OSHA’s Foulke Still Out of Touch with Reality
Ex-unionbuster and current OSHA Director Edwin Foulke, Jr. testified before congress last week, revealing once again the Labor Department’s laissez faire attitude toward occupational safety and health at our nation’s industrial facilities.
As the Bloomberg’s Cindy Skrzycki reported on Tuesday:
“I see such an incredible lack of urgency on the part of your agency to protect workers that it is astounding,” Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who heads the House Education and Labor Committee, told OSHA director Edwin Foulke Jr.
“We believe the agency has taken strong measures to prevent combustible dust hazards,” Foulke responded. Since the explosion in Georgia, the agency has created a Web page to make it easier to find guidance material on combustible dust, he told the committee.
Strong measures? Surely those measures don’t include OSHA’s failure to issue a single standard on combustible dust, as urged by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board in 2006. And last time I checked, most workers don’t have time in between shifts to study the guidance material online, the only apparent action taken by Foulke following the Georgia refinery explosion that killed 13 people.
Making matters worse, Foulke only seemed “a little bit disappointed” when another Imperial Sugar Company refinery, this time in Louisiana, closed down following an OSHA inspection that found potentially combustible dust. (Check out Change to Win’s mockup of a Homeland Security-style combustible dust advisory level chart about Foulke’s “disappointment.”)
You would think OSHA’s director might show a little more outrage since the same company still hasn’t cleaned up its act, literally. What will it take for Edwin and Elaine to do their jobs on combustible dust?
