OSHA FAILURES A CRISATUNITY.

This article about how badly the Bush administration has managed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration gives us the opportunity to speculate about what even basically competent appointees content to let OSHA employees simply do their jobs could accomplish there. And don't get me started about what life might be like for American workers if the political appointees were more than just basically competent but actually interested in improving the conditions in U.S. workplaces. But first ... what if people who were actively interested in worsening conditions in U.S. workplaces worked at OSHA?

The agency's first director under Bush, John L. Henshaw, startled career officials by telling them in an early meeting that employers were OSHA's real customers, not the nation's workers. "Everybody was pretty amazed," one of those present recalled. "Our purpose is to ensure employee safety and health. . . . He just looked at things differently."

... In 2006, Henshaw was replaced by Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a South Carolina lawyer and former Bush fundraiser who spent years defending companies cited by OSHA for safety and health violations.

Foulke quickly acquired a reputation inside the Labor Department as a man who literally fell asleep on the job: Eyewitnesses said they saw him suddenly doze off at staff meetings, during teleconferences, in one-on-one briefings, at retreats involving senior deputies, on the dais at a conference in Europe, at an award ceremony for a corporation and during an interview with a candidate for deputy regional administrator.

All this as various proposed regulations to protect workers from toxic chemicals, help hospitals prevent the spread of tuberculosis and improve safety at construction sites were not issued. One note I raised in this piece the other week was that even if EFCA is potentially difficult and naysayers think Obama isn't prioritizing labor issues, a lot can be done within agencies like OSHA to promote effective change without raising high-profile political battles. Elections, and their consequences.

-- Tim Fernholz