"dillydally" <****teigh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:646897eb-215d-4eb2-acdb-ec90c7eb5401@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 'This is flat-out secrecy. They are trying to essentially change the
> job safety and health laws and reduce required workplace protections
> through a midnight regulation.' -- Peg Seminario, director of health
> and safety policy, AFL-CIO.
>
> "Some accuse the Bush administration of working secretly to give
> industry a parting gift that will help it delay or block safety
> regulations after President Bush leaves office."
>
> 'It's an insult to America's workers for the Department of Labor to be
> spending its time in the last year of this administration allegedly
> fine-tuning the details of how to do these regulations when, other
> than the one ordered by a court, they have issued no major worker-
> health regulations.' -- Adam Finkel, professor, University of Medicine
> and Dentistry of New Jersey.
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> "U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules"
>
> By Carol D. Leonnig
> Wa****ngton Post Staff Writer
> Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A01
>
>
> Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with
> unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush
> administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-
> job exposure to chemicals and toxins.
>
> The agency did not disclose the proposal, as required, in public
> notices of regulatory plans that it filed in December and May.
> Instead, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao's intention to push for the
> rule first surfaced on July 7, when the White House Office of
> Management and Budget (OMB) posted on its Web site that it was
> reviewing the proposal, identified only by its nine-word title.
>
> The text of the proposed rule has not been made public, but according
> to sources briefed on the change and to an early draft obtained by The
> Wa****ngton Post, it would call for reexamining the methods used to
> measure risks posed by workplace exposure to toxins. The change would
> address long-standing complaints from businesses that the government
> overestimates the risk posed by job exposure to chemicals.
>
> The rule would also require the agency to take an extra step before
> setting new limits on chemicals in the workplace by allowing an
> additional round of challenges to agency risk *****sments.
>
> The department's speed in trying to make the regulatory change
> contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the
> past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major
> health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a
> court order.
>
> In an interview, Labor's assistant secretary for policy, Leon R.
> Sequeira, said officials did not disclose their interest in the rule
> change earlier because they were uncertain until recently whether they
> wanted to follow through and pursue a regulation.
>
> But the fast-track approach has brought criticism from workplace-
> safety advocates, unions and Democrats in Congress. Some accuse the
> Bush administration of working secretly to give industry a parting
> gift that will help it delay or block safety regulations after
> President Bush leaves office.
>
> "It's an insult to America's workers for the Department of Labor to be
> spending its time in the last year of this administration allegedly
> fine-tuning the details of how to do these regulations when, other
> than the one ordered by a court, they have issued no major worker-
> health regulations," said Adam Finkel, a professor at the University
> of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey who is a former health
> standards director at Labor's Occupational Safety and Health
> Administration. "The reality is there's a great need to light a fire
> under this moribund agency to do something -- anything -- to protect
> workers."
>
> Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and
> Labor Committee, said: "The fact that the Department of Labor seems to
> be engaged in secret rulemaking makes me highly suspicious that some
> high-level political appointees are up to no good. This Congress will
> not stand for the gutting of health and safety protections as the Bush
> administration heads out the door."
>
> Sequeira said department policy prevents him from discussing the
> details of a draft rule, how it was written and by whom, until it is
> reviewed by the OMB. The public will have 30 days to critique the
> draft after it is published.
>
> "It's premature to comment," he said. "People appear to be making
> assumptions about what's in the draft."
>
> Last week, the proposal was defended in an opinion piece in the New
> York Sun written by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a fellow at the
> conservative-leaning Hudson Institute. She wrote that it would bring a
> "rationalized approach" to risk *****sments and probably move away
> from the incorrect assumption in current rules that workers stay in a
> job, with daily exposure to the same chemicals or toxins, for as long
> as 45 years.
>
> Furchtgott-Roth did not mention in the article that she was one of the
> consultants who worked with Labor beginning in September 2007 on a
> $349,000 outside study of the risk-*****sment process.
>
> The OMB has been trying to address the issue of risk *****sment since
> 2006, when it attempted to set new standards governing how a host of
> federal agencies reach their conclusions. That plan was withdrawn
> after the National Academy of Sciences called it "fatally flawed"
> because it lacked scientific grounding.
>
> Early this year, Deborah Misir, a political deputy in Labor's office
> of the assistant secretary for policy, worked with the OMB to draft a
> new risk-*****sment rule. A former ethics adviser to Bush, Misir had
> complained that the department's assumption of a 45-year working life
> overstated the risk of exposure.
>
> Typically, before drafting a rule, agency officials consult with staff
> members, lawyers and outside experts, and sometimes industry and other
> interested parties. But Misir initially did not consult scientific and
> workplace-risk-*****sment experts in OSHA and the Mine Safety and
> Health Administration, according to sources briefed on her work.
>
> Charles Gordon, a recently retired Labor Department lawyer who worked
> on regulations in OSHA's solicitor's office for 32 years, said the
> policy office does not usually take the lead on rules involving risk
> *****sments. "Normally, issues of health science like risk *****sment
> are performed by OSHA and MSHA, that have statutory authority and
> expertise in the area," Gordon said.
>
> Misir waited until April to seek comments from the department's
> experts. They objected to both the legality and substance of the
> proposal and recommended that Chao not pursue such a rule, according
> to the sources.
>
> A few weeks later, when the agency listed regulations "under
> development or review" in its semiannual agenda, the risk-*****sment
> proposal was not included. But a draft was circulating among a small
> group of advisers, according to a date-stamped copy obtained by The
> Post.
>
> In spring 2007, the department listed 38 potential workplace-safety
> regulations as works in progress. Among its priorities were a proposal
> to reduce deaths and injuries from cranes and derricks, following a
> spate of fatal accidents; a new rule to reduce illnesses from silica,
> which can cause respiratory diseases; and a proposal to change
> regulation of beryllium, a light metal that can harm the lungs of
> dental and metal workers.
>
> But virtually overnight, changing the risk-*****sment process became
> the agency's top priority for workplace regulations. The July
> submission of its proposal broke a deadline set by White House Chief
> of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, who had ordered that all agencies submit
> proposed regulations before June 1 and "resist the historical tendency
> of administrations to increase regulatory activity in their final
> months."
>
> Nevertheless, the OMB agreed to work with Labor on the proposal. The
> July 7 posting on its Web site shocked many inside and outside the
> agency who had been following the events.
>
> "This is flat-out secrecy," said Peg Seminario, director of health and
> safety policy at the AFL-CIO. "They are trying to essentially change
> the job safety and health laws and reduce required workplace
> protections through a midnight regulation."
>
> Seminario said she was stunned that the administration would consider
> the rule its top priority, when for years it has "slow-walked and
> stalled" safety rules that would reduce worker deaths and injuries
> from diacetyl and beryllium.
>
> David Michaels, an epidemiologist and workplace safety professor at
> George Wa****ngton University's School of Public Health, said the rule
> would add another barrier to creating safety standards, in the name of
> improving them.
>
> "This is a guarantee to keep any more worker safety regulation from
> ever coming out of OSHA," Michaels said. "This is being done in
> secrecy, to be sprung before President Bush leaves office, to cripple
> the next administration."
>
> [Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this re****t.]
>
>
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202838.html
Republicans have proved over
and over that they and bush/
Cheney/ McCain/ Gramm don't
give one **** about the ordinary
working American
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