During the more than seven years that Milken Institute School of Public Health Professor David Michaels spent leading the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), he spoke regularly to people in the media about issues related to worker health and safety. He has continued to share observations based on his decades of experience since returning to GW this January.
“I am concerned about occupational safety and health issues that are not being addressed by the current administration,” says Michaels, who was the longest serving Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health in OSHA’s history. “Our country’s workers help make us great, and I want to do my utmost to ensure that they are protected from job-related hazards.”
As an article in the New York Times pointed out, some of OSHA’s signature achievements under Michaels are being weakened and delayed, and other actions hint at a significant relaxation in the government’s approach to occupational safety. “The culture of the trade associations in Washington is to attack any new regulation as burdensome, even though the empirical evidence is that they’re easily met, they’re not burdensome and they save lives. But injured workers don’t have a voice in Washington. Trade associations do,” Michaels explained to the Washington Post.
In June, he was the first author of an editorial in Science entitled “The Dishonest Honest Act,” warning of the potential ramifications of legislation (the “Honest Act”) that could undermine the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) current and future rules on clean air, lead and drinking water. Earlier in the year, he told Marketplace radio “This is not an abstract discussion — people will die. Exposure to pollution kills thousands of people a year. We won’t be able to stop that.”
Violations that can lead to death
Manufacturing work issues that Michaels has recently commented on include issues with the oil and gas, automotive parts, and shipbuilding industries. Manufacturing violations at a new Chinese-owned automotive glass plant in Ohio include the kinds of issues that “can easily lead to amputation or even death,” Michaels told the New York Times. This led to his being interviewed about the plant on national television in China. He commented in an EnergyWire article pointing out that the upstream oil and gas industry has one of the highest rates of severe injuries in the country. He spoke with Bloomberg BNA about the factors leading up to the avoidable death of 20-year-old woman at automotive parts plant in Alabama, as well as with On Point radio for a spot about the downside of the state’s low-wage manufacturing boom.
In a recent episode of the PBS NewsHour, Michaels talked about troubling safety violations associated with contractors in the U.S. shipbuilding industry who are continuing to be awarded contracts to build vessels for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. (It begins at approximately 36:37, and includes footage with a recent EOH MPH alum.)
Delayed reporting rules
The articles quoting Michaels in response to the Trump Labor Department’s May decision to delay OSHA rules requiring firms to report injuries and illness electronically include these comments in the Washington Post: “We know by making injury rates public some employers will work to prevent injuries because they want to be seen as safe employers and they want be seen as good employers.” Michaels explained to National Public Radio that the rules affect millions of Americans employed in "everything from steel mills to poultry processing plants." He said “if you don’t record injuries, you can’t investigate them, and you can’t prevent the next one” to the American Prospect. He told the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal that: “because the secretary of labor is not allowing [OSHA] to post this website, it means tens of thousands of employers will be in violation of the law.” In The Hill, he argued that the government should continue to help workers learn whether potential employers are safe.
Michaels also wrote two opinion pieces about the impact of legislation overturning a different OSHA record-keeping rule on workers—and employers. He urged President Trump not to sign the bill in Bloomberg BNA. His comments in Forbes included the observation that “responsible employers who choose to keep accurate records and are committed to worker safety will be hurt.”
Michaels spoke to Huffington Post about the Trump Administration’s delay of a new rule for silica exposure finalized by the previous administration, which he called “the most important health standard OSHA has issued in decades.” He also attended a White House event where he explained the implications of rolling back a rule protecting workers from beryllium, and brought EOH MPH students with him.
Michaels raised concerns about the proposal in the Trump White House’s “budget blueprint” to eliminate OSHA’s Susan B. Harwood training grants. “The Harwood grants include very important training programs to reduce occupational illnesses, like grants that go out to train workers in nail salons and beauty parlors” on exposure to hazardous chemicals, he said in a Salon article. To Huffington Post, he said: “the program is tiny, but very cost-effective…. It’s for small employers and for workers, but especially vulnerable workers. I have no question [the grants] are very valuable and play an important role in protecting people.”
Achievements as OSHA head
An opinion piece in the New York Times discussed Michaels’ efforts during his time at OSHA to change agency’s chemical exposure limits, which are currently much higher than the guidelines set by the U.S. EPA. Bloomberg BNA gave Michaels a chance to respond to criticism about his foreign travel during this time at OSHA. He pointed out that very little of OSHA’s foreign travel came out of the agency’s own budget. For example, he was asked by the State Department and the Bureau of International Labor Affairs to help improve worker safety in developing economies, such as China, Michaels said. And the New York Times, in discussing OSHA’s issuance of a final beryllium standard, quoted an earlier Michaels statement “Once we finish, these workers will be protected and we will end the epidemic of beryllium exposure in the United States.”
Michaels is confident that his actions support what Americans want and need. As he said in a recent Bloomberg BNA opinion piece: “When the Pew Research Center asked Americans to evaluate the performance of the federal government, setting fair and safe standards for workplaces was the second most highly rated function. And the support was equally high at 75 percent or more among Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.” He has every intention of doing his utmost to continue to advocate for fair and safe workplaces throughout the U.S. In fact, by the time you’re reading this, Michaels will have been quoted about more important issues in additional news articles.