OSHA Continues Cooperative Approach

Building on a framework that was put together in 1994, and buoyed by an increased budget for fiscal 1997, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Washington, is continuing its efforts to be a proactive safety organization with common-sense procedures and enforcement policies.

There are three words that describe OSHA’s current direction – cooperative, aggressive and innovative, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Washington. The agency is cooperative through its programs that focus on partnerships with companies to voluntarily identify and correct safety hazards; aggressive in that it pledges to put more inspection officers in the field and not get lax on enforcement; and innovative in that it is approaching the creation of new standards differently than it has in the past.

The most talked about OSHA initiative is the establishment of a program where companies choose between a partnership with OSHA, or traditional enforcement. This program is based on the Maine 200 concept where the state of Maine formed a partnership with 200 of the most accident prone companies to help them improve worker safety.

"Our goal is to nationalize the ‘Maine 200’ concept," says Susan Flemming, a spokesperson for OSHA. "Currently, 11 states have adopted this approach."

OSHA’s official name for the partnership program is the Cooperative Compliance Program. Under this program, companies that have been identified as severely deficient in safety compliance will be offered a choice on how they want to be inspected.

Those companies that choose to work with their employees and with OSHA in reducing injuries and illnesses will find OSHA a willing partner. For companies that eliminate hazards and reduce injuries, OSHA will go a step further and provide special recognition that includes the lowest priority for enforcement inspections, the highest priority for assistance, appropriate regulatory relief, and penalty reductions.

For those firms that are well intentioned but have room for improvement, OSHA will offer a sliding scale of incentives depending upon the degree to which the employer demonstrates real effort to find and fix hazards.

However, for firms that do not choose to participate in the program, there will continue to be traditional OSHA enforcement. These companies will face strong OSHA enforcement procedures, and inspectors will enforce the law without compromise.

"Companies have to understand that the Cooperative Compliance Program is not something that a company can initially choose – we will contact the company," says Flemming. "And we are only contacting companies that have very poor safety records. At that point, the company will be offered a choice of how they want be regulated by OSHA. It’s sort of like when you were a kid, and mom said ‘do this or else!’ Well, you didn’t want to know what the ‘or else’ meant."

OSHA is not "out to get" employers, according to Bill Smith, a technical expert with OSHA. "Our job is to help employers to do a better job in finding and fixing the hazards in their own workplaces. Part of our job involves setting standards and enforcing them, but that’s only part of it. During the past couple of years, we have been working hard to make this the ‘New OSHA’ – more willing to try cooperative and innovative approaches, and more willing to listen to the views of all those who have a stake in workplace safety and health."

Other initiatives include incentives for employers with safety and health programs, forming common sense regulations and updating and eliminating confusing and out-of-date ones, emphasizing plain language and user-friendly rules, rewarding companies for fixing safety hazards quickly, and eliminating red tape by focusing on the most serious hazards and most dangerous workplaces.

OSHA is also trying to stay in constant communication with the nation’s workforce. It has put a lot of effort into an Internet site at www.osha.org where employers and employees can access a wide range of information, including getting immediate assistance from national and local OSHA representatives.

"We are very happy with the online site," says Flemming. "It’s so good that I even pull off information from it."

In addition to the Cooperative Compliance Program, OSHA has two other cooperative programs available to employers. One is the free, on-site OSHA Consultation Program, available to smaller employers with poor safety records upon request; and the other is the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program, which guards companies with outstanding safety programs.

Using the services of the Consultation Program, employers can, without charge and upon request, find out about potential hazards at their worksites, improve their occupational safety and health management systems, and even qualify for a one-year exemption from routine OSHA inspections if they implement exemplary programs.

Under the Consultation Program, an employer may receive a hazard survey and assessment of their workplaces; advice on correcting hazards found and reestablishing compliance with OSHA standards; on-site and off-site training for employers, supervisors and employees, and advice on developing and implementing an effective occupational safety and health program.

But what happens if an OSHA consultant comes across a serious violation? Can the business be fined even if it invites OSHA to visit? "OSHA consultation visits are conducted only upon request of an employer," says Melody Sands, a technical expert with OSHA. "Before receiving these free services, an employer must agrees that if any serious hazards or imminent danger situations are found during the course of the visit, he or she will correct them within agreed-upon time frames. If the employer refuses to do this, then he or she will be referred to OSHA enforcement for appropriate action. This, however, has occurred only rarely in the past. Consultation’s goal is not to refer employers to enforcement, but to work cooperatively with them to get the hazards corrected and ensure employees are provided a safe and healthy workplace."

Under the Voluntary Protection Program, employers who have already achieved safety program excellence can apply for special recognition. "The VPP program is designed to recognize excellence in occupational safety and health by exempting from generally scheduled OSHA inspections those companies which demonstrate outstanding commitment to workplace safety and health and go beyond the requirements of the OSHA standards in protecting their workers," says Sands.

"To date, we have had about 300 companies come forward to be recognized for having outstanding safety programs under VPP," says Flemming. "It’s not that easy, and companies really have to be excellent in this area. Once we recognize them, we know that we don’t have to inspect them."

In addition, OSHA provides employers and employees with the opportunity to attend OSHA safety and health courses at 12 OSHA Education Centers located across the country.

The agency also gives worker safety and health seminars on various topics, and will provide training services to employers upon request. OSHA regional offices also are an excellent source of information on a myriad of safety and health topics, as is the OSHA Training Institute, located in Des Plaines, Ill.

Focused inspections for employers with strong and effective safety programs is another area that OSHA has developed. For example, let’s say in the scrap industry that the two major causes of injuries involve improper lockout/tagout procedures and improper machine guarding. If an inspector visits a scrap processor, that inspector will only focus on those two areas – provided the company has a solid safety program and track record. If the inspector determines that these two hazards – lockout/tagout and machine guarding – are well controlled, the inspected is finished and the inspector promptly leaves the site.

Conversely, where a safety and health program has not been established or is ineffective, the inspector is obligated to conduct a complete site inspection with full citations.

OSHA will be expanding the focused inspection concept to many other employment sectors and will work with targeted industries, based on their injury and illness rates and other data. The goal is to encourage the adoption of effective safety and health programs and to identify the most serious hazards in those industries for focused attention during inspections.

Another area involves incentives for employers with safety and health programs. Here, OSHA will grant an array of penalty adjustments based on the vigor and effectiveness of the company’s program.

If an OSHA inspector finds that an employer has implemented a superior safety and health program, penalty reductions can be granted – up to 100 percent. For employers who have less effective programs in place but are making good-faith efforts, OSHA will grant a sliding scale of incentives.

While OSHA is reinventing itself and espousing cooperation with business and industry, the agency says it will not become lax in its enforcement and outreach efforts designed to protect workers from the leading causes of occupational injury, illness and death. For example, significant emphasis will continue to be placed on fall protection, confined spaces, lockout/tagout, machine guarding, personnel protection equipment, asbestos, bloodborne pathogens, and various other safety and health standards and non-regulatory initiatives. Most of these areas are directly related to the scrap industry.

"This is an area that will not go away, no matter how extensively we reinvent ourselves," says Flemming.

Since 1970 when OSHA was established, the overall workplace death rate has been cut in half. Inspections have real, positive results, according to the agency. In a recent study, injuries and illnesses were shown to drop by an average of 22 percent in the three years following an OSHA inspection resulting in penalties. Overall injury and illness rates have declined in the industries where OSHA has concentrated its attention, yet have remained unchanged or have actually increased in the industries where OSHA has had less presence. Overall, OSHA has about 1,000 inspectors, and more inspectors could be hired due to a budget increase this fiscal year.

"Right now, we are filling vacancies; then we will look at adding more inspectors," says Flemming.

While maintaining its inspection credo, OSHA has made changes in this area, too. In the past, OSHA inspectors were measured not on the basis of safety at the workplace, but on the basis of violations found. Employers were cited not only for genuine safety hazards, but also for minor or paperwork violations. In the last two years, the agency has sought to streamline the enforcement process and reduce "nit-picking" by its field inspectors.

The result has been an immediate decline in citations for violations of paperwork requirements. Inspectors also no longer penalize employers who have not put up the required OSHA poster if the employer agrees to post it right away. OSHA has also issued new inspection guidelines that will better assure that employers are not fined for failure to have a material safety data sheet for a common consumer product that is used as it would be used in the home.

In addition, OSHA inspectors have been told that there are no numeric inspection goals, and that their performance will not be judged by the number of citations and fines they issue, but by their success in finding and reducing hazards associated with injuries and illnesses.

Other OSHA initiatives include a quick fix incentive program is also being considered for correcting hazards in a timely fashion. Now, after an OSHA inspector finds a violation, the employer can contest the citation for months, resulting in added cost and confrontation. As an incentive to abate hazards immediately, OSHA has successfully experimented with a program where compliance officers reduce penalties for violations that are abated during the inspection. This policy encourages employers to increase employee protection immediately, while freeing OSHA employees from monitoring abatement and follow-up paperwork.

Improvements are also planned in the Inspection Targeting System. Currently, OSHA treats all employers in an industry group alike, regardless of their individual safety and health performance. However, in every industry some workplaces are more hazardous than others, and it is these unsafe worksites that should be targeted for strong inspection. Relying on data that the agency began collecting in 1995 from a variety of internal and external sources, including data from state workers’ compensation agencies, the agency will focus its enforcement activities on companies with unusually high rates of workplace injury and illness and a record of serious and repeated OSHA violations.

OSHA is also going ahead with several other initiatives that may come to fruition soon. One involves a new reporting procedure that documents workplace injuries and illnesses. "In June or July of this year we expect the new OSHA 300 reporting forms to be available," says Flemming. "We hope that the way we ask for documentation from companies will be clearer and easier to understand."

Another initiative involves ergonomics – the science of designing jobs to fit people, and provides tools to address these problems. The agency is developing an ergonomics standard that is aimed to tackle work-related musculoskeletal disorders such as tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and lower back pain. These are the leading causes of suffering and disability in the workplace today, according to the agency.

The number of ergonomically-related disorders is increasing dramatically – six out of ten new occupational illnesses reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1992 were associated with repeated trauma.

Playing by its new, self-prescribed common-sense rules, OSHA is seeking to address the issues of ergonomics by working with business and labor on ergonomics initiatives, including training and education, technical assistance, and regulatory approaches. OSHA’s plan is to reward employers that institute ergonomically-supportive environments, provide assistance and address employers who fail to keep workplaces free of recognized and serious ergonomically-related hazards.

The standard, however, has so far received strong resistance from industry. Many thought that OSHA’s initial draft standard was too comprehensive. The opposition against the standard even reached Congressional ears, as Congress has in the past two years included specific language in OSHA budgets that prohibited the agency from implementing the standard, but no such language was included in the 1997 budget.

"We are also working on a standard for company safety and health programs," says Flemming. "It will be a baseline directive that will require that companies have certain initiatives in place as a minimum."

The agency is looking to base its safety program standard on the following features: management commitment, meaningful participation of employees, a systematic effort to find safety and health hazards whether they are covered by existing standards or not, documentation that any identified hazards are fixed and training for employees and supervisors.

COMMITTED TO REFORM

Despite OSHA’s efforts, every year more than 6,000 Americans die from workplace injuries, an estimated 50,000 people die from illnesses caused by workplace chemical exposures, and 6 million people suffer non-fatal workplace injuries.

These numbers are too high, according to OSHA, because many workplace injuries and illnesses are predictable and preventable. Just as OSHA is driving itself toward improvement, the agency says that workplaces, too, must make breakthrough improvements to reduce injury rates.

In the past, OSHA has been driven too often by numbers, with overzealous inspectors, burdensome rules and a one-size-fits-all regulatory approach.

OSHA’s task is to increase the protection of worker health and safety, while decreasing red tape and paperwork. It appears that the agency is heading down the right path.

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today.

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