Under Clinton's plan, OSHA fines on companies breaking workplace safety rules will be reduced or eliminated if errant companies put in place health and safety programs in consultation with their workers. Workplace inspections would also be reduced for these companies.
The plan is based on a two-year pilot project involving 200 workplaces in Maine. The project, in which 98 percent of the businesses opted to set up worker safety and health programs rather than pay penalties, resulted in "an extraordinary reduction in workplace injuries and illnesses," according to Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
"We're interested in prevention, not punishment," Clinton says. "It would suit me if we had a year in this country where OSHA did not levy a single fine, because if that happened, we'd have safer workplaces, more productive businesses, we'd be making more money with happier people going to work every day."
Robert Wages, president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, calls the Clinton approach "ridiculous," noting, "We've had joint committees in the oil industry since 1973, and we don't have a compellingly good record to show for it."
"I don't think there's a logical connection between taking punitive damages away and making workplaces safer," Wages adds. "It's just class-one pandering."
The plan was formulated as part of Clinton's "Reinventing Government" program, and in response to a Republican proposal to cut OSHA's budget by 50 percent.
"I am stunned and dismayed at th[is] catastrophic event," said Anglo Chair Julian Ogilvie Thompson in a May 12 statement. "My colleagues and I in the management of the Anglo American Corporation are determined to see that the cause of the disaster is vigorously investigated and that every aspect of the event is fully revealed."
South Africa has seen more mining disasters than any other country. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) estimates that, in 1994, 424 people were killed and 5,727 injured in 5,851 accidents. The South African Labor Ministry issued a statement following the Vaal Reefs disaster underscoring "the need for better health and safety measures" in the mines.
"We blame management for the negligence which caused the disaster," says National Union of Mineworkers President James Motlatsi. "At Vaal Reefs, safety shortcuts had become routine working practices in order to save time and to save money."
"We have been demanding the right of mineworkers to be involved in maintaining safety, safety inspections and training, but the companies have always refused."
Anglo denies the negligence charges.
The bill, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kansas, would require proposed regulations with an effect on the economy in excess of $50 million to undergo risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis to weigh the benefits of consumer protection against the industry costs of regulatory compliance before enactment. No government agency would be able to apply regulations if their costs outweighed their monetary benefits.
Critics have stressed the difficulty of quantifying the advantages of regulations and have decried the burden of tallying such costs at a time when Congress is cutting the funding of many government agencies.
Under the new bill, says Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook, "people will be endangered while faceless corporate entities flourish. The bottom line will outweigh the value of consumer safety ... more lives will be ruined and more lives lost as a result."
A statement by the Consumers Union said the bill "would undercut existing consumer protections and greatly retard the development of new protections."
Critics point to meat inspection standards as a prime example of how consumers would lose out under the bill. In January 1995, the USDA proposed a new meat inspection system to replace existing standards that have been in place since 1906. The new rules would protect consumers from contaminated meat by requiring procedures such as sanitizing animals with anti-microbial treatment, keeping meat properly refrigerated and testing for pathogens including E. coli and salmonella. Dole's bill would send the new meat inspection rules back to the USDA to be redrafted in accordance with new "regulatory reform" requirements.
"We know how to prevent the spread of E. coli, yet the Senate is about to weaken ... meat inspection techniques that haven't changed since the turn of the century," says Donna Rosenbaum, director and co-founder of Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP), a grassroots group of hundreds of families whose children have died or fallen ill due to E. coli poisoning.
"The regulatory reform bill would not block tougher health and food safety standards," Dole says. "The bill simply asks that agencies use common sense to avoid unnecessary costs when pursuing important goals such as health and safety."
- Aaron Freeman