OSHA to publicly shame job safety violators

[Omaha Steve]

http://peoplesworld.org/osha-to-publicly-shame-job-safety-violators/

by: Mark Gruenberg
June 23 2010

PITTSBURGH (PAI) - The Occupational Safety and Health Administration "will use not just our normal inspection system, but regulation by shaming" against notorious job safety and health violators, its administrator says.

In a June 15 telephone press conference/emergency meeting in Pittsburgh on the issue with Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, OSHA Administrator Dr. David Michaels added that the targets of the shaming would be "those companies that aren't playing by the rules" on worker safety and health.

"We have every right to call the CEO of any company and tell them what we want, and we will," Michaels added. And he urged workers to report violations.

Gerard, Roberts and Michaels spoke at an emergency safety conference of oil workers the Steelworkers union called in Pittsburgh, after a string of fatal oil refinery accidents - even before the deep-sea BP well blew up - and after deaths of 37 coal miners so far this year.

Michaels said he has already called the oil companies' lobby on the carpet to justify its practices, after the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil well fire, explosion and sinking in the Gulf of Mexico almost two months ago. The blast at the mile-deep well killed 11 workers and has spewed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf in the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

FULL story at link.