Whistle-Blower: Agency Tasked with Protecting American Workers Fails to Protect its Own

[Omaha Steve]

By Carole Bass, AlterNet. Posted July 27, 2008.

In less than an hour, Adam Finkel will be teaching a class on environmental risk assessment. But first, he's hustling off to audition for a tenor solo in Carl Orff's cantata Carmina Burana. The song, he explains, is the musical equivalent of a "dying swan: You basically stand there and scream for five minutes."

A cynic might say that's the perfect role for Finkel. He has spent the past five years standing up alone and screaming.


Adam Finkel. Photo: Joanne E. Booth

In 2002, Finkel was a high-ranking official at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency charged with protecting Americans from hazards on the job. Finkel was worried about hazards to some of OSHA's own inspectors, who faced the possibility of serious lung disease from exposure to the toxic metal beryllium.

He leaked the story of OSHA's refusal to offer the inspectors a blood test that would reveal whether they were at risk of disease. The day the article appeared, Finkel was essentially demoted. He filed a whistle-blower complaint, won a $500,000 settlement and left OSHA. Ever since then, he has been performing a long, loud solo protest aimed at getting the agency to do its job.

"Once I lived on lakes; once I looked beautiful, when I was a swan," the tenor bellows in Carmina Burana's "Song of the Roasted Swan." Then comes the chorus: "Misery me! Now black and roasting fiercely!"

But Finkel is an optimist, not a cynic. Although he's now in academia, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, he still believes that government can be a force for good. Despite his bitter experience at OSHA (which denies retaliating against him), Finkel believes "more than ever" in the agency's mission, proclaimed by Congress in 1970: "... to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the nation safe and healthful working conditions." He believes it is possible to blend good science and good politics, producing rules that protect workers. And he believes that, whether solo or in the chorus, Adam Finkel can still play a role.

What's Wrong With OSHA

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