Department of Labor, Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health

Department/Agency: Department of Labor

Position:

Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health

Executive Schedule: Executive Level IV - Presidential Appointment with Senate Confirmation

Major Responsibilities:

Enforce safety and health standards in U.S. workplaces to prevent work-related injury, illness and death
Educate employers, employees and public at large about workplace safety
Partner with states on safety inspections
Develop new safety standards

Key Competencies and Preferred Qualifications:

Health and safety expertise
Labor law
Management duties in industry or government

Insight:

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) was created during the Nixon administration in 1970 to safeguard the lives of millions of American workers, from offices to factories to shipyards to construction sites. Its leaders point with pride to a record they say shows a 60 percent drop in workplace fatalities and a 40 percent decline in work-related illness and injury since OSHA came into existence. With only 1,100 federal inspectors available to keep watch on more than 7 million work sites, OSHA has always been stretched thin. Its budget is $485 million. Only one in 90 work sites gets inspected each year. No staff that small could possibly inspect every U.S. workplace, and OSHA has never attempted that. Instead, it relies on partner agencies in the States to do most of the front-line work. But critics, including then-Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, accused the Bush administration of falling down on the job and making regulatory decisions that placed business profits before workers' lives.

An deadly explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Georgia that killed 14 workers last February briefly injected the issue of workplace safety into the presidential campaign. That refinery disaster, the worse U.S. industrial explosion since 1980, was caused by a buildup of combustible dust. OSHA had drawn criticism for years from workplace safety experts for not setting stricter limits on combustible dust. At an August 2008 hearing, Obama said, "It's long past time that OSHA issue a standard to prevent these kinds of accidents, and if the agency will not do so, then Congress must legislate one as soon as possible. As I have said before, the Bush Administration's Department of Labor has used its regulatory authority to side with corporations over the public interest - even when its decisions undermine the spirit of the law and puts workers' lives at risk." As a senator, Obama also repeatedly called for more funding for OSHA to hire more inspectors and get to "more of the most dangerous workplaces."

From the start in 1970, OSHA encouraged its state counterparts to handle most of the front-line inspections and investigations and provided grants to help them do that work. The Bush administration proposed $91 million for state grants for 2009, the same amount spent in 2007.

OSHA's effectiveness is a problem of longstanding, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. The New York Times, in an investigation of OSHA's handling of workplace fatality cases, said the agency found 1,242 incidents of "willful" safety violations that resulted in workers' deaths from 1982 to 2002. "Yet in 93 percent of those cases, OSHA declined to seek prosecution," the Times reported. "At least 70 employers willfully violated safety laws again, resulting in scores of additional deaths. Even these repeat violators were rarely prosecuted."

Still, there were 5,488 fatal work injuries in the U.S. in 2007, the smallest number since the government in 1992 began an annual count of occupational fatalities. Forty-one percent of those deaths were on the highways or in other moving vehicles, including work equipment; 17 percent were killed by equipment or machinery, 15 percent died in falls, 15 were victims of assaults, and 9 percent were killed by exposure to harmful substances or environments.

OSHA's mantra is, in the words of former Assistant Secretary Edwin G. Foulke, that, that, "Even one injury or fatality on the job is one too many." In an October 2007 speech, Foulke outlined the agency's strategy to eliminate occupational injuries and deaths. "We work with science and engineering experts, with input from industry, to develop standards for safety and health in the workplace," he said. OSHA then enforces those standards "firmly and fairly," and designs tools and services to help employers keep their workplaces safe. "While preventing employee injuries, illnesses and fatalities is every business owner's legal responsibility and, I believe, a moral obligation," Foulke said, it "also makes good business sense."

Convincing employers that health and safety is, indeed, good for business is an important part of the OSHA administrator's job. Last May OSHA Deputy Assistant Secretary Donald Shalhoub cited many studies affirming the cost-effectiveness of preventing workplace injuries and death. Shalhoub directed employers to a calculator on OSHA's web site that can "estimate savings earned by preventing occupational injuries," both in actual medical bills and indirect costs. "This eTool reinforces the evidence of numerous studies that clearly show how productivity, profitability, strong safety and health performance, respect for employees, respect for customers, and social responsibility are all connected," Shalhoub said. But critics of OSHA say some businesses long have relied on their own calculus to shirk workplace safety measures that can save lives and spare needless injuries.

Now it will fall to President-elect Obama and his OSHA administrator to change that calculus for good and to prevent disasters like Imperial Sugar.

Key Relationships – Within the Department or Agency:

Organizational Chart

Secretary and Under Secretary
Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health
Assistant Secretary for Labor-Management Relations
Assistant Secretary for Policy
Solicitor
OSHA program directors
Regional office administrators

Key Relationships – Within the Government:

Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Department of Health and Human Services
U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
National Transportation Safety Board
OMB Associate Director for Human Resources
Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Disability Rights Section
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Key Relationships – Outside the Government:

Employers and trade associations
AFL-CIO
American Industrial Hygiene Association
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Society for Human Resources Management
State government workplace safety officials
Health care providers
Insurance industry

Nomination Referred to:

Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

Current Position Profile:

1. David Michaels (Confirmed: Dec 3, 2009). Former Professor, George Washington University's School of Public Health and Health Services. Former Department of Energy's Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health (1998-2001). Founded and directed the Epidemiology Unit of the Montefiore-Rikers Island Health Service, the first such unit in a jail in the United States.

Recent Position Profiles:

2. Thomas M. Stohler (Acting 2008-2009). Promoted from deputy assistant secretary for OSHA. Formerly a senior legislative officer in Labor's Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs. Former congressional aide. Lobbyist for high tech and construction industries.

3. Edwin G. Foulke, Jr., J.D. (2006 -2008). Labor relations lawyer. Former member and chair of Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. Chaired Workplace Health and Safety Committee for the Society for Human Resource Management. Member of U.S. Chamber of Commerce committee on workplace safety.

4. Jonathan L. Snare, J.D. (2005 - 2006). Commercial litigation lawyer from Texas. Labor Department deputy solicitor.