An agency with "occupational" and "safety" and "health" in its name was always a sitting duck at the hands of the merciless Bush regimistas

"Heckuva Job Foulkie" (left) at a 2007 congressional
hearing, alongside injured worker Eric Peoples

by Ken

So, another federal agency bites the dust. Or, to be technical, turns out to have bitten the dust.

Oh, I know, I'm as bored as you are with this tiresome procession of Inspector General reports, congressionally mandated inquiries, GAO reports, CBO studies, independent inquiries, and on and on -- each revealing that yet another arm of the federal government was either reduced to impotence or transformed into an enforcement arm of the Far, Far Right totalitarian, megalomaniacal, constitution-shredding goons of the Bush regime. So what else is new?

Is there really much point sifting through the wreckage? Maybe trying to figure out how it all happened? Aren't we supposed to, you know, just get on with it?

Just like with Iraq. Why would troublemaking lefites insist on asking embarrassing questions about how the country got snookered into playing neocon war games, only for real? I would have thought that the "for real" part is explanation enough all by itself for why yes, we have to know how it all happened.

But I suppose we need to get some of the dreary facts on the record. Yesterday's Washington Post story began, typically enough, with a now-familiar sort of Incriminating Episode:

Under Bush, OSHA Mired in Inaction

By R. Jeffrey Smith

In early 2001, an epidemiologist at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sought to publish a special bulletin warning dental technicians that they could be exposed to dangerous beryllium alloys while grinding fillings. Health studies showed that even a single day's exposure at the agency's permitted level could lead to incurable lung disease.

After the bulletin was drafted, political appointees at the agency gave a copy to a lobbying firm hired by the country's principal beryllium manufacturer, according to internal OSHA documents. The epidemiologist, Peter Infante, incorporated what he considered reasonable changes requested by the company and won approval from key directorates, but he bristled when the private firm complained again.

"In my 24 years at the Agency, I have never experienced such indecision and delay," Infante wrote in an e-mail to the agency's director of standards in March 2002. Eventually, top OSHA officials decided, over what Infante described in an e-mail to his boss as opposition from "the entire OSHA staff working on beryllium issues," to publish the bulletin with a footnote challenging a key recommendation the firm opposed.

The usual stuff, right? Next, of course, comes the revelation (gasp) that this was (a) by once-normal standards extraordinary, even unprecedented behavior inside an executive-branch agency, and (b) this behavior wasn't the exception, it was the rule at OSHA:

Current and former career officials at OSHA say that such sagas were a recurrent feature during the Bush administration, as political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure.

The result is a legacy of unregulation common to several health-protection agencies under Bush: From 2001 to the end of 2007, OSHA officials issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations termed economically significant by the Office of Management and Budget than their counterparts did during a similar period in President Bill Clinton's tenure, according to White House lists.

Then of course there's the regimistas' standard indignant how-dare-you denial of all:

White House officials have dismissed such tallies, emphasizing in recent regulatory overviews that their "objective is quality, not quantity," and that heavy restrictions on corporations harm economic performance. During Bush's presidency, they said in a September report, average annual regulatory costs were kept 24 percent lower than during the previous two decades. OSHA says it has issued many rules of lesser consequence that nonetheless clarified industry responsibilities.

Talk about pathetic! Do they think that at this late date they don't owe us better lies and cover-ups? (Maybe they've given up even trying?) We don't have to wait long to hear from people who actually care about occupational safety and health, and are actually for it, people who've known what's been going on -- and have probably been trying to get someone to listen -- for years:

"The legacy of the Bush administration has been one of dismal inaction," said Robert Harrison, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco and chairman of the occupational health section of the American Public Health Association. It has been "like turning a ketchup bottle upside down, banging the bottom of the container, and nothing comes out. You shake and shake and nothing comes out," Harrison said.

More than two dozen current and former senior career officials further said in interviews that the agency's strategic choices were frequently made without input from its experienced hands. Political appointees "shut us out," a longtime senior career official said.

I suppose we should go through the whole bloody thing. Listen, for example, to former administration director Edwin Foulke (technically "assistant secretary of labor for OSH," since OSHA is an agency within the Labor Dept.) brag --

* about "levying heavy fines after major workplace disasters" (after major disasters? and what constitutes "major"? and were the fines actually collected?),

* about continuing "a drop in reported workplace injuries that began in 1974" (without mentioning the "14 percent drop in U.S. production and manufacturing jobs since 2001" and the "2002 change in the government's record-keeping rules").

Heckuva job, Foulkie!

In retrospect, without any investigation or inquiry we can say two things about the decimation of OSHA with a high degree of certainty:

(1) We can date the beginning of the agency's demise to the day those five Supreme Court justices decided (as Noah was just recalling), "To hell with counting the votes, for the good of the country let's make the guy who's trying to steal the election president." Maybe the idea was that since his people wanted it so much more, that would mean good things for the country? (In which case, oops, the joke's on them!)

(2) An outfit with a name like Occupational Health and Safety Administration was a sitting duck from the outset. In Bushworld, these are weasel words for "just drains money out of the pockets of deserving, regulation-oppressed businessmen, in order to do stuff no right-thinking [or, particularly, Right-thinking] person gives a crap about." Safety and health in the workplace? Gimme a break! Who says workers have any right to either? The only right workers have is to the absolute minimum financial compensation management can get away with giving.

I almost fell into the trap of saying "the absolute minimum the law allows." But that, as Richard Nixon might have said, would be wrong. (And who would know better about what's "wrong"?) It assumes that your Right-thinking managers:

(a) can't get laws and administrative rules changed (in which case, what was the point of buying up a whole government?), and

(b) feel any obligation to follow either laws or administrative rules (after all, the president they bought didn't).

We don't need no stinkin' reggolation, the Good Friedmanite intones solemnly. All's we need is God's Own Free Market.

But of course they don't really want no stinkin' free market. They want a market that's rigged to relieve them of as much obligation to society and to their workers as possible -- and by golly, they were (and still are) prepared to buy a government to do it. In addition to which, the Good Friedmanite's doctrine is a fantasy -- always was, especially is now, and always will be.

The Friedmanite theory is that if workers are sickened and injured or maimed or even killed on the job, the competitive pressures of a free market will lead those managements to upgrade their health and safety practices in their own economic interest. Which is nonsense, of course. Especially if those managements can get their bought government to lighten the administrative burdens of paying for their lapses. Far cheaper than keeping those old workers on the job is jettisoning them and replacing them with younger, less experienced, and above all cheaper workers. Heck, it's not as if workers get trained to do their jobs anymore. (Too expensive! Unproductive!)

Do we not have that executive memo from WalMart? You know, the one detailing corporate policy to do everything possible to shed older, more experienced, and above all more expensive workers so they can be replaced by less skilled people who are more desperate for work, any kind of work, including (especially?) work for minimal pay, under any conditions, and with few if any benefits?

The only shame about the OSHA "revelations" is that they come within weeks of the final slinking away of the Bush regime. Where the hell have we been all this time?

Oh, there have been malcontents shouting about this as well as the innumerable other Bush regime depredations, going back before 9/11 -- the event that in retrospect provided cover for ideological ransacking of our legitimate government which followed. But nobody wanted to hear. They were dismissed and derided as "Bush-bashers."

Can we at least hope that the Obama transition team is paying attention? Close attention.


POSTSCRIPT: THE NEW YORK TIMES WEIGHS IN EDITORIALLY

While we're on the subject, and while outgoing Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (aka Mrs. "Miss Mitch" McConnell, and as labor secretary OSHA's overboss), who has presidied over what we have abundant indications is a similar reign of political terror and enforced ineptitude within the department as a whole, but lately has been attempting, astonishingly, to portray her stewardship as a boon for working people, yesterday's NYT carried this editorial, which I think speaks for itself:

December 29, 2008

EDITORIAL
The Labor Agenda

There is no doubt that President-elect Barack Obama has chosen a labor secretary who could be a transformative force in a long-neglected arena. The question is whether he will let her.

Hilda Solis, a United States representative from Southern California, is the daughter of immigrant parents with union jobs. She has been an unfailing advocate of workers’ rights during eight years in Congress and before that, in California politics.

Ms. Solis has been a leader on traditional workplace issues, like a higher minimum wage and an enhanced right to form unions. She also has helped to expand the labor agenda by sponsoring legislation to create jobs in green technology, and in her support for community health workers and immigration reform.

Her record in Congress dovetails with the mission of the Labor Department, to protect and further the rights and opportunities of working people. It also dovetails with many of the promises Mr. Obama made during the campaign, both in its specifics and in its focus on the needs of America’s working families.

The main issue is whether the Obama administration will assert a forceful labor agenda in the face of certain protests from business that now — during a recession — is not the time to move forward.

The first and biggest test of Mr. Obama’s commitment to labor, and to Ms. Solis, will be his decision on whether or not to push the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009. Corporate America is determined to derail the bill, which would make it easier than it has been for workers to form unions by requiring that employers recognize a union if a majority of employees at a workplace sign cards indicating they wish to organize.

Ms. Solis voted for the bill when it passed the House in 2007. Senate Republicans prevented the bill from coming to a vote that same year. Mr. Obama voted in favor of bringing the bill to the Senate floor and supported it during the campaign.

The measure is vital legislation and should not be postponed. Even modest increases in the share of the unionized labor force push wages upward, because nonunion workplaces must keep up with unionized ones that collectively bargain for increases. By giving employees a bigger say in compensation issues, unions also help to establish corporate norms, the absence of which has contributed to unjustifiable disparities between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.

The argument against unions — that they unduly burden employers with unreasonable demands — is one that corporate America makes in good times and bad, so the recession by itself is not an excuse to avoid pushing the bill next year. The real issue is whether enhanced unionizing would worsen the recession, and there is no evidence that it would.

There is a strong argument that the slack labor market of a recession actually makes unions all the more important. Without a united front, workers will have even less bargaining power in the recession than they had during the growth years of this decade, when they largely failed to get raises even as productivity and profits soared. If pay continues to lag, it will only prolong the downturn by inhibiting spending.

Another question clouding the labor agenda is whether Mr. Obama will give equal weight to worker concerns — from reforming health care to raising the minimum wage — while the financial crisis is still playing out. Most members of his economic team are veterans of the Clinton administration who tilt toward Wall Street. In the Clinton era, financial issues routinely trumped labor concerns. If Mr. Obama’s campaign promises are to be kept, that mindset cannot prevail again. Mr. Obama’s creation of a task force on middle-class issues, to be led by Vice President-elect Joseph Biden and including Ms. Solis and other high-ranking officials, is an encouraging sign that labor issues will not be given short shrift.

There are many nonlegislative issues on the agenda for Ms. Solis. Safety standards must be updated: in the last eight years, the Labor Department has issued only one new safety rule of its own accord; it issued a few others only after being compelled by Congress or the courts. Overtime rules that were weakened in 2004 need to be restored. To enforce labor standards, the Labor Department will need more staff and more money, both of which have been cut deeply by President Bush.

Only the president can give the new labor secretary the clout she will need to do well at a job that has been done so badly for so long, at such great cost to the quality of Americans’ lives.

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