Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 10, 1991 TAG: 9103080016
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The AFL-CIO is circulating draft legislation it plans to have introduced in Congress on the April 28 anniversary of OSHA's enactment. The proposal would mandate that all employers create joint labor-management health and safety committees and require that employees have the right to participate in negotiations with the government over the settlement of any OSHA charges against their employer.
Peg Seminario, director of safety operations for the labor federation, said a key component of the legislation being considered was the proposal to mandate worker participation in health and safety matters at all work sites. She said the legislation would give workers the "right to act" on matters of their own safety.
Perhaps equally important, as far as labor is concerned, would be the right of unions to participate in settlement negotiations with the government after a complaint has been filed against a company whose employees they represent.
In recent years, OSHA has proposed large fines against offending corporations and then reduced the size of those fines in exchange for a company's commitment to take certain preventive action in the future. Labor wants a guaranteed voice in that negotiating process.
Some unions, such as the United Food and Commercial Workers, have managed to get themselves a seat at the negotiating table with the government, but not without a great deal of shouting and legal threats. The UFCW has been an integral part of the negotiations between the meat-packing industry and OSHA.
The United Auto Workers has also had a part in negotiations to settle OSHA charges resulting from repetitive motion injuries in the auto industry.
But many smaller, weaker unions have had less success gaining a voice in these negotiations. The legislation being considered would give all employees that voice as a matter of right.
The approach is patterned after the so-called "co-determination" that many union workers have in Western Europe, in which they are given a voice in matters involving their wages, hours and working conditions.
Increased worker power is not the only concern of labor in its new legislative proposal.
Seminario said the unions want the federal law changed to give OSHA the power to order a company cited by the agency to correct a hazardous situation while the charges are being contested by the employer. OSHA does not currently have that authority. The labor plan also would allow OSHA to issue criminal complaints against employers for certain willful violations of the law that result in death or serious injury.
Last year, Congress enacted a sevenfold increase in OSHA fines as a way to raise extra money for the federal Treasury. The increase was part of the budget reconciliation bill approved late last year, but congressional budget negotiators stripped out a proposal for criminal penalties after intense lobbying by business.
The legislation that labor wants would also extend OSHA protections to all state and federal workers. About half the states have federally approved state plans that do not cover public employees. When OSHA was enacted in 1971, states had the option of having the federal government oversee the health and safety law or adopting a plan that met the federal standards for workers but was administered by the state.
But states were not required to provide the safety protections for their own employees.
In this same area, the legislative proposal would give greater OSHA protections to certain federal employees who now fall between the cracks as a result of jurisdictional disputes between government agencies. An example cited by the unions is airline flight crews, which fall under the jurisdiction of both OSHA and the Federal Aviation Administration. Unions representing flight crews claim their members failed to get adequate health and safety protections under OSHA because of the jurisdictional control of the FAA.
Labor's growing concern over health and safety issues surfaced last month during a meeting in Florida of the AFL-CIO Executive Council and Lynn Martin, the new secretary of labor. Much of the two-hour meeting, according to AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, was taken up by questions from individual union leaders about problems their members were having in the health and safety area.
"Quite a number of members of the council very forcefully addressed a variety of occupational safety and health issues," Kirkland said after the meeting. Most of the questions dealt with areas being addressed in labor's proposed legislation.
Unlike other legislative proposals being pushed by labor this year in other areas, such as health care and a ban on the use of permanent strike replacement workers, the labor movement appears intent on pushing for passage of OSHA reform in this Congress.
by CNB