A new report by iWatch News suggests that the government’s voluntary workplace safety program is failing to protect workers.
Some 2,400 workplaces across the country are part of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP), which exempts plants from regular government inspections. Companies volunteer for on-site OSHA evaluations and if approved, are left to monitor plant safety on their own. The objective of the program, which started in 1982 during the Reagan administration, is to foster cooperation between industry and regulators and reduce costs to government, while improving safety.
In the course of an eight-month investigation, iWatch uncovered 80 worker deaths at WPP plants since 2000, and serious safety violations in at least 47 of those cases. IWatch is an arm of the Center for Public Integrity, a 22-year-old Washington, D.C. nonprofit funded by foundations like Ford, MacArthur and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Center has won numerous journalism awards for reports ranging from U.S. AIDS policy overseas to the global asbestos trade.
The 4,700-word piece on the volunteer plant safety program is painstakingly researched and carefully written by iWatch staff writer Chris Hamby. He details worker deaths and serious injuries at plants run by companies like International Paper and Tropicana, where an explosion at a Bradenton, Fla. juice processing facility left mechanic Rob Hackley with second- and third-degree burns on two-thirds of his body. In each instance, Hamby includes responses from both OSHA and the company. Tropicana paid fines and fixed problems it found after the explosion, while OSHA said there were only problems in one area of the juice plant.
Hamby also interviewed former and current OSHA officials who cast doubt on the program’s efficacy. Midway through the story, Hamby steps back and offers this summary of his findings:
This picture is of a program that has grown faster than OSHA’s ability to monitor it. It is a picture of a program that continues to reward some companies, even after they have failed to protect workers and violated safety standards. It is a picture of overstretched regulators who must decide whether a company is really committed to safety or is just good at making it look that way — and who are uncertain whether every company in the club deserves to be there. Asked if the agency felt confident that only qualified sites were in VPP, OSHA official [Jordan] Barab said, “We’re looking at that.”
Hamby doesn’t claim to offer a definitive answer to whether self-policing in the workplace is effective, further discussing the question in a shorter accompanying piece. But the issue deserves special scrutiny now, he observes. The Obama administration tried to cut spending on VPP last year, but Congress resisted, and now members from both parties want to make the program permanent. They should read Hamby’s excellent report. PBS is airing a televised version of the story tonight, and iWatch will have a second installment, on some of the most dangerous industries, on July 11.
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