OSHA’s power to protect workers upheld by the courts
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided in April that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) does indeed have the authority to say that employers can be cited for each worker they leave unprotected.
In the case of the National Association of Home Builders v. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the issue at hand centered around contractor Eric Ho of Houston, Texas who had hired 11 immigrant workers for an asbestos removal project in 2003. Ho did not train the workers in asbestos removal or provide them with respirators to protect them from inhaling asbestos fibers, which creates a risk of developing mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases. Initially, OSHA cited Ho with 11 violations for not training each worker and another 11 violations for not providing a respirator for each worker. All but two of the citations were overturned when Bush’s Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission stated that Ho could only be cited once for failing to train the workers and once for failing to provide respirators.
Because of this, OSHA officials rewrote the rules to clarify that each worker must be provided with the proper training and protective equipment, and that employers can be cited for each individual worker left unprotected as a separate violation. The National Association of Home Builders sued, stating that OSHA didn’t have the authority to do this, but the federal appeals court ruled that it did.
This important court ruling gives employers more of a financial incentive to protect their workers; many employers may have viewed a single fine for violations involving numerous workers to be less expensive than the cost of providing the requisite training and protective gear, but being fined for each individual worker will be far more costly.
For the full story, go to AFL-CIO.
