NU Online News Service, Nov. 19, 3:00 p.m. EST

Since the 1970 enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), workplace injuries are sharply down, but compliance remains spotty and easily-preventable deaths continue, according to a Workers Compensation Research Institute report.

The report, written by Michael Silverstein, M.D., assistant director for Industrial Safety and Health in the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, is part of a compilation of 13 workers' comp reports, titled, "Workers' Compensation: Where Have We Come From? Where Are We Going?"

He stated in his report that since passage of the OSHA, the rate of overall workplace injuries and illnesses has declined from 11 per 100 full-time equivalent workers in 1972 to just over 4 per 100 workers in 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Mr. Silverstein, however, still questions OSHA's effectiveness and said the BLS survey methodology significantly undercounts workplace injuries and illnesses.

He noted that American workers continue to be killed by hazards for which inexpensive protective measures have been available and well recognized "for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years."

As an example, he said, every week one or more workers are killed in trench cave-ins. The three principle methods for preventing these cave-ins, he said are sloping, shoring and shielding, methods that are ignored, even though required by OSHA rules for almost 40 years.

Mr. Silverstein also said that evidence shows most workplaces are not fully compliant with OSHA standards. About 65 percent of OSHA inspections, he said, result in at least one violation being cited.

Since compliance with OSHA is built on an honor system, and the gap between OSHA's resources and responsibilities is "enormous," Mr. Silverstein said that "few workplaces being inspected, and when they are, more than half reveal violations."

Additionally, the process for regulating exposure to chemical hazards is "hopelessly inadequate," he said. While several attempts have been made to regulate chemicals in groups, these have failed to overcome legal, administrative and political barriers, he said.

With more than 70,000 chemicals in commercial use, OSHA has adopted comprehensive rules to protect workers from exposure to only 33 of these chemicals in nearly 40 years. Mr. Silverstein said in the past eight years, OSHA has acted on only one new chemical hazard, hexavalent chromium, and that rule was issued in response to a court order.

Furthermore, Mr. Silverstein said workplace risks and protections are spread unevenly and unfairly among workers. He noted that temporary, leased and contingent workers–a high percentage of which are immigrants–see substantially higher rates of workers' comp claims than permanent workers in the same industries.

Fatal work injuries among foreign-born Hispanic workers have nearly tripled in less than 15 years, he said. While this is in part because the numbers of immigrant workers has increased, Mr. Silverstein said it is also because they are concentrated in dangerous jobs.

Mr. Silverstein recommended a three-part strategy combining administrative improvements requiring only a "measure of political will."

Recommendations include:

o Taking full advantage of existing authority.

o Fine-tuning the OSHA act.

o Building a new paradigm, redesigning OSHA's relationship between government, employers and employees.

One way to do this, he said, would be to replace the current honor system with a system of accountability and leverage.

"We can and must do better, but we won't succeed by simply working harder or more energetically," he concluded. "We also need more creative and systematic changes that revitalize the way OSHA works."

The report can be purchased by contacting WCRI.

Story corrected to show WCRI as Workers Compensation Research Institute, not Workers Compensation Research Industry.

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