offers some comparative data about the dangers facing laundry workers. Laundry and dry-cleaning workers have an injury rate of between 6.7 and 9.3 per 100 full-time workers. By comparison, the injury rate of chemical workers is 3.7, oil and gas well workers, 6.7, and forestry and logging workers, 9.9. In other words, commercial laundering is a very unsafe industry and it should be obvious to any of the workers there that they should vote a union in as soon as possible. Not only for wages and benefits, but the workers should join the union for general health and safety as well.