Worker Safety Measures are Gutted under Trump

Fortunately, the Tort System has Your Back

When a construction worker is hurt on the job, the impact extends far beyond the immediate injury. Hospital bills, physical therapy, medical devices — that’s just the half of it. In many of these cases, a workplace injury also means a significant detour or roadblock to employment.

With more minor injuries, we may be talking about lost wages while the injured party undergoes rehabilitation. In more severe cases, it can mean lost livelihood — a 50-year-old man or woman suddenly scrambling to find a new career, because they are no longer physically capable of performing the basic functions of their job.

Imagine that. You’ve spent your whole adult life training and working in your chosen field, and all of a sudden, that skill set doesn’t matter. You have to start anew in order to keep afloat, let alone to build that nest egg for retirement.

We talked in our last post about the federal safety rules designed to keep workers safe.

Well, we’ve got bad news on that front.

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), if you remember, is the government agency that tracks and enforces on-the-job safety — our first line of defense against catastrophic injuries that can permanently alter the lives of workers and their families.

The Think Progess report focuses on the overlap between OSHA and the Environmental Protection Agency, and their combined role in limiting workers’ exposure to harmful chemicals and radiation that can cause cancer and other debilitating illnesses such as black lung, asbestosis and silicosis.

These are the unseen dangers of manufacturing, construction and farm jobs — not often talked about, but always a real threat to workers. And usually preventable.

Now, it seems, workers are at an even greater exposure risk. It’s worth a read.

Meanwhile, the investigative journalism group ProPublica reports the Trump administration has dismantled or stalled several workplace safety panels in an effort to reduce regulations on business. Labor officials see these committees as essential to improving health, safety and whistleblower protections for workers.

For example, one committee that has been sidelined is the Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health, which was in the process of recommending ways to prevent workers from being killed by large trucks backing up. According to ProPublica, the panel was studying worksite traffic plans and new technologies, such as wearable beepers to alert workers of an approaching vehicle.

Also disbanded was the Federal Advisory Council on Occupational Safety and Health committee. It developed federal training guidelines for OSHA and ensured that federal contractors worked with unions on developing safe environments for work such as refueling nuclear submarines.

Now, here’s one thing we want to emphasize: This is not, and should not be, about politics.

As ProPublica notes, many of these committees were established with Republican and Democratic support, when workplace death rates were more than double what they are now.

So why the wholesale effort now to strip workers of basic safety protections? There’s no good answer to that question. But one thing is clear:

Given the decimation of these protections, the tort system is more important than ever in holding companies accountable and protecting workers.

The threat of tort liability can be a powerful force in improving conditions for workers — detering companies from putting profits ahead of worker safety, by placing a price on negligence, equipment failures and other lapses.

At Keefe, Keefe & Unsell, we don’t see it as a matter of inconveniencing companies and manufacturers. It’s about saving lives.

Because everyone has a right to feel safe on the job.