With Workplace Safety, Cooperation Beats Confrontation
This week’s issue contains a story about a good example of regulatory overreach. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was sharply admonished by one of its own administrative law judges, who overturned a penalty levied against Tennessee barge builder Trinity Marine Products.
In 2015, OSHA inspectors cited Trinity over alleged safety and exposure violations. Trinity settled all but two items in the complaints, which alleged worker overexposure to a particular chemical. OSHA proposed a $5,000 fine for the two items. Trinity challenged them, arguing that under the law, it could have chosen either to ventilate the entire area or provide respirators; it chose the latter. If some employees apparently violated company policy by not wearing their respirators, the company had no knowledge of that conduct and was not responsible. It asserted “unpreventable employee misconduct” as a defense.
Ruling in Trinity’s favor, OSHA administrative law judge Heather Joy found that the agency hadn’t followed its own rules in assessing the penalty. It failed to specify how remedies could feasibly be enacted, failed to estimate their costs and failed to detail the benefits to be expected.
Unfortunately, it’s not hard for large bureaucracies to develop mission creep, unaccountability and an adversarial relationship toward those they regulate.
Stories like this illustrate one reason why the barge industry has always been anxious to have the Coast Guard, rather than OSHA, be the safety regulator of record on the water. While the relationship between the barge industry and the Coast Guard has not been without communication and other issues, it’s fair to say there has been much more cooperation than confrontation. The Coast Guard has been consistent in its stated desire to work cooperatively with the industry and with the third-party organizations with which it is sharing the regulatory burdens of Subchapter M.
Realizing regulation was coming, the barge industry began regulating and policing itself two decades ago with the AWO’s Responsible Carrier Program. RCP anticipated and influenced many of Subchapter M’s safety measures. That gave the industry the credibility it needed to work productively with the Coast Guard as it developed Subchapter M, and to challenge uninformed or unworkable requirements where necessary.
The results of that cooperation were reflected in the annual report on safety statistics released by National Quality Steering Committee’s in partnership with The American Waterways Operators (WJ, February 26). The report showed a dramatic decline in fatalities, injuries and spills over a 17-year period.
When it comes to workplace safety, cooperation beats confrontation.
