Cooking The Books, Part IV: Partnerships and Underreporting -- 4 parts

[Omaha Steve]

http://spewingforth.blogspot.com/2006/09/cooking-books-part-iv-partnerships-and.html

Sunday, September 24, 2006
PERMALINK Posted 3:26 AM by Jordan

Cooking The Books, Part IV: Partnerships and Underreporting -- What It Means In California and Nationwide

Note: The entire four-part series can be read here.

In the last three installments of "Cooking the Books," we've described how KFM cooked the books by using "the carrot" to discourage workers from reporting injuries or illnesses, "the stick" to punish workers who do report injuries, how KFM's doctors and industrial hygienists collude with the company to ensure that injuries and illnesses don't get put on the Cal/OSHA Log, and how KFM benefits from the coverup.

Today, Part IV concludes the series by discussing how Cal/OSHA can't decide whether KFM's actions are good or bad, and what implications these underreporting has nationally.


Cal/OSHA: A Schizophrenic Enforcer/Defender

KFM’s creative accounting with worker injuries has been enabled by Cal/OSHA’s schizophrenic jumping between worker protector and employer defender.

Normally, federal OSHA would have jurisdiction over the parts of the job that were done on floating platforms. Federal OSHA would not give up its jurisdiction on work done on barges in the bay until Cal/OSHA agreed to.a “compliance assistance partnership” with KFM. Rick Rice, undersecretary of Cal/OHSA’s parent agency, defended the partnership in his reply to the scathing Bureau of State Audit (SBA) report by saying that “federal OSHA encourages them and expects State Plan states to engage in them.”

As guest-blogger ERM wrote in a series on recordkeeping problems last May,

Federal OSHA has been promoting voluntary partnerships for years, in an effort to induce companies to make safety improvements. OSHA lacks the resources to enforce everywhere, the reasoning goes, so the more it can encourage companies to comply voluntarily, the better for everyone. Being kinder and gentler to business is also in line with the political program of the Republican administration.

The compliance assistance agreement with KFM allows Cal/OSHA complete access to the work site, with prior notice to KFM, in return for KFM’s agreement to correct identified hazards found during a visit.

But a written partnership agreement, with explicit roles and rights for workers and their unions, was never formalized with KFM, which balked at signing any of the seven versions of the partnership text prepared by Cal/OSHA. Eventually Cal/OSHA gave up on a written agreement and has been operating on a “handshake” basis with KFM, but without any direct role for workers or any additional resources for monitoring the giant construction site.


FULL part 4 at link above.