Bush Administration Pushing Secret Proposal to Reexamine Workplace Toxin Regulations
Most politicians and presidential administrations are "lame ducks" in the final year of their last terms, as not having to run a reelection campaign leaves them free of the pressure to get anything done while in office. Many are not expecting the current Bush administration, widely considered one of the three worst presidencies in US history, to be that active during 2008, before President Bush leaves office.
But news out of Washington has suggested that while the economy languishes in a downturn, Bush and company have been active in pushing through federal agency rules that may be detrimental to US workers by preventing active regulation of workplace conditions. While not "lame duck" in the sense that it is doing nothing, the government may be further assisting in the erosion of workers" rights that, while costly to some corporations, do save lives.
The Washington Post reports that a proposal that has so far escaped public scrutiny is being pushed aggressively through the Department of Labor, where it awaits review by the Office of Management and Budget. Reporters at the Post spoke with sources close to the proposal and saw an earlier draft, and state that the proposal would call for reexamining regulations used to measure risks for exposure to toxins in workplaces. New regulations would also be forced to undergo an extra round of challenges before being implemented.
While no one seems to have a clear idea about the extent of the proposal or precisely what it would entail, many worker-safety advocates and Democrats in Congress are suspicious at the outset, because of the secrecy surrounding the proposal and the way the administration sidestepped public filing requirements before pushing it for consideration by the Department of Labor.
A conservative think-tank member published an article advocating the review as suggested in the proposal, citing specific problems with the way that current toxin regulations are placed with the baseline level of exposure founded on the assumption that workers stay in potentially hazardous jobs for an entire 45-year career, as one example.
However, the Washington Post notes in its article that the same think-tank member was part of the team that was paid a cool $350,000 to conduct an outside study of the risk-assessment regulations, and therefore would hardly have an unbiased opinion of these problems.
Union officials and other opponents have also been critical of the fact that the Department of Labor has made only a single change to workplace regulations during the Bush administration's seven and a half years in office, and that due to a court order. Rather than finally getting serious about change in its final year in office, these officials have suggested that the administration is laying political and regulatory land mines that future government administrations will have a hard time undoing.
In any case, hazardous exposure regulations have kept many workers in potentially dangerous conditions from experiencing severe illnesses or even deaths in situations where previous lack of regulation during industrialization proved harmful to many. While workers have recourse to legal compensation for hazardous exposure, it's best to prevent pervasive toxins from contact before they become a problem, both for the safety of workers and for the long-term good of a business.