U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

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FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

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THURSDAY

SEPTEMBER 28, 2006

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ARLINGTON, VA

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The committee convened at 10:00 a.m. in room 2537-G on the 25^th^ floor
of 1100 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia, Assistant Secretary Edwin
Foulke, Jr., Chairman, presiding.

[Present:]{.underline}

EDWIN G. FOULKE, JR., Chair

W. COREY THOMPSON, Jr., Vice-Chair

CURTIS BOWLING

MILLY RODRIGUEZ

DONALD BATHURST

THOMAS GALASSI

DIANE M. BRAYDEN

SHELBY HALLMARK

RICHARD WILLIAMS

KEITH NELSON

ROBERT LEE MARTIN

VICKERS MEADOWS

JOSE GONZALES

[Also Present:]{.underline}

FRANK DENNY

JIM MEREDITH

SUEY HOWE

JENNIFER SILK

DAVID MARCINIAK

CATHY OLIVER

LAURA SEEMAN

[Attending:]{.underline}

RANDY ERWIN

BRIAN ROGERS

BILL TUMBLIN

W. CZAPLA

MICHAEL THOMAS

DAN GLUCKSMAN

MARVIN GREENE

JOAN FLYNN

MARIA A. JONES

SAMARA MOORE

TONY PIERPOINT

ALFRED POPE

SANDY GUCHES

LOUIS ROWE

ART KAMINSKI

ELLEN BYERRUM

BARBARA QUINN

SEAN CUSSON

MELISSA TERLEY

VENETA CHATMON

ALICE JACOBSOHN

BURL KELLER

LaVEETA MOTEN

WILLIAM BASS

MIKKI HOLMES

DAVID MARCINIAK

STEPHEN WALLACE

JIM STEVENS

LEWIS LIGON

LITA ARNOLD

JONATHAN MADDEN

OWEN GREULICH

STEPHEN ECK

MICHELLE WALKER

LAURA MILLS

I-N-D-E-X

Call to Order 5

Edwin G. Foulke, Jr.

Introduction of FACOSH Members 9

Introduction of Attendees 11

Council Organization and Procedures 20

Edwin G. Foulke, Jr.

Election of FACOSH Vice Chair 21

Approval of April 12, 2005 22

Council Minutes

Program Updates

GAO Audit on Federal Workplace 23

Safety & Health

Diane Brayden

SHARE Initiative 32

Edwin G. Foulke, Jr./

Shelby Hallmark

i\) Progress to date

ii\) Proposed Extension

(Question/Answer regarding SHARE)

iii\) Agency Recognition Program

Federal Agency Recordkeeping Change 64

Diane Brayden

Federal Agency Training Week 83

Diane Brayden

Pandemic Flu 94

Suey Howe/Jennifer Silk

Motor Vehicle Safety 121

Larry Liberatore

I-N-D-E-X (Continued)

New Business 129

Facility Systems Safety

David Marciniak

Program Updates (Continued)

Cooperative Programs 150

Cathy Oliver/

Laura Seeman

Additional New Business 177

Adjourn

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G

(10:09 a.m.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Good morning. My name is Ed Foulke. I am
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health
Administration. I want to say, first of all, thank you to each and every
member of the FACOSH Committee for being here today and agreeing to
serve. I know that you probably have other things that you could be
doing and probably have other duties that are always pressing, but we
deeply appreciate you agreeing to take time out of your busy schedules
to participate in this committee.

And this is a very important committee in that what we do here in our
\-- as part of \-- is helping to make sure that federal employees have a
safe and healthy workplace. Hopefully, what we do will allow additional
things, changes and best practices or whatever that will allow to reduce
injuries, illnesses and fatalities in the government. And that\'s really
an important thing when you think about it \-- the opportunity to try to
help allow \-- to do something that will actually help allow employees
and workers to go home each and every night back to their families safe
and sound. So it is an important charge, and I just want to say thank
you very much for agreeing to serve on this committee.

Also, I\'d like to recognize that the this is Labor Heritage Month, and
in recognition of that, AFGE Local 12 has provided coffee and donuts and
food for this meeting, so we deeply appreciate that, too.

The notice of today\'s meeting was published in the September 8, 2006
*Federal Register*. A copy of that notice is included in each of the
members\' packets along with a copy of the accompanying OSHA trade news
release.

The agenda which is in on the second page is included. That outlines the
topics to be discussed at today\'s proceedings, and copies are also
available for the other attendees in the audience. And I\'d like to
thank all the attendees that are here today for showing interest in this
important area, too.

Also in your meeting materials is documents relating to a program topic
which we will be discussing today as well as a booklet that we have been
asked to provide to you on emergency preparedness for individuals with
disabilities, and I think that\'s this right here (indicating) here at
the front of the desk.

Before we move on to the next item on the agenda, I\'m going to ask is
Keith Pendergrass here? There is back in the back there. Keith works
here at MSHA, and I must admit you all have a nicer view than I have at
down at 200 Constitution Avenue. Keith is going to go over the emergency
evacuation and shelter in place here at the facility.

MR. PENDERGRASS: Good morning, everyone. I am Keith Pendergrass. I\'m
with the Facilities and Property Management branch here. Welcome to 1100
Wilson Boulevard and to Mine Safety and Health. I\'m going to give you
first of all the two most important things, where to eat and the
bathrooms. They\'re next door, and you need a code to get into them, and
the code\'s are posted on the walls. As far as eating food, we have a
cafeteria down on the mall, and we have a couple of little eateries down
on the lower mall. And if you want to go to some place like Chipotle\'s,
we have that across the street. Blimpie\'s is across the street. And
McDonald\'s is just around the corner by the subway.

Now for emergency evacuations, if we should happen to have an incident,
there will be an alarmed sounded, an audible alarm, and they will tell
you to evacuate the building. The evacuation routes are both stairwells.
One is located just back here (indicating). When you go out, just turn
to the right, and you\'ll see a sign saying Exit. Take the steps all the
way down, and it will let you out right here on this side of the
building. Once you get outside, just cross the street to Rosslyn Plaza,
which if you look out the window, you can see it.

The second set of stairwells are right over here next to Strayer, and
they\'re to the left. Once you get passed the elevator lobby, just turn
to the left, and you\'ll see this exit for the stairwell. Take that
down, and that will take you to the same spot as this set of stairwells.
And then just proceed over to Rosslyn Plaza, check in with whoever is
over there, and let them know that you\'re here. If you have a list of
all the attendees, let them know that everybody is present, of if
anybody is missing or if anybody is still in the building.

As far as emergency holding rooms, the emergency holding areas are
within MSHA suites, and you actually will need a card key. But in case
of an emergency, there is someone who sits near both doors. Just knock
on the door, they\'ll let you in. There are two rooms, one on each side
of the building, and they\'re right as you go through the glass doors.

As far as shelter in place for this floor, we have one large library
that\'s also located in MSHA space. If we have a shelter posture 2,
that\'s where you would go to. In case there is a shelter in place,
posture 1, everybody will remain here. We just keep the windows closed,
and somebody will be up to give you further directions and see if you
need anything.

That is basically it as far as the evacuations. Usually, if it\'s a
fire, they\'ll evacuate the floor above and floor below. So if you hear
an alarm and it goes off on this floor, then it is for this floor. If
you do not hear it on this floor, then it\'s not for this floor, and
it\'s probably for the floors above us. In that case, everybody just
stays put. And I think that\'s it. If you have any questions, feel free
to ask and I\'ll let you know. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. Thank you, Keith. I appreciate it.

I think what we\'ll do first is to kind of start off by introducing each
of the members of the Council, and then also what we\'ll do, I\'d like
to have the other attendees here to introduce themselves, too. When we
get to that point. I think there\'s a wireless mic so we can record
this, we have a \-- what I\'d like to do is everyone, if you would,
please state your name, your official title, the organization you
represent, and for the Council members here, indicate whether you are a
member or you are a designated alternate.

My name is, like I said, Edwin G. Foulke, Jr. I am Assistant Secretary
of Labor for OSHA, and I am also, under the FACOSH charter, designated
the Council Chair.

MS. BRAYDEN: I\'m Diane Brayden. I\'m the Director of OSHA\'s Office of
Federal Agency Programs.

MR. HALLMARK: Shelby Hallmark. I\'m the Director of the Office of
Workers\' Compensation Programs, and I guess I\'m soft of the ex officio
member of the committee.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Why don\'t we go this way?

MR. THOMPSON: Corey Thompson. I\'m the National Safety and Health
Specialist for the American Postal Workers Union, and I am a member.

MR. WILLIAMS: Rich Williams, Chief Health and Medical Officer, NASA, and
I\'m a member.

MR. NELSON: Keith Nelson, Assistant Secretary for Administration at HUD,
and I\'m a member.

MR. MARTIN: Robert Martin, Assistant to the President, Organizing
Director of Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, and I\'m a member
of the Council.

MS. MEADOWS: Vickers Meadows. I\'m the Chief Administrative Officer at
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and I\'m a member.

MR. GONZALES: Jose Gonzales, Supervisor, Immigration Enforcement Agent,
and I\'m a member.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Thank you.

MR. DENNY: My name is Frank Denny. I\'m the Acting Director for
Occupational Safety and Health for Department of Veterans Affairs here
for Mr. Pittman who is a member. I am not.

MR. BOWLING: I\'m Curtis Bowling. I\'m the Director for Environmental
Radiance and Safety, Department of Defense. I am a member.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: I\'m Milly Rodriguez. I\'m the Health and Safety
Specialist of the American Federation of Government Employees, and I\'m
a member.

MR. BATHURST: I\'m Don Bathurst. I\'m the Chief Administrative Officer
for the Department of Homeland Security, and I\'m a member.

MR. GALASSI: Tom Galassi, Deputy Director, Directorate of Enforcement
Programs, not a member.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All right. Why don\'t we go ahead and start
in the back there, and just, you know, if you would just tell us your
name and your organization.

MS. WALKER: Hi. I\'m Michelle Walker. I am Team Leader in OSHA\'s Office
of Federal Agency Programs.

MS. MILLS: Laura Mills. Again, OSHA Office of Federal Agency Programs.

MR. LeGAINIER: Louis LeGainier, Office of Federal Agency Programs. I\'m
an Industrialist Hygienist.

MS. HOLMES: Mikki Holmes, Office of Federal Agency Programs.

MR. WALLACE: Steven Wallace, EHSD Program Manager, Treasury.

MR. VAND: I\'m Richard Vand, Director of Employee Safety and Health with
MSHA.

MR. STEVENS: Jim Stevens, Safety Director, Department of Agriculture.

MS. ARNOLD: I\'m Lita Arnold with the Transportation Security
Administration.

MR. GREULICH: Owen Greulich, Pressure and Energenics System Safety
Manager, NASA.

MR. ROHT: Louis Roht, Deputy, Safety and Health, National Park Service.

MR. MEREDITH: Jim Meredith, Safety and Occupational Health Manager,
Department of the Interior.

MS. GUCHES: Sandy Guches, Chief of Safety and Occupational Health for
Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior.

MS. CHATMON: Veneta Chatmon, Program Specialist, OSHA Office of
Communications.

MR. CHOPLA: David Chopla with Plexus Scientific and the Department of
Defense Volunteer Protection Program Center of Excellence.

MR. ROGERS: I\'m Brian Rogers. I\'m also with Plexus Scientific in the
DoD VPP CX.

MR. TUMBLIN: Bill Tumblin, Director of ESO Programs for Concurrent
Technologies Corporation and the Voluntary Protection Program Center of
Excellence for DoD.

MR. MADDEN: Jonathan Madden, Associate Counsel, Seafarers International
Union.

MR. DICKERSON: Marvin Dickerson, Disaster Safety Officer for FEMA
Occupational Safety and Health.

MR. PIERPOINT: Tony Pierpoint, Department of Homeland Security.

MS. BYERRUM: Ellen Byerrum, Reporter with BNA.

MS. TURLEY: Melissa Turley. I\'m a reporter with *Federal Human
Resources Week*.

MR. KELLER: Burl Keller, Supervisory Safety Specialist wit GSA National
Capital Region.

MR. MARCINIAK: Dave Marciniak, Safety and Health Manager for GSA.

MR. POLK: Alfred Polk with GSA.

MR. COSSEN: Sean Cossen, Government Affairs Coordinator of the VPP
Participants Association.

MS. QUINN: Barb Quinn, Contract Support for FAA Headquarters EI Services
Group.

MR. BASS: Bill Bass, Safety and Occupational Health Manager for the
Office of Surface Mining, U.S. Department of the Interior, and home of
the Superbowl champs.

MS. MOTEN: LaVeeta Moten with Department of Interior Office of Surface
Mining. I\'m Program Analyst/Collateral Duty Safety Officer.

MR. ALDRICH: Robert Aldrich, Office of the Solicitor, Department of
Labor.

MR. ECK: Steven Eck, Safety and Occupational Health Manager for the
Department of Justice.

MR. THOMAS: Michael Thomas, Federal Aviation Administration, Office of
Environment, Energy and Employee Safety Policy.

MR. KAMINSKI: Art Kaminski, Assistant for Safety, Health and Fire,
designated alternate for DoD.

MR. GLUCKMAN: Last but not last, Dan Glucksman, International Safety
Equipment Association.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Great. Thank you all very much, and I
appreciate you being here for the meeting. It was interesting \-- I\'ll
just kind of give you a little bit of background on myself. Let\'s see,
tomorrow I guess I\'ll have been the Assistant Secretary for six whole
months, so I\'m still kind of learning where everything is. But I\'ve
been involved with Safety and Health for about 25 years from a legal
perspective. And in the first Bush administration, two years in the
Clinton administration, I was the Chairman of the OSHA Review
Commission, so I have a little familiarity with the federal government
and workplace safety involving federal employees.

You know, it was interesting. Last week I was in China. I had the
opportunity \-- had the honor to get invited to come speak at the
Chinese Third International Safety and Health Expo. And they\'re just
kind of changing, kind of moving into the safety and health area, but
they are very much interested in what they\'re trying to do. And I met
with the government officials from what the call SAWS, which is the
State Administration for Work Safety, and this is the organization, I
guess, as close as you can get to as a counterpart for OSHA in China.
But they are very much interested in workplace safety and health for all
their employees and including \-- I talked a little bit since I knew I
was having this meeting this week \-- I asked them a little bit about
their open involvement with their government employees, and they said
they do take that very seriously and have been trying to work on it.

It\'s interesting to see the comparison, though. I mean they have such a
much longer history of civilization than we do. But, you know, OSHA\'s
been in effect now for 35 years. We\'re celebrating our 35th anniversary
this year. And, you know, in talking to the Chinese safety government
officials, they\'re very much interested in finding out what we are
doing in workplace safety and health, because they really want to learn
from us, and I think this will give us an opportunity, working on this
committee, maybe to provide them assistance and information that they
can use in making their government employees safe.

As a matter of fact, they are talking about coming over and doing an
educational tour in \'07 bringing some of a lot of their governmental
officials within their of with them to look and see what we\'re doing in
all areas of safety and health. So it was a very interesting dichotomy
there that even though they had a very old culture, safety and health is
kind of new to them, where safety and health, to a certain degree, is
new to us in that we\'ve only been doing it really, from the federal
perspective, from a federal law and a coordinated law, for 35 years.

But I think we have made great strides with respect to workplace safety
and health. In 1971, when we were instituted or when we started, there
were a little over 14,000 workplace fatalities countrywide. This past
year in \'05, we had 5,700 approximately fatalities. Now obviously
that\'s a significant reduction, but it\'s even more significant when
you recognize that, in fact, between \'71 and now, the number of people
in the workforce has more than doubled. But I think you would agree with
me that even though we have reduced the number of fatalities, just
having one fatality is one fatality too many. And we\'re going to work
very hard to continue to try to reduce that with the ultimate goal of
getting to zero fatalities in this country.

And we\'ve also had significant reduction in that 35 year period \--
we\'ve reduced injuries by 60 percent, and we\'ve reduced illnesses by
40 percent I believe. But once again, the idea is still that we have a
lot of people that are getting injured on the job and contracting
occupational illnesses because of their work. And so whatever we can do
here today to help reduce those numbers is a good thing and a very
important thing. So I\'ll say again, I appreciate and I want to thank
you again for your participation in the organization.

I guess at this time, I\'m going to spend a little bit and kind of do
some more housekeeping stuff, I guess, is the best way to describe it,
about the Council\'s organization and procedures and how it\'s organized
and how it functions.

In your packet, we have the FACOSH Articles of Organization, which
addresses all these areas. The Council is a 16-member body comprised of
an equal number of management representatives of federal departments and
agencies and labor representatives appointed by the Secretary of Labor.
This Council represents all new members appointed by the Secretary on
June 6, 2006 for terms of one, two and three years. These staggered
terms are meant to reestablish the continuality of the Council since the
terms of the Council members all expired simultaneously about last year.
As your membership expires, the succeeding members will be appointed to
a three-year term so that one-third of the membership will expire
annually.

The purpose of FACOSH is to advise the Secretary on matters relating to
occupational safety and health of federal employees. As I mentioned
earlier, I, as the Secretary designee chairs the Council and will call
and preside at all of our meetings. If for any reason, I am unable to
attend a meeting, the Vice Chair will act in my absence. The Vice Chair
is to be elected under the Articles of Organization by the members to
serve on an annual calendar year basis. This position will rotate
between agency and labor members. The office was last held by a
management on the last council, so only labor representatives are now
eligible to serve in this capacity. In a few moments, I will take a
formal vote to elect a Vice Chair.

Because of the unique relationship between OSHA and OWCP, I\'ve also
invited Shelby to participate, and as he noted, he is the ex officio
member of the Council, as he has done on preceding councils. And you did
a really good job, I understand, but, you know, so \--

MR. HALLMARK: Thank you, sir.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: We are required to hold at least two
meetings each calendar year including the annual meeting. And I am very
much committed to this. I know in the past, we\'ve had some problems on
a lot of the advisory committees on meeting, so I am very much committed
in making sure that the committees meet and that we meet at least the
minimum number that we\'re required.

To convene a meeting we must have a quorum of at least six members or
alternates with a minimum of three management and three labor
representatives. Alternates must be designated by the member, in
writing, to me as Chairperson, which we have previously requested from
each member.

The parliamentary procedures as outlined in the Robert\'s Rules of Order
will be followed at all meetings of the Council. Resolutions require a
majority vote by members or alternates in attendance.

Is there any question on the make-up of the Council or how it will
function by any of the members?

(No verbal response.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: At this time then, we will elect a Vice
Chair, and I would like to enter a motion to nominate W. Corey Thompson,
Jr. as the FACOSH Vice Chair. Mr. Thompson represents the American
Postal Workers Union AFL-CIO and has been an active member of the
Council in the past previously serving a three-year term. Because of his
dedication and commitment and proven leadership in the safety and health
field, the Secretary has appointed Mr. Thompson to serve a second
three-year term on the Council. Mr. Thompson has expressed a willingness
to serve in this capacity, and I appreciate you\'re willing to do that.

Are there any other nominees for the position of Vice Chair?

Hearing none, I would ask for a vote to say all in favor of Mr. Corey
Thompson to serve as FACOSH Vice Chair, please signify it by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All opposed, nay?

(No response.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: The ayes have it. Congratulations. Thank you
very much. I appreciate that.

Let the record show that W. Corey Thompson has been elected by the
membership to serve as Vice Chair of the Council for the calendar year
2007.

If you will turn to the Minutes. All right, the draft minutes of the
April 12, 2005 FACOSH commission were previously emailed to you, and one
modification was requested. An updated copy of the minutes is included
in your packet. Based on a staff review of the official transcript, I
attest that these minutes accurately reflect the discussion of the
Council at its April 12, 2005 meeting. Therefore, I will entertain a
motion that these minutes be accepted as written and incorporating any
other changes. First of all let me ask you, are there any changes to the
April 12, 2005 minutes by any Council members?

Hearing none, then I will entertain a motion from someone to accept the
minutes as written.

MR. WILLIAMS: So moved.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Mr. Williams, okay. Thank you. Is there a
second?

MR. GONZALES: Second that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Seconded. All in favor of approving the
minutes of April 12, 2005, please signify by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All opposed, nay.

(No response.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: The ayes have it. The minutes of April 12,
2005 have been approved.

With respect to program updates, we have seven program matters to
discuss today, and the first report we\'re going to discuss is the GAO
Audit on Federal Workplace Safety and Health. In April of 2006, the
Government Accountability Office, GAO, published a final report on how
OSHA can improve its oversight of federal agency safety and health
programs. I have asked Diane to talk to you about the GAO findings,
their recommendations, the OSHA Statement of Executive Action and
Response to their report, and anything else you want to talk about on
that. So I\'m going to turn it over to you.

MS. BRAYDEN: Thank you, Ed. I think many of you are aware that the GAO
did a rather extensive audit of the state of worker safety and health in
the federal sector. The audit was done because federal Workers\'
Compensation costs exceeded \$1.5 billion dollars in 2004 with
approximately 148,000 new claims filed that year. The audit was
initiated due to concerns both for the safety of federal workers and for
the costs associated with the unsafe workplaces.

This audit, I believe, took place over a period of about 18 months, and
in the course of the audit, GAO surveyed 57 agencies and found that most
reported having at least some activity in each of the six components
generally associated with good safety programs. These components include
management commitment, employee involvement, education and training,
identification of hazards, correction of identified hazards, and medical
management including a return to work program for injured workers.

GAO also found that agencies faced implementation challenges in the
areas of data management, accountability and safety resources. In the
findings of the report, they stated that many agencies do not have
automated systems to track employee training, and several agencies did
not hold their managers accountable for maintaining effective safety
programs. Many agencies also admitted that due to limited resources,
they often depend on safety officers with limited professional safety
experience.

The bulk of the report addressed OSHA\'s oversight of the safety and
health programs and policies in the government. The report alleged that
OSHA\'s oversight was less effective than it could be due to not using
enforcement and Compliance Assistance resources in a strategic manner.
There were four basic findings that they came out with. First, that OSHA
did not conduct a large number of inspections of federal worksites and
did not have a national strategy for targeting worksites with high
injury and illness rates for inspection.

The second finding was that OSHA did not track disputed violations to
resolution or refer unresolved disputes to the President.

Thirdly, it stated that reports on the status of safety and health that
are due to the President each year were overdue.

And lastly, it reported that OSHA\'s Compliance Assistance programs
designed to help agencies comply with its regulations and improved
safety were not being fully utilized.

In summary, the GAO stated that OSHA faces a number of challenges in
monitoring federal agency safety programs and, over time, has adapted
its methods to try to make the most of its resources. However, OSHA\'s
oversight could be further strengthened if it took a more strategic
approach says the GAO. It recommended that the Secretary of Labor should
direct OSHA to take certain actions.

First, OSHA should develop a targeted inspection program for federal
worksites based on the new worker injury and illness data federal
agencies are required to collect. They suggested that be done by
requiring the agencies to report summaries or relevant portions of that
data in their annual reports or by obtaining the data from the agencies
through period selected surveys.

The second recommendation was that OSHA should track violations disputed
by federal agencies to their resolution and ensure that the unresolved
disputes are reported to the President.

The third recommendation was that OSHA should conduct evaluations for
the largest and most hazardous federal agencies as required and to use
evaluations, inspection data and annual reports submitted by federal
agencies to assess the effectiveness of their safety programs and to
include that assessment of each agency\'s worker safety program and
recommendations for improvement in Department of Labor\'s report to the
President.

OSHA responded to that report in the following way: We found that
several of the weaknesses that were identified in the report had been
recognized by OSHA prior to the initiation of the GAO survey and plans
for initiating new approaches to enhance OSHA\'s effectiveness were in
various stages of development. Additionally, in some cases, there seemed
to be some confusion in the survey results which led to misleading
findings.

So OSHA responded to the three recommendations for executive action in
the following ways: The first recommendation had been to develop a
targeted inspection program. OSHA\'s Office of Federal Agency Programs
has been struggling for some time to develop a targeted inspection
program directed toward the most dangerous workplaces. We fully
recognize the need to do so.

The problem is that sources of data for injuries and for workplace
employment have been and remain incompatible. This makes the
determination of injury rates for individual worksites impossible.
Recognizing that there is a serious need for a national targeting
program, we have attempted to develop such a program which is presently
undergoing departmental review.

This program would be based on injury rates at the departmental level or
independent agency level, because we do have rates at that level. We
simply do not have rates at the individual worksite level. This process
would be a short-term fix to carry us over until we find a way to access
site-specific injury and employment data making it possible to
accurately identify and address the workplaces that are posing the
greatest degree of risk to workers.

The second gap noted by GAO, which was the failure to track appealed
violations, was largely due to misunderstandings. All notices of
violation that are issued to federal agencies are tracked in the same
tracking system as are the citations that are issued to private sector
employers. Therefore, if the data is entered properly into that system,
all notices are tracked as to status through appeal and to closure.

However, the appeal process for the federal sector does differ from the
contest process for the private sector, which apparently led to some
errors in data entry. Nevertheless, we did note that we could improve
our internal tracking of appealed cases within the Office of Federal
Agency Programs, which is the point at which the appealed cases go for
OSHA-level resolution.

So we have developed an internal tracking system so that as we receive a
case on appeal, we will enter the case into that system so we have a
very condensed, consolidated database to follow so we will know what we
have that we need to be addressing. So we did make improvements there.

The third recommendation by GAO was to conduct annual federal agency
evaluations. Due to staffing limitations, OSHA has not conducted full
scope field evaluations of agencies during the past several years. We
will be looking at the possibility of re-instituting agency-level onsite
reviews at some time in the future.

However, for the moment, we are enhancing our use of other tools at our
disposal to address this issue. In this regard, we have been working
diligently to increase the staff in the Office of Federal Agency
Programs and are pleased with the progress we have made during the
passed year.

In fiscal 2006, we brought one certified safety professional and two
highly skilled Program Analysts. My staff that is present here has
already introduced themselves, but Mikki Holmes in the red there and
Laura Mills are the two new Program Analysts that we have on our staff,
and they have really hit the road running and are doing a great job for
us at this time.

With this new challenge on Board, we plan to apply a significantly
higher level of analysis to the annual reports and where serious
deficiencies are identified, they will be addressed and noted in the
report to the President as was recommended by GAO.

Very shortly, the request for agency annual reports will be sent to the
DASHOs of each department and independent agency. You will find the
information requested this year considerably more extensive than what
was asked for in the past.

In addition to requesting the more specific data, including some OSHA
300 summary results, if they are available, we are also asking for
agency feedback on certain issues of interest or concern to allow us to
begin developing meaningful and practical methods of addressing more
fully some of the gaps identified by the GAO.

For instance, we will be asking about the manner in which the agency has
implemented the new OSHA 300 record-keeping and how that system is
managed. Is it an electronic system? What all can the system do? Would
you be interested in a common system for all federal agencies for the
accumulation of the OSHA 300-type data.

We are also asking for information about the agencies\' use of
volunteers and how the injuries experienced by that subset of employees
is being managed at this time.

You will be pleased to learn that the annual reports to the President
are current at this time. In an effort to maintain the state of
timeliness of the annual reports to the President that we have worked so
hard to achieve, the annual report request that goes out to the agencies
will be asking for your reports to be due by January 1st, which is the
regulatory deadline from 29 CFR 1960.71(a)(1). Unless we follow the
mandate in the Regulation, OFAP will not be able to conduct the analyses
we have committed to while still compiling the report and getting it to
the President by our deadline as prescribed in 1960.71(b).

In summary, OSHA has been working diligently to use the insight provided
in the GAO report to reinforce our support to the federal agencies and
to assure the federal employees the most safe and healthful working
environment possible. In this regard, you can expect to be asked that
more comprehensive and detailed information be provided in your annual
reports. Meanwhile, we will be working toward an efficient and effective
means of gathering establishment-specific information to be used as a
tool in focusing our enforcement and evaluation efforts.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Thank you. Does anybody have any \-- do any
of the members have any questions about the GAO report or OSHA\'s
response to that or anything we\'re doing on that?

(No verbal response.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: On thing I know we are trying to look to do
more federal worksite inspections, and one of the things that I\'ve
instituted among our regional administrators is going to be a flash
report which will indicate \-- give me pretty much, at least on a
monthly basis, the number of federal site inspections that we are doing.
And I do have the goal of basically trying to make sure that an
appropriate number, at least, of inspections of federal worksites are
conducted by our OSHA investigators. So, hopefully, you\'re going to see
a little bit more activity in this area and that that will also be
helpful to you.

The second report is dealing with the SHARE Initiative, which is the
Safety, Health and Return to Employment Initiative, and it goes by
SHARE. I think we got a little PowerPoint presentation there. Shelby\'s
going to help me. We\'ve actually done this a couple of times. As you
can see, the SHARE Initiative is a federal executive branch initiative
which was announced by Presidential Memo back in January 9, 2004. It was
intended to go through this fiscal year, and we have requested \-- both
Shelby and myself have made presentations to the Secretary to recommend
to the President that the SHARE Initiative be extended for an additional
three years, because, as the results that you\'ll see, I think, are very
impressive and demonstrate the worthwhileness of the program or the
initiative.

As you see, the emphasis is on the Return to Employment programs and it
ran through this fiscal year, and it basically establishes four goals,
two of which are under OSHA\'s purview and two are under OWCP\'s review.
The four goals are one, to reduce the total case rates by at least three
percent per year; to reduce the lost-time case rates by at least three
percent per year. The third goal was to improve the timely filing of
injury and illness notices by at least five percent per year, and the
fourth goal was to reduce the rates of lost productive days due to
injuries and illnesses by at least one percent per year.

And the SHARE goals are basically aligned with the President\'s
Management Agenda goals on human capital, and also aligns with the
Department of Labor Strategic Goals; one, to foster a quality of
workplaces that are safe, healthy and fair and to minimize the impact on
work-related injuries. And it aligns with OSHA\'s mission to promote and
assure workplace safety and health and to reduce workplace fatalities,
injuries and illnesses.

Under SHARE, the Department of Labor\'s role is first to lead the
initiative, also to provide assistance to all federal agencies, then to
also measure the performance of each department and agency against their
goal, and then to report annually to the President.

And going now to basically seeing where we\'ve been tracking the goals
here, the first goal, as I mentioned, the number one goal is dealing
with total case rates. And as you can see, the baseline for Fiscal Year
\'03 was about 4.25. In \'04, our goal was basically about 4, and we did
not meet our goal in \'04 for the entire federal government. On \'05, we
basically reached our goal. We were slightly above it, but just
basically we were very close to reaching it. And then \'06, we actually
have, through the third quarter, and based on the initial numbers that
begin for the fourth-quarter \-- as you can see through the first three
quarters of fiscal \'06, we are on track to actually meet our goals by a
fairly significant amount considering that we hadn\'t met the goals the
last two times.

With respect to goal number one, here it is by some, but not all, of the
agencies that we have on. And this is for Fiscal Year \'06. As you can
see, goal versus actual. And you can see, for the most part, almost all
the agencies, all the departments within the government, have met their
goals. I think you can see why.

One of the reasons we\'ve actually kind of \-- actually are going to
meet our goal and actually exceed our goal in case rates is the dramatic
increase that the Department of Homeland Security has done. They\'ve
done a yeoman\'s job on addressing their issues, and I think they
realize that \-- they went trough a lot of growing pains, and I think we
were pretty excited about the reduction there. But you can see where we
are, and we\'re going to keep focusing on all the agencies to continue
to reduce it government wide.

Our goal number two on lost time case rates, once again, we did not \--
we had a baseline of about almost 1.75 in \'04. In \'05, once again, we
did not make our goals. But as you can see for Fiscal Year \'06 through
the third quarter, and looking at the data we have on fourth quarter, it
looks like we will meet our goal federal government wide less the postal
service for Fiscal Year \'06.

Once again, with respect to goal number two dealing with lost time case
rates, these are the major agencies for \'06 goal versus actual. And
once again, you can see we\'ve done a good job of reducing our lost time
case rates, but we obviously still have some work to be done. So.

MR. HALLMARK: Okay. As Ed said, the third and fourth goals are monitored
by OWCP since they focus more on the what happens if injuries do occur
side. And it\'s important \-- and I\'ve spoken to this group several
times about SHARE \-- it\'s important to keep the two issues linked,
because obviously we want to stop injuries, and that\'s the whole point
of the safety program, but injuries will always occur, and it\'s
important that we take care of the individuals and make them whole when
they do occur.

The goal number three is particularly apt in that regard, but that\'s
focused on timeliness of submission of claims. One of the reasons why my
organization really wanted to have this goal included in the
Presidential Initiative is to address one of the issues that GAO talked
about \-- could in fact agencies be inclined to meet the goal by not
filing the claims, in effect by fudging the numbers, if you will.

This goal focuses on the fact that when a claim, when an injury occurs,
you must get the injury notice in quickly and that, I hope and I
believe, contrary to anything that GAO may have suggested, has resulted
in a tremendous improvement in this whole area. Agencies have gotten
their act together, and the data show it. About ten years ago, OWCP
started talking with the agencies about the problem of getting claims in
timely. At that time, the national average across all the agencies was
in the 30 percent range, 30, 35 percent. And that\'s within 14 days. In
our day and time, a completely abysmal product.

We started talking about that. The agencies started looking at their
processes. Many agencies have done a lot of work on this and have
reorganized different ways to try to get it done. And once the
Initiative has kicked in, you\'ll see that we\'ve made tremendous
progress, and I\'m really very pleased about this. We can go to the next
slide, Michelle.

This breaks it out by the individual agencies, and I would just note
here that, again, Homeland Security deserves a tremendous amount of
credit for the very substantial improvement there that they\'ve made
against the goal in 2006. I believe Homeland Security went to use of the
Department\'s SHIM system, which allows for an electronic submission of
claims. And that is a big help in getting these claims in quickly. It\'s
not the only answer, because obviously somebody\'s got to get that
electronic transmission going. But obviously it does help, and several
agencies that have gone electronic have improved. The Labor Department
uses, of course, it\'s own SHIMS system and continues to be the leader
on that particular measure.

The lost production day goal is a little bit \-- this is my favorite
goal, actually. Since I made it up, I like it. But I think the reason
why I really like it is because both the safety side of the house can
accomplish this goal by avoiding injuries happening in the first place,
so you don\'t lose days if the injury doesn\'t happen, and the FICA case
management side of the house can address it by making that process work
well and getting the return to work process going so that people are
made whole and get back to work quickly. So it\'s a really nice metric
that shows the integration of those two sides of the house, which don\'t
always talk with each other as much as we\'d like.

It\'s also a very difficult goal, because unlike safety, which can
address major areas across the board in broad management approach, case
management is an individual person-by-person activity, and it really
takes hard work and intensive focus. That\'s why this is, I think, the
most difficult goal, and it\'s one that\'s clearly been difficult for us
in the last three years under SHARE. The first two years, we didn\'t
make it at all. I think in \'04 a big part of that shortfall was the
startup of TSA and the difficulties that agency had in trying to get
baggage moved in airports that weren\'t designed for that kind of
activity. \'05 looked a lot better but still short and, again, as Ed
indicated, in Fiscal Year \'06 through three quarters, and we believe
this is sufficient margin to carry us through in the fourth quarter as
well, we are finally meeting the goal.

So that means cumulatively all four goals for SHARE look as if they\'re
going to be met, and that\'s a tremendous accomplishment and one for
which the folks in this room deserve credit.

Just breaking this out a little bit on lost production days by agency.
We have a couple that are struggling. DHS is still struggling on this
and that, I think, largely goes to the fact that at TSA and a number of
the law enforcement entities, it\'s very difficult to find return to
work and make that process happen. It\'s not impossible, and we\'re
certainly working with DHS, and they\'ve been working with us. But
that\'s a challenge. Justice has the same problem. Bureau of Prisons is
the major contributor to their shortfall. Again, a difficulty in finding
places for people to go back to work.

But most of the agencies are making significant improvements. I\'d like
to specifically cite the Defense Department, which has really done well
in this area and has a very effective program.

So that\'s sort of the rack up of the data and, Ed, if you want to talk
about these issues.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Why don\'t you go ahead.

MR. HALLMARK: What can DOL \-- DOL obviously, as Ed indicated, is the
entity asked by the President to monitor and lead the SHARE initiative,
and we in OWCP spend a lot of time and effort as we can in our
management structure to help on this. First of all, obviously to capture
the data that\'s used to track these accomplishments against the
metrics. And in my view, that\'s job number one, because if you don\'t
know where you are, you can\'t make improvements.

And I think at this time of the year, when we\'re all sitting down
trying to figure out whether we met our GPRA goals and our performance
goals for our personal evaluations, metrics become very important. They
also can become anxiety producing, but they are the reason why people
get better. Because you look at those numbers, and you have a clear
understanding of where you\'re reality is and you need to get better. So
we\'ve done that. We\'ve put it up on our Web site. We apologize that
our Web site was out of commission for the last several weeks due to
some serious security breaches, but it\'s back up now. Knock on
something. And we really encourage everyone to use that data.

Obviously, we also do a lot of outreach. OWCP and I know OSHA as well
have addressed inter-agency meetings that we convene, FEB meetings
around the country where agencies are getting together, joint management
union meetings where we can to try to get this word out. Because SHARE
and all of these goals are things that I think everybody on both sides
of the LMR fence can sign up to and work hard to accomplish. And that
is, I think, very important as well, and we feel strongly about that.

We do in OWCP, and I know OSHA does as well, workshops on how best to
train your folks to address these issues, especially in the difficult
FICA area for us. We try to get out and respond to requests from
agencies to get these training courses in so that their injury comp
folks can be up to speed, and we\'re continuing working with them on
that here through our national office folks and our regional staff.
Newsletters, training, technical assistance, all of those things are
available.

Ed, I don\'t know if you want to or Diane wants to expound on the OSHA
side of that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I think we can move on.

MR. HALLMARK: The next slide talks about the future. The President\'s
Initiative for 2004 through 2006 is over on Saturday. We believe that
the progress that was shown in 2006 especially makes it clear that it\'s
appropriate to continue this effort. We have made really good strides,
but if you look at the base numbers, they\'re still not acceptable.

We still have a very large number of injuries in the federal workplace,
and the lost production days number, which is how many days actually get
lost because of workplace injury and illness, per 100 FTD is about 52
right now. That means if you figure we have about 2 million employees
covered by this Initiative, that\'s roughly 1 million lost days every
year.

One million lost days, I would submit, is way too many, and in our view,
that suggests that we need to get this project extended and get those
targets out in front of us again so that we can, in fact, make further
progress. Ed, do you want to speak to that?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes. Well, we are definitely going to be \--
the Secretary \-- like I said earlier, the Secretary had requested \--
had made the recommendation to the President to extend the initiative
through FY \'09 basically maintaining all the 2003 baseline goals. Also,
as I indicated, the Secretary has forwarded it to the White House for
their consideration. Hopefully, they\'re going to \-- we\'ve been
pushing very hard. We sent that up a week ago or two, two weeks ago, I
believe to the White House and trying to see if we can get it finalized
in the White House and approved for the start on October 1st of this
year.

MR. HALLMARK: As Ed said, we\'re really trying to get this signed off
and out to the agencies quickly. Those of you who were around in 2004
know that the Initiative started in January which made it rather
difficult to charge ahead in Fiscal Year 2004 since most of it was \--
or a lot if it was already behind us, so we want to avoid that. We want
to make sure that people know that we\'re moving ahead and that this is,
in fact, going to be a continuing undertaking. I suspect most people
felt like that was probably going to happen, and I certainly hope that
the President agrees that it\'s appropriate.

The only things that we\'re really doing in terms of changes the goals
is we\'re making a couple of adjustments in goal three and four,
primarily aimed at avoiding sort of inappropriate results. In goal
three, we\'re putting sort of a cap on the top, and I\'m responding, in
part, to my own Assistant Secretary for Administration, who is unhappy
that if he has to keep making a 5 percent improvement of 98 percent,
he\'s going to have to go crazy. So we\'ve said 95 percent is an
acceptable cap, and I think that\'s a reasonable outcome.

But we\'re also saying that the 5 percent increase every year is not
enough for those agencies that are still down in the 30\'s and 40\'s.
We\'re proposing to set a minimum of 50 percent in 2007, so that, in
effect 50, percent timeliness is really not that hard, and anything less
than that is, in my view, completely unacceptable. And then we would
move that minimum up each year.

For most agencies, that\'s not going to come into play, because you\'re
already in the 70, 80, 90 percent range now, and that\'s fine. But there
are a few agencies that haven\'t really focused on this issue, and we\'d
like to send that signal that getting half of them in two weeks is
really not that hard.

With regard to goal four, lost production days; again, a lot agencies
that had very low injury rates are going to have a very difficult time
continually reducing those injury rates, especially the small agencies
that only have a few employees. So we\'re proposing to set a sort of a
base level of performance of 15 lost days as being a, you know, you
don\'t need to get better than 15 lost days and continually improve from
a level that\'s really quite good.

So those are the changes. They\'re really just tweaks to the metric as
opposed to anything fundamental. And that\'s what\'s on the table now
for the President to consider.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I don\'t know if any of the Council members
have any questions about the SHARE initiative. As you can see from the
data, clearly it has been successful. It is working and doing what was
envisioned that it would do when it was implemented. Once again, as I
mentioned before, we want to try to continue to move forward on reducing
our injuries and illnesses as best we can.

And one thing I will say from an OSHA standpoint, is that, of course, we
do have a lot of tools and resources that we can help provide to
agencies and departments within the government. I really sincerely want
to do that. I\'m probably going to be sending out a letter to, or maybe
the Secretary will, offering assistance to the departments and agencies
within the government, whatever OSHA can do to provide that. If you have
the opportunity to look on our OSHA Web site, I believe its one of the
best Web sites in the government in providing a lot of practical
information. We get a lot of complements from the private sector on
this. But we want to try to assist and provide whatever resources we can
to the agencies to further help them, first of all, achieve their goals,
which is important. But the more we can do in just overall reducing
injuries and illness even if we didn\'t have goals, we\'d want to
provide assistance in that.

I don\'t know if anyone has any questions about that. Yes.

MR. BOWLING: I just have a comment. I would like to work with Shelby on
the Web site on the way Defense is rolled up in goals three and four.
The Army, Navy and Air Force are now rolled up in the DoD total, and I
just think it would be a better presentation if we do that showing DoD
as all of DoD, including the services. So I\'ll work with you on that.

MR. HALLMARK: Certainly a reasonable notion, and I guess we\'ve never
done it just because history, but I think you\'re \--

MR. BOWLING: Right.

MR. HALLMARK: \-- I certainly approve of the notion right off the top.

MR. BOWLING: Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I would agree with that, because they got
guns.

MR. HALLMARK: Well, yes, they do have \-- they have persuasion.

MS. BRAYDEN: I believe one of the reasons that sometimes we don\'t
report that all rolled out together is because you\'re so huge that the
number becomes very large and so by breaking it down, we can fit you on
the chart with everyone else. But we can certainly take a look at that.

MR. BOWLING: Okay.

MR. HALLMARK: Well, I take it you\'re suggesting the summary would be in
addition to the breakouts of the \--

MR. BOWLING: Whatever works. I\'m open for discussion. We appreciate
just having the conversation.

MR. HALLMARK: Sure.

MR. BOWLING: Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes. And I would note, too, one of the
things that OSHA provides to \-- that we\'re trying to do more on with
the federal agencies is our Compliance Assistance programs. We have some
partnerships, I know, with the Army, and I think with some of the other
departments and also our Voluntary Protection Program, the VPP, which
basically is a recognition \-- is a program where we recognize basically
the best of the best.

I know we have three naval facilities, shipyards that are in the VPP,
and based on the calculations for \'05, they have determined that the
fact that \-- they believe that because of the fact that they were in
VPP, that they saved approximately \$2 million dollars last year in
Workers\' Comp cost, which is a tremendous amount.

I know Secretary Rumsfeld has been very interested in moving into this
area for the whole Department, not only from a standpoint for money, but
also I understood it was an issue of readiness that really piqued his
interest in trying to find out what would be the best \-- how to get
into programs that are going to help reduce injuries and illnesses and,
clearly, fatalities. And so I would recommend to you \-- and I\'m hoping
we\'re going to provide \-- like I say, again, we\'re here to provide
assistance.

These programs, this Compliance Assistance programs can be extremely
helpful and beneficial and, like I say, reduce injuries and illnesses
but also at the same time save your agency a fairly significant amount
of Workers\' Comp. We\'re just talking three facilities saving \$2
million dollars in Workers\' Comp costs. That\'s a tremendous amount of
money.

So if you don\'t know about the VPP or our partnerships in there, then
we\'d like to talk to you about each. And I think that\'s something
we\'re going to try to do this coming year, really make a conscientious
effort to sit down with every department, every agency in government and
talk a little bit about what compliance assistance, what additional
things we can do for you so. Any other questions? Yes.

MR. NELSON: If you have them, we\'d be interested in seeing any of other
agency\'s statistics on \'06 through three quarters that weren\'t listed
here on the slides.

MS. BRAYDEN: If you access the OSHA Web site, we do have raw number
within the OSHA Web site. And then we also link to the ESA Web site,
which gives the rates and the goals and who\'s meeting what goals. And
you have access to all the data there.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay.

MR. WILLIAMS: Yes. Just one comment, question. The comment \-- we at
NASA have embraced the VPP \--

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I\'m sorry. You\'re right. You have. Yes.

MR. WILLIAMS: We\'ve got \-- several of our centers participate with
that program. We\'ve found it very useful, and thank you for that
program.

The second thing is kind of a narrow question. You may have eluded to
the answer, but could you shed just a little light on the challenges
within the Department of Homeland Security and why those data are so
markedly different. TSA and bag handling, is that the main reason or?

MR. HALLMARK: That\'s a big one, and obviously that\'s one we\'ve been
focusing. It\'s not the only issue, because you have Border Patrol and
other kinds of \-- a lot of law enforcement, and recently in the news,
Air Marshals. There\'s a lot of people who are at risk in high-risk kind
of situations. The baggage handling, however, is particularly difficult.
It brought 60,000 employees in a very short period working in 400
airports that didn\'t have any kind of real provision for them. And
lifting 75, 100 pound bags and twisting and turning is really a
prescription for back injuries, and so that, I think, is the major cause
for the spike in 2004. I don\'t know if you wanted to \--

MR. BATHURST: Yes, there\'s a couple of things with that. A, as said,
we\'ve threw a lot of these \-- one of the unintended affects of the
establishment of the department was we actually put a lot of hazardous
types of occupations together, and the baggage issue, and the TSA
screeners, both on passenger lines and in the baggage screening lines,
they trend consistent with private sector work. Again, it\'s the
lifting, twisting, turning type of injuries, and we\'re working, you
know, both on the design of the equipment and, you know, how we can move
that stuff long, but those are longer term solutions. Plus getting
people back to work is a bit of a challenge because of the type of work
and the rotations of \-- you can\'t just put someone on an x-ray machine
all the time, because you\'ve got to give them a break from that or
you\'re going to end up with other problems.

The other thing is with \'03 base. It\'s a little bit of a challenge for
us because we came into existence in \'03, and it\'s very hard to match
exactly a lot of our components into the base, especially when we were
established, a lot of the legacy organization actually got split into
multiple organizations, so the numbers don\'t exactly tie to what our
current organization is. So probably in aggregate, it\'s a little bit
better, but when we try to break it down internally, it\'s a little bit
harder to track that data.

And then, of course, on the law enforcement side, we\'ve got most of the
law enforcement activities in the federal government, and I would say
some of the most active law enforcement. And my tours on the border,
amazing as to how many arrests, apprehensions, gun battles, scuffles,
vehicle accidents really in very, very inhospitable environments.

You know, we\'re very happy with the focus we have both on our vehicle
work, law enforcement work, our aviation programs, but we can always
improve, and we\'re certainly trying to redouble our efforts.

MR. HALLMARK: The fact that the injury rate has gone down is tremendous
and obviously, as Ed said, is one of the reasons why we\'re meeting the
goal \-- if it\'s not the primary one. We appreciate that.

MR. BATHURST: That\'s one of the reasons we didn\'t meet the goal as a
government, you know, force, so we try to bring it back.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: My wife\'s bag is the one that\'s marked
forklift only.

MR. BOWLING: I\'d just like to give another commercial for VPP, and I
thank you for the kind words on what the Department of Defense is trying
to do. We have five installations that have reached the Star status and,
as you say, we\'ve seen, you know, increases in the number of accidents,
in injuries, reduced Workers\' Compensation cost, improved the safety
culture. And I think we\'ve recognized that as a real key to where we
want to go with our safety program in the future. And I want to thank
OSHA and their support in helping us do that. At the introductions, you
heard three gentlemen introduce themselves as a DoD VPP Center of
Excellence, and that\'s a group that has stood up to help us move
forward on VPP in a broader scale in the Department of Defense.

We looked at 43 sites in FY \'06. We did the GAP analysis and the action
plans to kind of get them ready to become part of the VPP program. That
included the Pentagon, which I think is a great undertaking. The
Pentagon is a huge office building that has all sorts of activities, not
only from office space, but it has package handling; it\'s a heliport;
it\'s got law enforcement; it\'s got a whole bunch of functions that you
normally don\'t see in an office building plus it\'s huge. So we think
that\'s going to be, as the corporate headquarters, kind of the keystone
of what we want to do in the safety program.

In \'07, we\'re probably going to do another 40 sites to get them
started. And as I said, I think we\'re looking \-- this is really the
way we\'re going to change the safety culture in the Department of
Defense and really do the right thing for the people who work in our
installations and office buildings.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: And I would note for those who are not
familiar with the VPP program, in the private sector, the companies, the
facilities that are in VPP, their lost time injury rates are 50 percent
below the industry average as a total average, so clearly the proof is
in the pudding, and it\'s there. And I would say, to kind of put a plug
for OSHA, we actually have had three sites, three of our area offices
are in VPP, so we are walking the walk, I guess, is the best way to say
it. As a matter of fact, last night at midnight, I signed our fourth
one, the Chicago office, a big area office, is going to be in the VPP,
so.

The results are actually just tremendous and, like I say, we\'re here.
We have the people here to help you get into that and provide you the
assistance, to show you how we can help you get your facilities across
the country into the program, so we\'re happy to do that.

Anything else about the SHARE Initiative? Yes, Corey.

MR. THOMPSON: Let me just add, of course, the Postal Service is very big
into partnerships and VPP. I think we have 80 facilities with 78 of them
getting star. But from a union perspective, let me just give you a
little idea, because I know you all deal with that, is it\'s been
fantastic. We\'ve seen incredible reductions in injuries and illnesses
that we have seen, we\'ve seen a reduction in lost time. So it\'s a
win/win. And I definitely would say to anybody that has an idea of doing
this that I would be happy to talk to you about it from the labor
perspective or how you might approach those things. So we\'ve been very
happy in coordination with our ergonomics program. We\'ve seen even
greater reductions, so it helps your numbers.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: And we appreciate that. I mean the Post
Office has been really one of the leading forces on VPP in the federal
government, and I think they\'re committed to getting something like
34,000 facilities in the VPP. Probably won\'t do that this year \--

MR. THOMPSON: Next year.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: \-- but the following year, they should be
close to it, but anyway.

MR. HALLMARK: Just as a footnote to this, the total claims we expect to
have for this fiscal year will be less than 140,000, which is still a
lot, but it\'s the lowest number since 1973 or thereabouts. So that
suggests to me that these programs are working, that SHARE is helping,
and this is the second year in a row we\'ll have like an eight or nine
percent reduction, and that\'s really good news.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: A question for Shelby on follow-up with agencies, that
you might, you know, qualify as poor performers. What happens? I mean
certainly the numbers will show you that, but what kind of follow-up is
there from your office or even from OSHA\'s end?

MR. HALLMARK: Well, we have tried to work directly with agencies where
we see there are significant problems on lost days and on timeliness.
Timeliness is rather difficult, because it\'s kind of spread. Right now
it\'s now kind of moved to the smaller agencies where it\'s, you know,
we run into people who just, you know, have system problems and other
things. I\'m open to somebody, you know, to request or suggestions about
how to address that, and anybody here from the State Department, we\'re
always looking for improvement on State\'s results on that score.

As far as lost production days are concerned, as I\'ve said, it\'s a
very intricate and difficult goal. And I think it\'s frustrating,
especially in light of the reduction in the total number of injuries
that the lost days isn\'t going down in a sort of lock step. It is going
down, but it\'s not as dramatic. And that really gets to this sort of
one person at a time process that is involved in getting people back to
work. And, as I said, we provide help. We\'ve talked with TSA, and I
believe there\'s a pilot operation going on about coordinating their
efforts with safety people and nurses with our nurse process to try to
get the best results. Hard there when you have, you know, these job
duties that are really extensive and bump up against somebody who has a
surgically repaired back and just can\'t do these physical activities.

So, you know, that breaks you down to a sort of agency by agency,
workplace by workplace, person by person effort. And certainly one of
the things that I would say today is agencies that think they would like
to hear from us, that would like to hear some of the best practices and
suggestions about how to do these rather difficult lost \-- return to
work activities, just give me a call, or, you know, my folks. My number
is 202-693-0031, and we\'ll get you to somebody who can help.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes?

MR. ROWE: Are you taking questions from the participants?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Sure. Unless you get out of hand and then
\--

MR. ROWE: Have Michelle drag me off.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: That\'s right.

MR. ROWE: My name\'s Louis Rowe, National Park Service, and we only have
about 25,000 employees, so we\'re relatively small. But we have 390
sites geographically located all over the nation, and most of our sites
are smaller sites where they\'re not SES. The superintendent might be a
GS-12. And as much as possible, we\'re shoving the SHARE goals, and we
think SHARE is great, and we\'re putting those goals right down into
those performance appraisals for those individuals as well as key staff
at those parks.

We would love to see the goal language correlate with what the OSHA 300
summary now says, because that superintendent and staff can pull up
anytime during the year information out of our electronic system, which
is OSHA 300 now. So we don\'t see recordables, and don\'t see DART on
the SHARE goals. What we see are lost time cases, and we see total
incidents.

But for my people that are very technically competent, they say you know
there\'s a difference in the way those are calculated. We say, yes, yes,
just ignore that. But for those that are less sophisticated, they say,
well, I\'m being graded on one thing, but I\'m looking at something else
at my own site, so what does this mean to me.

So it would be good to have DART and recordables in the language on the
SHARE goals in the future so that as we put those down to those sites,
that superintendent, that division chief can look at that and say, yes,
that\'s what we\'re looking at folks, pull it up for our division, this
is where we\'re at, got to work harder at it.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. That\'s a good suggestion.

MR. ROWE: The second thing that we would comment on is that the annual
report that will be due January 1st is going to require us to put data
together that\'s \-- with an annual year now, a calendar year that
closes on December 31st, because we\'re not longer doing the old
record-keeping system. We\'re now on a calendar year OSHA 300
record-keeping system, and my last OWCP data dump where I correlate my
data against OWCP doesn\'t come in for about a month, month and a half.
So I won\'t have all my data to give you a good report until somewhere
around the middle of February. And when we used to have that fiscal year
report, that was fine to hit a January mark, but now that we\'re on a
calendar for the OSHA 300 system, that\'s going to be very difficult for
me to give you good data as I still have things coming in from OWCP.

MS. BRAYDEN: Okay. In response to that, your annual report is a fiscal
year report. It is not a calendar year report. Now we understand that
your OSHA 300 data is recorded as an annual year, so when we go out and
we ask, we know that we cannot get good OSHA 300 data from all of the
departments.

What we\'re going to try to do is find out what we can get and what
impediments you have to providing that kind of information to us. It is
very important that we get that information at some point in some way,
but we have to find out how we can actually accomplish that, and what
works for you, what kind of systems you have in place that you can use
to get us that data. And with that feedback, then we can develop systems
and processes within our office to work with you to get the data that we
need so that we can manipulate it and use it in a positive way.

MR. ROWE: Well, we\'re fully on board with you. We want to do everything
that we can to make our own programs better. I just wanted to make sure
you know that a big piece of that report we won\'t have until 40 days
after you\'ve asked for this report to be due, so just to keep that in
mind.

MS. BRAYDEN: Okay.

MR. ROWE: Thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes.

MR. DENNY: Just a cautionary note. I know that everybody\'s talking
about this data and cost, but if you push it down too far, then your
lower level managers have a tendency to concentrate on the final data
numbers rather than improving the program, and the manipulation of the
data becomes the driver as opposed to the outcome, which is why we\'re,
within the VA, are tending to use the data at a national level, perhaps
even at an administrative level. But insofar as holding our managers at
the facility level accountable, we\'re looking at performance measures
that are in the process area rather than the outcome area.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes. I know that\'s something that OSHA\'s
always been concerned about in the private sector about incentives and
goals and everything else like that \-- are the numbers being somehow
skewed or not everything being reported or whatever, because clearly we
want to have accurate data, and we want to have \-- the intent of the
system \-- the intent of the initiative is clearly to help reduce
injuries and illnesses in the government. So I understand where you\'re
coming from on that, too. Any other questions or any other comments?
Okay. Thank you.

I think the Secretary has said that she wants to establish a program to
formally recognize some of the more notable performance accomplishments
of the agencies and meeting the SHARE Initiative goals. And I know OSHA
and ESA and OWCP are working together to explore ways to develop such a
program, and we\'re going to keep you apprised as we work through that
development process.

The next report that we have is dealing with federal agency
record-keeping changes. I know we have two more reports that we want to
try to get finished before we break for lunch, so our next report is
going to be on the federal agency record-keeping changes, and Diane\'s
going to give an update on the status of the changes on the injury and
illness record-keeping requirements that took place for federal agencies
effective on January 1st of \'05.

MS. BRAYDEN: Now as you all know, the federal government did adopt a new
method of recording injuries and illnesses experienced by our employees
that became effective January 1st of 2005, so we\'re now well into our
second year under this new system. This new system is nearly identical
to the system used in the private sector. There are a few nuances that
are different because of special things that apply to the federal
sector.

During the past year, a great deal of training and guidance has been
provided to assist agencies in their transition. I addition to the many
speaking engagements we have participated in, information is posted on
the Office of Federal Agency Programs Web page. We hope to update that
page in the near future to expand the Frequently Asked Questions
regarding the record-keeping and also to create so me special links
designed to funnel the federal agencies more directly to the guidance
that will be most useful to them.

On that page, you will also find a link to a video that was produced by
the Veterans Administration with OSHA and post office participation.
This has been distributed to the DASHOs and the Safety and Health
Councils as well as to the OSHA area offices. At this point in time,
most of you should be far enough into the change to maybe not need that
basic information anymore, but for anyone who feels that they need go
back and get a grasp on what the differences are and what actually
happened there, you might want to go back and access that video. It is
available on the Web site and can be very useful in guiding you through
what the change is, why it came about and what the basic differences
are.

Although the federal and private industry record-keeping regulations are
nearly identical, one of the differences has to do with the recording of
injuries and illnesses experienced by volunteers. In the private sector,
you don\'t have a lot of volunteers in your workforce. The people who
are working for profit-making entities typically are getting a salary.
That\'s part of the deal.

With the federal sector it\'s quite different. We have hundreds of
thousands of volunteers that work with us regularly. They work in all
different kinds of capacities. Some work even full-time without
compensation. Some work in office environments, but others work in the
field where they have as much exposure to hazards and injuries and
illnesses as our paid employees do. So it\'s very important for us to
make sure that we are tracking the injuries and illnesses that are
experienced by this section of employees, and they are employees in the
federal sector as defined in Part 1960.

MR. HALLMARK: They\'re also eligible for FICA.

MS. BRAYDEN: Right. They\'re eligible for compensation which is also
probably different than what is in the private sector. In the 1904
regulations as they apply to the private sector, it specifically states
in the preamble that their volunteers will not be included in the
record-keeping. In the federal sector, we do need to include them in the
record-keeping because in the definition of employee, volunteers are
included under all aspect of 29 CRF 196, the safety and health programs,
and record-keeping is a component of that regulation. So we do need to
keep track of the injuries and illnesses to volunteers.

Now we are still kind of feeling our way through this, and we are
anxious to get feedback from you about how you think that can best be
implemented. If there is some way that you think we should be specially
tracking them separate from the others or making a notation when the
injury or illness is being experienced by a volunteer. This kind of
information is important to us, and so this is some of the information
that we\'re asking for in the request for the annual reports from the
agencies. We want to hear back from you what kind of experiences do you
have: What do you have for volunteers in your workforce; what kind of
work do they do; do you have an idea of what the injury/illness
experience is with this group of people.

We have made some initial inquiries of a couple of the departments to
find out what it is they\'re doing. We are trying to get a sense of
what\'s going on out there, how is this being managed at this point in
time. One of the departments that we reached out to was the Department
of the Interior, who has a high level of interest in this topic. Jim
Meredith is here from the Department of Interior. He has asked to
address the Council on this issue. Jim is the SHIMS Manager at DoI. Jim,
would you like to speak?

MR. MEREDITH: Good morning. I\'m here on behalf of Kathleen Wheeler, the
Interior designated safety and health official, and I appreciate the
opportunity to be able to speak with you a few minutes today. I did want
to talk to you about this issue, which is very important to the Interior
Department, regarding the accounting for and including of work hours
specifically for volunteers and the calculation of agency injury and
illness rates.

I do have a statement here which I don\'t know if you have that in your
packet or not, but I\'d like to read it into the record for you.
(Reading) The Department of the Interior is the nation\'s principle
conservation agency. Our mission is to protect America\'s treasures for
future generations, provide access to our nations natural and cultural
heritage, offer recreation opportunities, honor our trust
responsibilities to American Indians and Alaska Natives, and our
responsibilities to island communities, conduct scientific research,
provide wise stewardship of energy and mineral resources, foster sound
use of land and water resources, and conserve and protect fish and
wildlife. The work that we do affects the lives and experiences of
hundreds of millions of people annually, including visitors, land
owners, farmers, ranchers, employers, communities and other
stakeholders.

Interior is a large decentralized agency with over 70,000 employees
located in approximately 2400 operating locations located across the
United States, Puerto Rico, U.S. territories and freely associated
states. Each year the Department attracts some 200,000 volunteers that
help care for and are sharing in the stewardship of our public lands and
natural resources. They contribute their time and talents to a wide
array of volunteer duties including assisting staff with scientific
experiments, data collection and clerical assignments. They also serve
in many areas of resource management and recreation.

We estimate the dollar value of the hours contributed by volunteers in
2005 to be at nearly \$162 million dollars, but their value goes much
further than that. The volunteer workforce has proven to be an important
adjunct to the federal workforce assisting with hundreds of programs and
projects. They bring fresh energy and enthusiasm, new ideas and skills
that energize us all. Retirees and older volunteers find an outlet for
their knowledge and their expertise. Younger volunteers gain job
experience. Volunteers come away with a deeper understanding of the
breadth and complexity of the Department\'s mission, and the Department
is reminded of the depth of the public support for public lands and our
missions.

DOI agencies take many precautions to protect volunteers. We include
training, personal protective equipment and placement into positions
where they are physically and mentally prepared to succeed. Even so,
upon occasion, a volunteer is injured while working for Interior.
Official volunteers are directly supervised by government employees and
are covered under FICA. These volunteer injuries are included in the
OWCP injury and illness case totals reported to BLS, and injuries and
illnesses are logged at the installation OSHA 300 logs as required by 29
CFR 1904.

While Interior agencies with active volunteer programs do compile
records of volunteer hours, the Department of Labor does not currently
collate or include the work exposure of volunteers when publishing
injury and illness rates for federal agencies and for the Safety, Health
and Return to Employment, SHARE, Initiative. Since volunteer hours are a
significant portion of some agencies overall work exposure, including
volunteer accident cases without including volunteer exposure hours
results in inaccurate and, we believe, higher injury rates with the
implication that the agency\'s safety experience is worse than it
actually is.

For example, this is an example of our exposure. In 2005 we had just
short of 9 million volunteer work hours, and that amounted to about
6-1/2 percent of our combined volunteer and employee work exposure. The
National Park Service, it\'s an even more significant portion in their
case, about 5.2 million hours, and that amounted to about 12.7 percent
of their combined work exposure. So you can see from our standpoint,
this has a significant impact on our programs and on any rates that
might be reported.

While this correspondence represents only the viewpoint of the
Department of the Interior, other federal agencies, particularly those
with resource management responsibilities similar to the Interior such
as the U.S. Forest Service, are facing the same issue. We also
understand that other agencies like VA and FEMA have very, very large
volunteer exposure.

The Department of the Interior requests that the FACOSH ask that the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Bureau of Labor
Statistics take this issue into consideration. The Department is
prepared to take part in any effort to more accurately quantify injury
and illness rates and looks forward to the resolution of this problem
(end reading). And that is the statement that I have. I\'d be happy to
take any additional questions. I also have, like I said, Louis Rowe,
from the National Park Service and Sandy Guches from the Bureau of Land
Management, both agencies which have very large volunteer programs.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Are there any questions from the Committee
members?

MR. DENNY: I noticed in your presentation that you used the term hours
worked for calculating your volunteers. Is that true?

MR. MEREDITH: We collect on an annual basis \-- unfortunately, that\'s
the best we have at the moment \-- on an annual basis, we do calculate
\-- we do collect hours, and we \--

MR. DENNY: So you calculate the number of volunteers by the number of
hours worked?

MR. MEREDITH: That\'s correct.

MR. ROWE: We calculate both ways. We know the number of volunteers and
the number of hours that volunteers work.

MR. DENNY: Because that would be a little bit different than the \--
would that be different than the way you are calculating for your
employee injury and illnesses since many times federal agencies use FTE
as a mechanism and go through OPM to do the calculations?

MR. MEREDITH: We are fortunate. Our electronic database allows us to
capture employee work hours through our payroll system so that we do
know \-- based on payroll, we know how many hours. So within the
Department, we do our injury and illness calculations based on hours of
work exposure.

MR. DENNY: How do you report that to OSHA?

MR. MEREDITH: Well, we track what \-- you know, like I said, that\'s
what we have, and I think in our previous annual reports, that\'s the
information that we \-- that\'s how we have reported it.

MR. DENNY: You report is as a calculation under hours?

MR. MEREDITH: Yes.

MS. BRAYDEN: As far as the SHARE program works, because we don\'t have
accurate employment data for volunteers, when we get the OWCP injury and
illness data, we subtract out the injuries and illnesses that were
experienced by volunteers, so that data is based only on paid employees.
And the reason for that is the employment data issue.

MR. MEREDITH: Okay.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Anything \--

MR. DENNY: Just to continue on. I\'m sorry. I\'m just trying to figure
out how this is going to \-- do you calculate them out separately
insofar as whenever you report volunteers versus employees or do you mix
them?

MR. MEREDITH: To be honest with you, I don\'t really have an answer for
that. To the best of my knowledge \-- I mean we would like to report
them. Obviously, we feel that because \-- in a general rule, we don\'t
want to put volunteers perhaps in some of the more hazardous
environments that we may perhaps have some of our full-time employees
in. You know, if we included those, it does, you know, from an
accounting standpoint, it makes our organization rates look better. But
again, that\'s not what it\'s really all about.

MR. GALASSI: Jim, as you well know, from a safety and health
perspective, the OSHA record-keeping system, one of its big purposes is
so that the site safety and health person has that information so that
they can use it a as a form of hazard identification. And I think you
just said that \-- is there an effort to make sure volunteers are not in
the more hazardous types of activities? Are there hazard assessments
they do to ensure that they\'re lowered hazard jobs or things of that
nature? Because it is a very important tool to identify where the
hazards are and what actions to take.

MR. MEREDITH: I think that\'s a case of the journal. I may defer that
question back to Sandy or Louis who are more directly \--

MS. GUCHES: Sandy Guches with BLM. At least for our Bureau, we have a
volunteer manual that states specifically what volunteers can and cannot
do, and they are not allowed to do things like fight wild land fire or
do hazardous materials and hazardous waste kinds of activities. And
there\'s, you know, a list of those things. And we train our managers
and supervisors and volunteer coordinators accordingly.

And Bureau of Land Management has been heavily involved in risk
management in the last few years, and risk assessments are completed for
these kinds of jobs. And so we do train our employees and our volunteers
exactly the same way, but our volunteers do not do hazardous duty in
accordance with our policy. And even the OPM definition of hazardous
duty, they are not part of that.

The one thing that is important to know is that the volunteers, they
often don\'t have a regular schedule of work. There might be, you know,
100 volunteers for this trail building or this trail cleaning, so it\'s
really hard to use a calculation. It\'s important, I think, to use the
hours that they\'re actually working for us because of the way that we
utilize them \-- campground host for a month in one place. They might
more over to a forest service campground in another area.

MR. ROWE: The Park Service has a multitude of sites, 390 sites now, and
we have a full range of exposures for our employees. And we don\'t
prohibit volunteers from doing many of the jobs in the parks, but we do
match the volunteer age, skill, experience, physical condition, mental
condition, situation awareness to the job.

Now I\'m not handing a pistol to a volunteer and saying you\'re working
a border patrol park now, and you\'ll be stopping drugs coming across.
But that same volunteer might be getting into a helicopter to do part of
an animal study with three scientists, the helicopter crashes, we lose
four people. So we try not to put volunteers in hazardous situations,
but as soon as you get off the road in a park like Yosemite in the
wintertime, you may be in a situation that\'s hazardous even though we
have hundreds of thousands, or in this case literally millions, of
visitors that do the same thing.

So we assess the hazards, Tom, but we are not always able to say we
can\'t expose every volunteer to every hazard, because there could be a
moose right next to the superintendent\'s office that is in rutting
season and gores a volunteer that\'s walking in to deliver the mail, and
those kinds of things happen. But we do assessment as much as possible,
and we try to match the volunteer to the job.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. Thank you. Any other comments?

MR. HALLMARK: I had just a quick comment. I assume the way the SHARE
system works is that FICA claims are identified as volunteer and that
OSHA withdraws them from the counts, so that you\'re injury rate is only
figured on your actual government FTE. Obviously, I applaud, and we
talked a little bit earlier about the question of inappropriate
incentives, and I applaud the notion of making sure that volunteer
injuries are being tracked and that safety activities are being directed
in their way. And I know that as the Director of OWCP, from
time-to-time, I\'m made aware of new groups of volunteers that are added
by one agency or another. Recently the Commerce Department \-- I don\'t
know if there\'s from anybody from there now here \-- added a very large
component of volunteers, boaters, who are involved in documenting
situations with respect to water levels and so on. They\'re out there no
in a federal worksite, presumably not frequently managed, not
supervised. So that\'s a challenge that agencies have to make sure that,
in fact, there is a program, that somebody\'s paying attention to it,
and that when injuries occur, somebody takes care of them.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Did you have a question?

MR. DICKERSON: More sort of a comment. Yes. My name is Marvin Dickerson
with FEMA, and because this kind gentlemen evoked our agency name, I
thought it was appropriate \-- the fact the volunteer issue is a
national issue. It is an issue where you surely don\'t want to defeat a
person\'s volunteerism, but at the same time, obviously there has to be
some standards or some guidelines established for that. In FEMA, we have
an agency called VOLAG in which we try to filter people through but is
indicative of Hurricane Katrina \-- there\'s a disaster that I just come
back from New Orleans \-- actually worked down in Louisiana for the last
year \-- the number of volunteers are overwhelming.

And so I\'m thinking that maybe perhaps at this forum, it might be an
excellent place to talk about maybe OSHA or some other agency chairing a
national \-- to spearhead a national effort to start making sure that
volunteers who do volunteer for various agencies understand that there
are certain prerequisites that are needed for them in terms of safety
equipment and safety protocol when they get into a disaster or get to an
area like the Department of Interior. Because when people really want to
volunteer to do something, they\'re doing it out of the goodness of
their heart or out of patriotism or whatever, and you certainly don\'t
want to stymie that.

But I found out \-- or at least I\'ve learned down in the New Orleans
during the initial phases of Hurricane Katrina \-- that people were
streaming in droves, and they were determined to want to add value to
the process, but they were not prone to want to hear or listen to any
kind of guidelines talking about the safety equipment that you may need
or the safety way in which you need to address certain issues. And so
there were some people who were turned back and some people who were
filtered to VOLAG.

But I think that the country probably needs to make sure that whenever
an event occurs or a disaster where volunteers are headed to, that the
country, if it\'s an incident of national significance or a major
incident, that somewhere we need to have some vehicle to let the
volunteers know that we really appreciate them participating; however,
there are some very important things that they have to do before they
get there, whether it\'s a hurricane or whether it\'s volunteering to go
into the national parks.

I don\'t think that we have the national capability to look at
volunteers without stymieing their interest at the same time helping
them to understand that they\'re volunteers and could also add to injury
to themselves. And we surely, in my organization, we couldn\'t go out
and address the volunteers, those that were not going through VOLAG, but
yet they were adding value to the process. And I think volunteerism in
this country, especially during the last couple of years with the
hurricanes in Florida and then this Katrina thing, was up very high. But
yet you find people wanting to make the John Wayne entrance, if you
will, and they\'re not concerned about the need for understanding the
safety issues that may be prevalent there.

And so then when you start looking at the record-keeping issue, it
becomes another problem because if you\'re not going to get them to
adhere to the principles or the tenets of what constitutes being in an
area and being safe, then surely, you know, you start looking at how
does that impact your Workers\' Comp or how does that affect your
program overall.

I think my suggestion basically is that maybe perhaps there should be a
national effort to talk about volunteerism in general and set some
established guidelines on what volunteerism is, especially if it\'s in
an area where they\'ll put themselves in harms way.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I would note on that issue, we actually had
some frustration as an agency, because we had a number of grants that
were given, emergency grants, training grants that were given
specifically to help train workers in Louisiana and in the Gulf region.
And the grants are written such that it talked about training of
employees.

And basically, as I understand it, we actually have gotten a legal
opinion on this thing and said, no, employees are employees, they\'re
not volunteers, and, therefore, they were precluded from technically
receiving that training. As I understand it, basically what we did was
we would hold training courses for employees, and if some other people
happened to walk in, we weren\'t going to throw them out.

But that just shows you right there, once again, we were limited on \--
because there were a lot of volunteers that wanted to receive safety and
health training and how to handle \-- to recognize the hazards that they
were going to be placed in. So it is a problem and something we probably
need to do, have a serious look at how we can address the whole across
the board issue.

What type of training do you do with your volunteers when they come up?
Do you do safety and health training for them or?

MR. MEREDITH: I think to a large degree, we probably provide much of the
\-- similar training that we provide our regular employees. Again, I
might defer if you guys have any additional comments, but I think we
provide them with a general orientation that we would provide any new
employee. We would include them in any of our ongoing safety and health
training we provide employees ranging from some, you know, training
specific to an activity that they might be involved in to perhaps even
being involved in the regular employee toolbox meetings, safety
meetings, any orientation and training that\'s provided for any special
activities that they might be involved in, including, you know, activity
hazard analyses and things of that nature. So to my knowledge, we
provide them much of the same, if not the same training that we provide
our regular employees.

MS. BRAYDEN: This is all the type of information that we knew that we
need, and we recognized that particularly FEMA would have some very
different volunteer issues than say the Smithsonian or the IRS that may
have people assisting with people doing their taxes. So the type of
volunteerism out there is far reaching and very much varied. And so
that\'s why in the annual request for the agency annual reports, we want
this kind of feedback so that we can understand more fully what the
challenges are for the various agencies out there, and then find a way
to work through this issue and work through it with you, so. Thank you
very much.

MR. MEREDITH: We certainly appreciate that. Like I said, it\'s an
integral and a growing part of our work accomplishment and mission
accomplishment, and we\'re looking forward to providing you input in the
annual report and also to working with you to help better address this
issue. Thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Thank you.

MS. BRAYDEN: Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Do you have some other comments?

MS. BRAYDEN: While we\'re still on the area of record-keeping, I did
want to also speak a moment about the issue of OSHA 300 data collection.
This is an issue that definitely needs to be addressed and was not
initially taken on when the record-keeping requirements were changed.
The GAO, as I have noted, has already strongly and appropriately
recommended that this data be used to identify hazardous worksites and
to assure that these most hazardous worksites receive the proper
attention and assistance from OSHA necessary to protect their employees.

The GAO had recommended that we either request this data through the
medium of the agency annual report or through special periodic surveys.
As has already been pointed out, it\'s difficult to get that data with
the annual report because of the timeframes. The annual report is done
on a fiscal year basis. The OSHA 300 data is collected on a calendar
year basis. So there is a bit of a disconnect there. I\'m not certain
that that will be a very effective way of getting timely data unless we
back off nine months before \-- you know, if we get it a year late.

The periodic survey suggestion might be workable if we can find a cost
effective and efficient way to do that.

Other ideas have been put forward about developing a database that could
be made available to the various agencies whereby we could collect \--
they could manage their OSHA 300 data concurrent with their OWCP claims
filing. There a number of such systems out there now. The Department of
Labor has the SHIMS system that does this sort of thing, and some of the
other major departments have also developed electronic systems for their
own departments where they enter their injury data, it is also funneled
into a system to do the OSHA 300 record keeping.

We\'ve had a number of parties approach us on this. Some are private
entities that would like to have a contract to develop such a system.
Some are existing systems. And then we\'ve also been approached by
various internal organization such as NIOSH and BLS who believe that
with some of the software that they already have in place and which they
are using to manage this type of data for the private sector, that
perhaps we could use this \-- we\'d have to do some additional
development \-- but use this to collect the federal data as well where
we could come up with data that is establishment specific, with
establishment being under the definition of OSHA\'s establishment which
is different than sometimes how agencies report to OWCP. And we can get
their injuries and their employment data together, understand where that
establishment is and then actually use that in a way like we do for the
SST program for the private sector. So that\'s something we\'re looking
at.

And in the request for the annual report, we\'re going to be asking you
there also, what do you think of this; would such a system work for your
agencies; do you have an opinion about that. And then with your
feedback, we can take that into consideration as we move forward to try
to figure out how it is we can move forward to collect the data that we
absolutely need to have.

And that\'s about all I have on record-keeping unless someone has a
comment on the OSHA 300 data collection issue.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. Thank you, Diane and Jim. I appreciate
your presentations. I see it\'s noontime. I think since we\'ve been
meeting for two hours, it would probably be a good time to take a break
for lunch. Would 1:15 be enough time for everybody to do what the need
to do and eat also and whatever. Well, we\'ll just stand adjourned \--
recessed until 1:15 and return to here. Thank you.

(Whereupon, off the record for a lunch recess.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I\'m going to reconvene the FACOSH committee
meeting. Our next report is on federal agency training. As some of you
may know, or maybe all of you will know, each year the OSHA Training
Institute sets aside a week of training dedicated exclusively for
training federal agency personnel, and I\'ve asked Diane to kind of give
us an update about the federal agency training week.

MS. BRAYDEN: Thank you, Ed. As reported, the GAO audit, many agencies
admitted that they depend on safety officers with limited professional
experience as a result of their limited resources. In addition, there is
a very wide use of collateral safety officers to support the safety
programs overseen by the few full-time professional safety officers on
staff. There seems to be a well-recognized need to enhance the skills of
the personnel in the field that can make a real difference in our safety
and health programs on a day to day basis.

OSHA makes a Web based collateral duty course for other federal
agencies, course number 6000, available to federal employees from all
agencies free of charge. The duration of this course is 23 contact hours
broken up into one hour segments on a wide variety of topics, some of
which address discrete types of hazards and others which provide
foundation and administrative safety topics such as the OSHA Act and
Standards and how to conduct inspections and write inspection reports.

It is essential that the collateral duty personnel complete this course
to provide them with at least a limited background to pursue their
collateral duty safety and health duties. However, for the use of the
collateral duty safety officers to be truly effective, additional
training is needed.

As you probably know, OSHA has been setting aside the one week each year
at the OSHA Training Institute specifically for training federal
employees who are involved in safety and health activities. In the past,
this event was held in June and afforded federal employees an
opportunity to take one 3-day course on a single topic. These courses
were fairly in depth and provided a good background on the topic area
that the student was studying. However, this format may not have been
ideally suited to the collateral duty officers who need training over a
wide variety of topics rather than a very in depth study of a single
topic area.

In an effort to assist the agencies in preparing the collateral staff to
be effective in their roles as on-site safety and health monitors, OSHA
is offering training week this year from Tuesday, November the 16th
through Thursday, November the 18th with what we believe will be a new
and improved format. We will now be offering a menu of half-day courses
over the three days providing students an opportunity to select up to
six seminars of interest from a wide variety of safety topics. That\'s
six topics per person. The seminars will be provided on 12 topics
covering general industry safety, construction safety and industrial
hygiene areas.

The courses or seminars that we offer will include respirators,
emergency response, general construction, demolition, scaffolding,
electrical safety, fall protection, ergonomics, fire protection,
lockout-tagout, safety and health management and introduction to
industrial hygiene.

Four seminars will be offered concurrently during each half-day period,
and each topic will be offered twice during the week making it easy for
the students to schedule a combination of courses best suited to their
individual needs. The announcement for this training week opportunity
will be coming out hopefully within the next few days, and the courses
are offered free of charge, and course registration will be completed
online making it very convenient.

Again, there is no cost for these courses. The agencies would pay travel
costs, but we think that by providing a wide variety of topic areas that
the agencies may find this training to be more cost effective, because
the collateral duty officer will get training for six topics during the
week rather than just one.

Are there any questions about that?

MR. NELSON: Any costs?

MS. BRAYDEN: There\'s no tuition fee. Only travel costs would be covered
by the agencies.

VICE CHAIR THOMPSON: Are the courses geared towards introductory type
courses, or are they geared towards those that may have some experience
in the fields or?

MS. BRAYDEN: It would be expected that the student would have had the
basic collateral duty course so that they would have a basic foundation.
These are condensed versions of the full scope, the full size OSHA
courses that are usually \-- they\'d condense them down into shorter
periods.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes. You might want to say your name again
just so it will be on the record.

MR. ROWE: Louis Rowe, National Park Service. Thank you so much. That
sounds like a brilliant concept, and we would love to take advantage of
that. How about we take that out to the ten regional offices over a
year? We\'ll even chip in funding.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Did you get that on the record?

MR. ROWE: We are all over the nation, and it\'s hard to bring everybody
together in one place like that, but if we could do that in ten regions
over the course of a year, that would be extremely valuable. Just a
thought.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: That\'s a good thought. We\'ll see if we can
work on that. Okay.

MR. GALASSI: Interesting, Louis, as you say that, we, I guess, you know,
following up on the GAO report and to start looking at our offering of
training, we are starting to explore, and it\'s just very exploratory,
what opportunities there are to expand on collateral training and that
kind of model. And I understand some of the agencies such as the VA have
some ongoing laudable training for collateral duty, and actually it\'s
sponsored by AFDE that they put on once a year. They train about 250 to
300 of their employees. And we participate formally every year. And I
don\'t know if there are other agencies that do something like that, but
it certainly is an area that I think all agencies need to focus on. And
OSHA will provide assistance, you know, where we can.

MR. ROWE: We\'ve been using distance learning technology, satellite
broadcast uplinks, that type of stuff. We reached about 5500 people last
year with safety classes that range from two to six hours in length.
There are sometimes technical difficulties with making a class like that
last too long, but we would love to take advantage of OSHA resources,
broadcast those everywhere, and those are digital signals. They can also
be turned into analog signals, so that anybody that has a receiver can
receive that type of signal at distance type events and worksites all
over the nation, including places like Joe\'s Bar in Montana which we
once used as a training site and sent a signal into so that BLM and
Forest Service and Park Service could get training in that remote site.
But we would love to maybe talk about collaborating where we could share
resources like that, get some expertise, and the broadcast those. And we
also turn those into DVDs so that sites that cannot get access to the
training can still have a DVD and use that part of safety committee
training or collateral duty offline-type training. Difficulties in
controlling who participates, in keeping track of who used it, but there
might be ways that all of the agencies could make better use of some of
your people.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I like that. Yes, that\'s a good idea. Okay.
Thank you. Any other questions or comments? All right. The next report
is on pandemic flu, and I\'m sure you\'re all aware that we have a new
national effort involving OSHA and its federal and state partners
involving pandemic flu. Working through the leadership of the White
House, the federal agencies are prepared for effective, coordinated
response to a possible flu pandemic.

For nearly a year, OSHA has been examining workplace safety and health
concerns related to that. Committees of OSHA employees have developed a
group of guidance documents that focus on recognizing and combating the
hazards of a pandemic in the workplace. These documents, which will be
published very soon, will suggest changes in the workplace in the
private sector and government that can reduce the spread of influenza.
These guidance documents will also recommend procedures that employers
can put in place to continue to operate during a pandemic. Naturally,
protection of federal employees and continuing federal government
services is of paramount importance.

We have with us today, I think, probably the two top experts at the
Department, Suey Howe, from the Department of Labor\'s Office of
Assistant Secretary for Policy and Jennifer Silk who is the Deputy
Director of OSHA\'s Director of Standards and Guidance to speak on this
topic. So do you want to take it away.

MS. HOWE: Thank you Assistant Secretary Foulke. My name is Suey Howe,
and I\'m the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of
Labor. The Policy Office in Labor has been coordinating the
Department\'s involvement in a coordinated, planning and response to
address pandemic flu. We\'re working closely with the Homeland Security
Council. We\'re also working closely with colleagues at HHS, CDC, the
VA, Department of Education, DHS, USDA, Commerce, Treasury, you name it.
It is truly a coordinated and government-wide effort.

My comments will be brief. They\'re going to focus on some contacts,
providing some contacts and also emphasizing the importance of planning
to ensure that federal employees are protected and that continuity of
operations continues in the event of a pandemic.

First, as background, it\'s important to understand the different types
of flu that can be discussed. Seasonal flu is an annual event. People
get flu shots. About 36,000 Americans die each year from the seasonal
flu.

Avian flus are also normal events. However the H5N1 variety of the avian
flu is of great concern, because it\'s very lethal and causing death in
poultry populations and wild bird populations around the world. It has
infected humans who have close contact or direct contact with infected
birds. So there\'s great concern could that avian flu, the H5N1 mutate
to become easily transmissible between humans and lead toward a
pandemic.

A pandemic is, of course, a global disease outbreak. It\'s an influenza,
in the case of flu, that would cause more severe disease and spread
widely across the globe. The critical aspects of a pandemic flu are that
it\'s a new virus, the population has little or no immunity to it, which
is why it spreads. There are so many people who are susceptible to it.
There is no vaccine, and it causes serious illness and death. And
because it\'s easily spread person-to-person, it can span the globe,
cross the country in a short period of time.

Now this slide shows a comparison. We\'ve had three pandemics in this
century. Not all pandemics are of equal severity. It could be a mild or
moderate pandemic. In here using moderate disease transmission modeling
and looking at past pandemics, there\'s an estimation that 30 percent of
the population would be affected. And if it was a mild to moderate
pandemic, like 1957, the potential deaths in the United States would be
200,000. However, if it\'s a severe pandemic along the lines of the 1918
pandemic, you could approach 2 million deaths.

Most of the federal planning efforts are focusing on the severe
pandemic, because not only would it cause a significant amount of
illness and death, but significant disruptions to our economy and to our
lives. Next slide please.

And this again is another slide focusing on the severe pandemic. The CDL
estimates that 4.75 percent reduction in the U.S. GDP could result from
such a severe pandemic. Implications for a severe pandemic, I\'m sure
many of you have read about or are hopefully incorporating in your
planning as departments are preparing, is the fact there would be
extensive absenteeism. Forty percent is the number that\'s given.
That\'s anticipating not only those who are sick themselves, but are
home caring for sick members of their family or staying home due to fear
and are afraid to go to work.

Essential services may be disrupted, in part because of the absenteeism
in their own work places. The healthcare system could be overwhelmed
exceeding its surge capacity. Banks, stores, restaurants would all have
to alter their operations to make sure that they\'re not providing
opportunity for the disease to spread across their workforce and with
their customers. And transportation and food deliver and other essential
services could be disrupted.

Social distancing is an important strategy that\'s being discussed.
School closures would be likely for certain durations. Large gatherings,
community meetings and gatherings would also be discouraged, all in an
effort to tamp down the virus, to reduce the number of people who become
ill, and also as a means of making sure we can sustain our economy and
protect individuals during a pandemic.

As I hope you\'re all aware, in response to the potential threat of a
pandemic, the President released on November 1st, 2005 the national
strategy. It was a general overarching document, but an implementation
plan was released on May 3rd. That got into greater detail with over 300
actions specifically tasked to federal agencies and departments. As
we\'ll discuss later, 24 of those actions the Department of Labor has a
direct role in, 19 of which are being headed by OSHA.

Also within the pandemic implementation plan, it flushes out the
strategy. It talks about the development of departmental plans, and it
assigns responsibilities for carrying out the actions within it. It also
communicates expectations for all stakeholders at the state and local
government level and the private sector for families. Critical
infrastructure is a very important part of the preparation as well.

Again, I\'m focusing here on department and agency planning.
Approximately 67 departments and agencies should be well on their way to
developing plans, Chapter 9 in the implementation plan and Appendix A
provide guidance and details to aid in that planning. Department plans
are supposed to focus on four key objectives: protecting employees
during a pandemic, sustaining essential functions during times of
significant absenteeism, supporting the overall federal response, and
also communicating to stakeholders during a pandemic, and also
communications to stakeholders in advance of a pandemic to help with
preparations.

Now key planning assumptions, again, I mentioned the 40 percent earlier.
It is anticipated up to 40 percent of absenteeism during the two peak
weeks of a pandemic, lower levels on the weeks on either side. Each
waive of a pandemic could be six to eight weeks. There could be multiple
waves such that the disruption could span over a period of several
months. For pandemic planning purposes within the federal government,
we\'re assuming that essential services and functions are likely to be
broader than what you would do during a 30-day or less COOP event.

Now I wanted to point out some guidance that\'s been provided to federal
agencies and departments. FEMA issued a \-- excuse me \-- there\'s a
memo with guidance where it took the 11 COOP elements and mapped them to
a pandemic scenario showing where you might flush things out differently
or flush things out differently, and that was released in March 2006.
Also, I mentioned Chapter 9 and Appendix A of the implementation plan
also provide guidance to aid federal agencies and departments in their
planning.

And then FEMA issued a survey in July that had specific planning
elements, and they asked each department to review their own plan and
complete the survey to sort of benchmark how we were doing in our
planning and also to encourage consistency across the government. Then
FEMA in September had six exercises called determine accord.

There are train the trainer courses. One hundred and eighty federal
employees participated. Six courses were in the Washington or national
capitol region. There since has been a course, I believe, in
Philadelphia and New York, and it\'s also going to go to the West Coast,
and that training is also going to be pushed out through CDs. The goal
there is, again, train the trainer so that people go through the
exercise and then can go back to their own departments and agencies and
help use that exercise to review their plans, seeing how comprehensive
they are, seeing if they\'ve anticipated different contingencies that
they need to be prepared for, and also it\'s a great opportunity for
cross-pollenization, because you have people from different departments
and agencies can come together and share how they\'ve overcome different
challenges.

There\'s also a draft checklist that was in Clearance in September \--
hopefully, it\'ll be released shortly \-- which builds upon the earlier
FEMA survey. It was an interagency effort developed with input from the
Department of Labor, Office of Personnel Management, HHS, DHS, again,
looking at the 11 elements of COOP planning and focusing on things like
human capital, telework, personal protective equipment and those type of
things where agencies had additional insights and guidance to bring to
bear. It\'s a general document, but it does acknowledge where further
guidance will be provided.

Also, at the six month mark, six months from the issuance of the
implementation plan, which would be November of 2006, that\'s when a
number of the 300 actions come due. There\'s additional guidance that
would be available to federal agencies and departments at that time.

Here are some Web sites that I thought might be helpful:
pandemicflu.gov, obviously is where we\'re all supposed to be focusing
our efforts and our attentions making sure that stakeholders are aware
of it, making sure all of our guidance documents are available there as
well as in our own departmental sites.

OPM provided human capital planning guidance. It\'s available through
its Web site. Then there\'s also a guidance document that was developed
after 9/11, I believe, the Department of Labor\'s Office of Disability
Employment Policy was involved as well as EEOC and a number of, I think,
21 agencies focusing on emergency planning and attention to individuals
with disabilities. And some of the lessons there are also applicable to
how you deal with stakeholders who may have disabilities to make sure
the guidance you\'re putting out is accessible to them as well.

Then CDC and the State Department have Web sites if you have employees
traveling or if you have employees overseas where you can look to see
what their recommendations are along those lines.

And then the other point to mention is with all the guidance that\'s
been coming out and will continue to come out, planning is obviously an
evolving process, but departments and agencies are to aim to have their
plans pretty much nailed down by December. And then as additional
guidance and more information becomes available, they will be fine tuned
to address either more knowledge that may be acquired about the nature
of the virus and/or more strategies that become available. I think I
have one more slide.

As I mentioned earlier, of the 300 actions and implementation plan, 24
involve the Department of Labor. The Institutions Chapter, which is
Chapter 9, Protecting Personnel and Ensuring Continuity of Operations,
that focuses on federal agency or institutional preparation including
federal agencies. Five of those, Department of Labor is involved in two
of them involving Office of Personnel Management, and the other three
are primarily led by OSHA internally within the Department of Labor. And
overall, of the 24 actions, OSHA has the lead on 19 and has been working
closely with our counterparts.

And now Jennifer Silk will speak to the specific activities going on
within OSHA.

MS. SILK: Thank you. As you might imagine, OSHA has a somewhat unique
role in preparing for the pandemic, because not only do we have to be
concerned about the safety and health of our own workers, we also have
to be concerned about the safety and health of other workers and
preparing other workplaces for the pandemic. This is a timeline just to
give you an idea of when we started thinking about this that we actually
issued guidance for protecting workers against avian flu in March of
2004 when we first started hearing about the avian flu and were
concerned about it coming to the United States.

Clearly, in terms of avian flu, the primary human population that is of
concern would be workers who would be handling the infected birds and
taking care of the bird carcasses. So we are concerned about that. In
December of 2004, we issued additional guidance on avian influenza
protecting poultry workers at risk, so we got into more specific
guidance about those workers.

Then in November of 2005, as was already mentioned, the President issued
the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. As a result of that, in
February of this year, we created pandemic influenza working groups to
address our concerns both internally and externally on this and started
working with the Department on the DOL plan for dealing with the
pandemic. In May of this year, of course, the President issued the
implementation plan for the National Strategy that requires all the
agencies to be working towards preparation.

And as of this month, September, we have a number of guidance documents,
which I\'ll talk to you about in a little more detail, that are
currently in the clearance process. And I\'d just like to note, you\'ll
see a number of slides here that have \"draft\" as the watermark on them
because those documents are still in clearance. I\'m going to give you
an idea of what\'s in them, but they could potentially change as a
result of the clearance process.

Just to give you an idea of what we have identified as OSHA\'s essential
functions for the pandemic, first of all, we have responsibilities under
the Worker Safety and Health Support Annex to the National Response
Plan, so if there is a pandemic and an incident of national significance
is declared, then OSHA will have certain responsibilities regarding
protection of workers.

We believe that we will have to continue enforcement activities and
probably focus on fatalities, imminent dangers, complaints and accident
investigations. We also have a role to provide safety and health
specific guidance and assistance to employer \-- employees in the
federal response community which we\'ll get into in a little more
detail.

We think cooperative programs would continue. That would be our
consultation programs, VPP, Voluntary Protection Programs and Compliance
Assistance, and there still would be a role for developing and
promulgating workplace health and safety standards in the event of a
pandemic.

The process that we established is to address our responsibilities. We
have two different workgroups to identify issues and develop
recommendations relative to the pandemic flu. The first is the Pandemic
Flu Policy Group, and this has been divided into an internal subgroup to
look at DOL and agency issues. And then we also have an external
subgroup to look at employer and employee issues.

In addition to that, we established a Respiratory Protection Group,
because it became clear to us in the initial preparation phases that the
issue of respiratory protection was going to be very key, and there were
a lot of disagreements in the industry about how that might transpire.

The workgroups are responsible for developing our policies and
procedures, for protecting OSHA\'s employees during pandemic as well as
to develop guidance to assist employers with protecting their employees
and a respiratory protection policy. And these activities are all
ongoing within the agency.

Now just to get into a little more detail on what our current activities
are. First of all, we have been petitioned under the Occupational Safety
and Health Act to issue an emergency temporary standard on protecting
workers from pandemic flu. This was received in December of last year
from a number of unions. Under the Act, there\'s a provision that allows
the Secretary of Labor to issue a standard when there is a grave danger
that has a time factor associated with it, so it\'s a grave danger
that\'s going to happen in a short period of time. And under that
provision of the Act, we have been asked to issue a standard for those
workers that are going to be performing essential functions or are at
high risk of workplace exposures like emergency responders or have close
contact with birds.

We\'re currently in the process of reviewing and evaluating that
petition to decide what the appropriate response is going to be, but
concurrently, as I\'ve already mentioned, we are moving forward to
provide guidance on pandemic influenza preparedness.

The documents that we currently have in development is first of all, the
guidance that I mentioned to you that we issued in March of 2004, we are
you updating that. This is a very significant update, because obviously
we\'ve learned a lot in the last two years about how to protect workers
from avian flu, and that\'s in the final stages of clearance. We also
are developing new guidance that is specifically targeted to the health
care industry where workers will be on the front line in terms of
dealing with patients who have pandemic flue, so that\'s really critical
guidance in terms of protecting workers who will be at very high risk.
And we are developing more general guidance on preparing workplaces for
an influenza pandemic.

Okay. The OSHA guidance update on protecting employees from avian flu
that I mentioned, which is actually a substantive document on avian flu
guidance, but it has a number of fact sheets and quick cards that go
with it that are tied to specific industries. It provides general
information about avian influenza. It also identifies key employee
groups that might be affected so in addition to poultry workers, there
are other people who might be affected by the avian flu. It provides
guidance for protected those affected employee groups, so it has
specific guidance for the different employee groups in terms of
protection. And their basically, the fact sheet and the quick cards, are
designed for layperson use, so those are tools that can be used by
employers to help inform their employees.

As already mentioned, it updates the 2004 guidance. It includes much
more detailed guidance on what the workplace protections would be. It
also talks in some detail about the avian influenza virus, the history
of pandemics, the kinds of incidents that are already occurring in
humans and other animals, much more information on signs and symptoms of
infection, talking about how you protect people from viruses and how
they behave in the workplace and other places, and it has a number of
links to additional resources. So as I said, that\'s really in the final
stages of clearance, and we hope to have that issued very soon.

The healthcare guidance provides comprehensive information and guidance
to the healthcare community specifically. We drew information from a
number of different sources including our colleagues in HHS, including
CDC and NIOSH, the World Health Organization, our own resources, and we
did a literature review. This again is a very substantive guidance
document. It provides a lot of detailed information for the healthcare
industry. Next slide please.

It includes the biological aspects of influenza, the general principles
of infection control, what you can do to prepare healthcare workplaces
for pandemic influenza, the standards that we currently have that would
be of special importance in the event of a pandemic, and then it has a
number of appendices with supplemental information and resource links.

This is in the initial stages of clearance, and we expect to have that
issued some time later this year.

The third guidance document is the one that probably would be of most
interest to most of you, and it\'s more general guidance on preparing
workplaces for a pandemic. And this was developed by our external
workgroup, and it addresses a number of different influenza types of
exposure scenarios. It talks about a public health approach. We\'ve
already mentioned hygiene and social distancing. But it also addresses
an industrial hygiene hierarchy of controls, of engineering controls,
work practices, administrative controls, and personal protective
equipment. And it\'s basically giving employers a general idea of how to
assess the risk in their workplaces and then come to the appropriate
controls.

You might all appreciate the fact that in the case of the pandemic,
there isn\'t anybody who has any experience in protecting people against
a pandemic, so what we\'re doing here really is taking general
industrial hygiene principles for occupational safety and health and
trying to apply them to the situation that we think would occur in a
pandemic. And what we\'ve done is develop this hierarchy of potential
exposures.

It\'s a risk-based exposé to preparing workplaces for pandemic
influenzas, so we\'re looking at the types of exposures that people have
in the normal workplace situation, the kind of proximity they would have
to potentially infected people, what kind of contact they have with the
public, and then we looked to provide guidance on how you might assess
risk in the workplace and provide risk-based control measures. So,
basically, the people who are the higher risk are at the top of this
pyramid, and the people at the lowest risk are at the bottom. But it\'s
recognizing that different jobs have different levels of risk without
actually being able to quantify the risk. This isn\'t a numerical
quantification. It\'s more or less a subjective approach to determining
what the potential for exposure to infected people is.

Those who would be at very high risk, which would be the top of the
pyramid, are those jobs that have potential exposures to high
concentrations of the pandemic influenza virus. And the examples of this
would be, for example, healthcare workers who are performing
aerosol-generating procedures on known or suspected pandemic patients or
those healthcare workers who are collecting or handling specimens from
known or suspected pandemic patients. So these are the people who would
clearly be at high risk of contracting pandemic influenza in their work.

The kinds of control measures that you would use for the very high risk
employees would be first of all, hygiene and social distancing. That\'s
basically used for everybody in terms of influenza transmission. You
might also be doing enhanced employee medical monitoring, so sort of
proactively looking for symptoms and making sure that people are
removed; be looking at ventilation which is isolation rooms; physical
barriers like plexiglass shields to prevent people from breathing on
each other; infection control isolation precautions; and then, of
course, personal protective equipment. And here, we would talk about
respirators, which would be N95 respirators or better, such as powered
air purifying respirators or a supplied air respirator which are a
higher level of protection; gloves; face shields; eye protection; and
gowns. So these would be the employees who are at the highest risk.

The next category is high risk which, again, these have a high potential
but not as high as the ones we just talked about. It would mostly
involve healthcare delivery and support staff exposed to known or
suspected pandemic patients, so it might be people who are providing
care or transporting known or suspected pandemic patients in enclosed
vehicles, or handling or disposing of remains of known or suspected
pandemic patients.

So in the case of the high risk control measures, you would again have
hygiene and social distancing, enhanced employee medical monitoring and
physical barriers, infection control and isolation precautions, and then
the personal protective equipment. And here we say the N95\'s are
better, gloves, face shields, eye protection, and gowns.

Then we have the medium risk, and these are jobs that require frequent
or close proximity, which we\'ve identified as between three and five
feet exposures to the general public. It would be looking at high
frequency contact with the general public as well as the close proximity
to vulnerable populations which we believe will be identified by the
Centers for Disease Control. And the examples that we have here are
banking, for example, bank tellers, grocery clerks and retail stores,
teachers in schools, so people who have a lot of contact with the
public.

For these medium risk jobs, we\'re looking again at control measures of
hygiene and social distancing, some enhanced employee medical
monitoring, physical barriers, enhanced local area ventilation where
possible, strategies to minimize face-to-face contact, administrative
controls, and personal protective equipment. And here we\'re saying
gloves for employees who handle money or merchandise, then surgical
masks or respirators, face shields, and eye protection.

And then the last category on the bottom of the period would be the
lower risk where you would have a caution or want to be cautious, but
these jobs don\'t usually require contact with people known to be
infected, and they don\'t have a lot of close contact with the pubic in
terms of proximity or numbers of people, but employers would just want
to be cautious and protect their employees from infection. And in the
case of the lower risk, again, you would have the hygiene and social
distancing. We\'re all going to have to get used to not shaking hands
with people and things like that. And administrative controls like a
sick leave policy, telecommuting. You would want to encourage your
employees to telecommute and flexible schedules to limit contact that
people have with people.

In addition to those, there also might be some high impact employees.
Employees that would be difficult to replace. You might have to do
extensive training or that they provide some kind of essential services.
Police, fire fighters, other kinds of emergency response people would
certainly fall into this. Public utility employees, you want the power
plants to keep operating. For these employees, while they might be at
lower risk, employers might want to consider upgrading to a higher level
of precaution from that lowest level just to help make sure that these
employees are protected from being infected.

So that\'s the general concept that we have in terms of guidance. And as
I said, it\'s not that anybody has any special knowledge about how to
deal with a pandemic, but it\'s just taking general industrial hygiene
principles and trying to apply them along with the infection control
principles that people are all knowledgeable about. And that\'s
generally where we are. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. Thank you. Do we have any questions
or? Well we deeply \-- oh, I\'m sorry. Go ahead.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: Do you have any sense of where agencies are in terms of
fulfilling some of this, like, you know, where in the process they might
be? I know that you mentioned December as sort of the next point where
people have to report in.

MS. HOWE: I think \-- generally, I think \-- I mean it\'s hard to say.
There are 67 departments or agencies. Thirty of those are sort of your
more significant size. My sense is everyone has begun planning and is
hopefully well on their way to planning. Certainly the agencies and
departments I\'m dealing with are pretty far having had draft plans in
the works first for sort of a March deadline, then for a May deadline,
and now looking as more guidance becomes available.

You know, I\'d be interested from all of you who are representing
various departments and agencies if in your capacities you\'ve been
engaged, if you\'re aware of the planning. I think what we\'ve tried to
encourage is \-- there\'s a little bit of attention, whether this is a
COOP activity and your emergency management people handle this, or is
this an HR activity and then your Office of Assistant Secretary for
Management Administration or something, HR-oriented handles it. I think
what we\'ve tried to encourage is that those two groups work together,
granted we won\'t have to evacuate of your buildings necessarily, but it
is a continuity of operations.

And we\'ve also encouraged that the leadership of the agency and
department needs to be involved. If this is simply being pushed up by
emergency management personnel and not being pushed down by the
leadership, it won\'t be truly a part of the agency and department\'s
culture, and you won\'t have the decisions made in advance that you need
to have made.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: Yes. I actually just had a briefing yesterday at OPM on
their portion of what you just described, and that was one of the points
that we were very concerned about, making sure that while there are
different plans going on dealing with specific issues of a potential
pandemic that both sides need to be working together and talking. And I
know that in parallel points you have been, but, you know, there has to
be that coming together as you just mentioned.

MS. HOWE: And the other point to mention is that both the COOP and
emergency personnel but also the policy personnel need to reach out to
the emergency managers, because a lot of the people involved in policy
know what\'s in the pipeline to be developed as guidance. And that
certainly would be helpful for their emergency managers or their
pandemic planners to know what do you need to worry about; what do you
need to just wait and see what guidance you\'re given, and deal with
what you can in the meantime.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes.

MR. MEREDITH: Hi. Jim Meredith, Interior Department again. We\'re in
something of a little bit of a unique situation, though not entirely to
us, because of our wildlife management responsibilities. We have
employees that are, as we speak, working with identification as part of
their regular work activities in working with wildlife, migratory birds
specifically. That\'s something that they\'re concerned about, and also
with the efforts to try to identify the possibility of the virus coming
in through the migratory birds. So as a result, we have developed a plan
specifically focused for those employees, and it has been coordinated
very closely with CDC, OSHA, other agencies.

I know we just had a second federal review. OMB sent it out. We did an
internal professional-type review of that. And then OMB just recently
had it out to federal agencies again for further comment. So even though
it\'s not been finalized yet; however, we have essentially implemented
it for our employees. So it has been a very interesting effort that\'s
underway. And it sort of puts us in a very unique environment with that
respect.

But even on top of that and on the broader scale, because of our public
interaction through the Park Service and Bureau of Land Management and
so forth, you know, we\'re very concerned as well with the, you know,
the public contact and particularly our emergency management. At that
level, our emergency management folks are working on development of a
departmental plan there. So just kind of a different take there that I
thought I might share with you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Thank you. Any other comments or questions
for our panelists? Okay. Jennifer, Suey, we thank you so much. I
appreciate that. I know there\'s a lot going on, because I get to see a
lot of it. I\'m glad I\'m not writing all of it, but I don\'t know how
they keep up with it to tell you the truth.

We\'re going to kind of a have a little bit of a rearrangement on our
Agenda here. But first of all, I did want to introduce my new Deputy
here, Bryan Little. Bryan, you want to stand up. Bryan Little is my new
Deputy Assistant Secretary for OSHA, and I\'m glad to have him on board.
So you\'ll probably be seeing him at these meetings also.

Now we\'re going to go to motor vehicle safety. Executive Order 13043
requires all federal employees are to use seatbelts when traveling on
official business. And this is whether they are driving, riding as a
passenger or catching a taxicab. My predecessor, former Assistant
Secretary Henshaw, began an effort to re-energize the effort to obtain
100 percent compliance with the Order by reminding federal employees of
their obligation to comply, but more importantly, he wanted to let them
know how much seatbelt use reduces the risk of deaths and serious
injuries.

And I know that in 2004, the National Safety Congress in New Orleans,
OSHA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration called a
joint seminar for federal employees on traffic and motor vehicle safety.
And in conjunction with that seminar, OSHA launched the Every Belt,
Every Ride campaign to encourage increased seatbelt use among federal
employees.

OSHA established a motor vehicle safety workgroup to coordinate the
campaign activities. One of the goals of the workgroup was to develop a
model motor vehicle safety program. The group has received a number of
examples of best practices, policy statements and guidelines that
address motor vehicle safety.

And right now we have Larry Liberatore from OSHA\'s Coordinator for
Motor Vehicle Safety Campaign who is going to provide us an update, I
believe, on the workgroup\'s progress to date. So, Larry, why don\'t you
go ahead and tell us what you got. Are you belted? Are you locked in
there?

MR. LIBERATORE: Thank you for that introduction, and I want to thank the
Committee, for those that worked on this product before and this
project, Milly and DoD, Lou Cannon (phonetic) from the Fraternal Order.
So we\'ve had some people who have had experience here, and I want to
thank you for that past participation. As Ed said, we launched a
campaign, an awareness program in 2004 for motor vehicle safety. The
major focus of that was seatbelt safety in the federal sector. We had
other advisory committees that, you know, we liaisoned with, an actual
advisory committee and other groups. But our primary effort was the
federal sector and seatbelts.

As an outgrowth of that, we formed a workgroup in FACOSH to help develop
a model program. We did not want to reinvent the wheel. We were not
trying to develop a very detailed fleet management safety program. Our
intent was let\'s help federal agencies where they do not have fleets,
like the post office may have a fleet, but we were looking for the rest
of the federal government that didn\'t and that what we could them with
was to supplement their safety and health programs and develop a very
brief pamphlet or chapter or module that addressed motor vehicle safety.

We completed that product, so this is really old business. When we
completed it, the full committee never met again, so we have a product
here that we\'re going to hand over to the committee for further
deliberation and further consideration.

Some key points about the program. I think you all have a copy of the
draft in your booklets or they were provided to you earlier. It adopts
many best practices, common best practices that are out there, both in
the private sector and the federal sector, procedures and policies on
seatbelt safety, seatbelt use, alcohol, drug use, fatigue, distracted
driving, vehicle inspection, testing, things that you very commonly see
in those programs. Again, it\'s not a fleet program.

There are a few notable items in the draft that I\'d ask you to pay some
special attention to. You know, again, these are best practices, but
some of these things are some practices that not all of us do,
particularly there will probably be some discussion about pre-screening
of drivers\' records, where most of your progressive companies have a
procedure here, and they do that. I don\'t think that\'s something
that\'s not routinely done right now by many agencies.

It also provides some guidance and discussion of cell phone use, and
there are different opinions on this, about driving with and without a
hands-on use, so that would certainly be another area that would have to
be discussed. There are various views in the federal government right
now on this. From a GSA perspective has one policy. NIOSH is approaching
from a completely, not completely different but different perspective.
But in closing, I want to present this to the committee.

I\'ll be glad to answer any questions, and again, I want to thank the
past committee members for their support in providing input to this.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Any questions. Yes. Go ahead.

MR. WILLIAMS: Just out of curiosity, with regard to handheld cell
phones, what\'s the difference? Is there any data that would indicate
any kind of a difference between being distracted by talking to somebody
else physically in the car versus talking on a hands free cell phone?

MR. LIBERATORE: Yes. NIOSH has quite a bit, and they\'re position is
it\'s just as hazardous to be talking hands free as if you are holding
it.

MR. WILLIAMS: But I\'m talking about having a person in the car with
you. In other words, two people, three people in the car and they\'re
talking. Does that constitute a distraction, and do accident rates go up
versus people driving in their car by themselves? Is there any
comparative data? Has anybody even looked at that to the best of your
knowledge?

MR. LIBERATORE: The only research that I\'m aware of is in the context
of teenage drivers where they view it as a distraction, and it\'s
certainly addressed in graduated licensing programs. But from a worker
standpoint or beyond teenage driving research, I\'m not aware of any.

MR. NELSON: Did the committee look at GPS systems and whether those
reduce accidents or increase them. As those are going cheaper, I can see
a lot of the federal drivers using those to make their way around
inspection sites.

MR. LIBERATORE: No, we did not. I mean the only consideration on the
vehicles was that you should have a vehicle inspection and maintenance
program. That\'s the extent of how it\'s addressed here.

MR. NELSON: Okay. GPS system, you know what I\'m talking about?

MR. LIBERATORE: Yes.

MR. NELSON: Yes. Okay.

MR. LIBERATORE: We didn\'t get anywhere near \--

MR. WILLIAMS: That\'s an excellent question though, because some of
those \-- all of those systems are highly interactive, and it takes a
great deal of cognitive energy, if you will, to program them to try to
let them know where you want to go, and a lot of people do that en route
as opposed to pulling off and doing it on the side of the road. That\'s
a superb question.

MR. LIBERATORE: There is research being conducted, but it\'s mainly with
the trucking industry and being carried out by the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Any other questions? Yes. Go ahead.

MR. GALASSI: Larry, in skimming your document, I noticed it\'s silent
airbags. Is that \--

MR. LIBERATORE: Yes.

MR. GALASSI: Do most of the vehicles in the federal government have
airbags?

MR. LIBERATORE: Yes, they do.

MR. GALASSI: Okay. So there isn\'t \-- there is a presumption \--

MR. LIBERATORE: There\'s no controversy. There\'s an assumption that
they\'re there. You know, they treat them in the same way they do
seatbelts.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I know how important this. I moved up here
from South Carolina, and South Carolina just instituted a mandatory
seatbelt law for the citizens, and before it was kind of a secondary
stop, but now the police can stop you. And I understand that the
statistics \-- I had not looked at this until they were going in this,
when the legislation was pending. And the fact that if the state can get
up to like 90, 95 percent seatbelt usage, they could cut the number of
fatalities by almost 50 percent, which is just a huge number.

And, of course, with respect to workplace fatalities, if you look at the
overall number of workplace fatalities, I mean we\'re talking about
5700, I think, is where we are, a large portion of that is automobile
fatalities. So if we can get up to the 95 percent seatbelt usage, we can
have a very tremendous impact on the number of fatalities that occur in
this country, so. So clearly, this is a very important area that we\'re
going to be looking at doing more work in, so. Anything else? Yes. Go
ahead.

MR. BOWLING: Larry, did you look at the type of vehicles like, for
example, 15-passenger vans are kind of a unique government vehicle that
has caused some problems over the years or some special emphasis.

MR. LIBERATORE: We looked at it. The focus here is in general
guidelines. You know, there were certainly some side discussions about
15-passenger vans. There was a discussion about selection of vehicles,
that smaller vehicles are 50 percent higher to have accidents. But this
draft doesn\'t get into that detail. NTSA is doing a lot. They\'re doing
a lot of studies on the 15-passenger van. There\'s quite a bit on their
Web site.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. Anything else? Okay. Thank you, Larry.

MR. LIBERATORE: Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I much appreciate that presentation. We\'re
going to \-- I guess we still have \-- Cathy Oliver, I think, has not
gotten here yet and Laura Seeman. I\'m sure they\'re at their desks just
working so hard that they didn\'t realize what time it was and time was
just flying, so. Let\'s move on to New Business and when they get here,
we\'ll go back to their segment there.

We have one scheduled item of new business, and at this time, I\'d like
to invite David Marciniak. This is Dave \-- David.

MR. MARCINIAK: Thanks.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Do you go by Dave or David?

MR. MARCINIAK: David. It doesn\'t matter.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: And he\'s the Safety and Health Manager for
the GSA, and he\'s requested some time to speak about the facility
design for safety and health. So, David, thank you so much for being
here.

MR. MARCINIAK: Thank you, Secretary Foulke, Ms. Brayden and the Council
for giving GSA the opportunity to just spend a few minutes on, I guess,
something that I think comes at OSHA from somewhat of a different
approach. Essentially, what we\'d like to propose \-- I\'ll just get
right to the point \-- is that the Council perhaps \-- or Council
consider possibly putting together a sub group which could address
facility design or actually health and safety in facility design.

Fundamentally, by designing out hazards early in the life cycle, it has
been shown pretty much by DoD, NASA, those types of agencies, DoE, who
use these types of \-- use systems safety techniques, that you can
affect safety much more effectively and also at much lower cost. That\'s
my roots basically from DoD. And that\'s pretty much where this design
safety or facility systems safety, in those types of agencies that have
these very complex type systems for which there generally weren\'t many
codified requirements that you could go by.

But what we\'ve seen happen \-- I\'ve seen it when I was with the DoD in
a facilities area and with GSA is that when you get into what I\'ll call
\-- I hate to call it more common buildings \-- but more common
buildings, office buildings as such, commercial type buildings, is there
is a paradigm out there that well, building codes and quote unquote
\"OSHA Regulations\" are going to cover everything. Okay? And for the
most part, they do. You know, you get a reasonably safe building by
following those codes, but we\'ll submit to you that anomalies do creep
in, hazards do get designed into these buildings that just aren\'t
covered by these codes and safety regulations.

And for the most part, I mean I don\'t have to tell this group, OSHA has
some fairly specific facility-related requirements when you get to say
railings and stairs and things of that sort. But when you get into the
other areas, I mean it\'s really an employer/employee. And just as you
need to protect the, you know, employee and it doesn\'t get into
specifics on how to design.

Compounding factors besides the field of system safety or design safety
not being well known in what I\'ll call the real estate industry, the
compounding factor in that is, from our experience, when you do try to
introduce it, it\'s looked at as overkill \-- that\'s the stuff that
NASA uses for those complicated; you know, you\'re going kill \--
you\'re going to put too much cost on our program.

The other thing is limited budgets. You know, many times, by the time a
project manager gets his or her budget approved, you know, things are
tight, and they\'re looking to cut things out of the budget. So you get
into this confrontation, the safety people with the design or with the
project manager \-- show me where it is \-- show me where it is in the
regulation. You know? So it gets a little tough there.

Some agencies like ourselves, though, we do have a design guide that
comes below the regulations. We don\'t rewrite the regulations, but we
have a design guide that the A and E\'s, architect and engineering firms
are required to use. And I\'ll mention just a few of the things that we
put into our design guides; say, hey, these are good practices, we are
adopting them, okay, regardless of whether it\'s in a code or not.

So really what we\'re proposing \-- and there is some of this out there,
but it\'s just a smattering of it out there \-- I\'ve done quite a bit
of research, and I can\'t find anything dealing with facility design
safety all in one place say for something that I\'m going to mention at
the end, the whole building design guide \-- there\'s smatterings of it
out there \-- what GSA would like to do is kind of pull that all
together, since we have this design guide already which is a best
practice, pull together all the, you know, you start with the laws, the
Executive Orders and the Codes and Regulations, and then you just come
on down to the consensus standards and the trade practices and then all
those things that just aren\'t there but they are good practices, and
try to draw all that together into something which might be a joint
services, if you will, or a joint agency design guide for safety and
health in facilities.

Before I mention just a few of the things that have got us really
excited about doing this, before I get into that, one of the things we
in the safety business in GSA have come to realize is we can\'t align
our priorities or our topics by what we know, you know, fault protection
or whatever it may be. We have to align it by what our internal
customers, these A and E designers work by, and they work by
landscaping, structure, mechanical, you know, those type of things, so
kind of just transpose it into their language.

I just want to run through before I get to the end, but just kind of
give you a smattering of some of the things that have come up in our
experience that we wish \-- you know, some of these are in our design
guides, and some of these are going to go in our design guide, because
it just came \-- we revise it about every two years, and I\'m on \--
they got safety and health on the committee to review the revision. I
mean things like \-- let\'s go to rooftops.

Well, first of all, let me backtrack again. The differentiation between
workers, you know, federal workers, contractor workers, we really don\'t
make that differentiation, because we can say, well, we contract out
most of our maintenance and so forth, we don\'t have to worry about
that. Well, we do have to worry about that. We go on the roofs, too. Our
GSA people go on the roofs, too. Your people go on the roofs. You deal
with the antennas. You deal with other things like that. And we really
should be thinking holistically. We can\'t draw that line and say, well,
that\'s the contractor\'s responsibility, let him worry about how to
protect himself. So that\'s one thing, you know, I want to set straight.
Even though this is FACOSH, we don\'t want to try to differentiate
between us and the private sector.

I don\'t think I mentioned, though, at the beginning even though GSA is
a small agency, 12,700 or so, we house a little over one million federal
workers, so half of those are housed in buildings we own. The other half
are housed in leased locations. And we can still affect lessors. You
know, we have \-- we\'re dealing the money, so we can tell them how we
want things done. So we have 1,700 owned buildings and 6,300 leased
locations. So, you know, we have quite a bit of exposure out there.
Maybe we don\'t have the very, very high hazards in these office
buildings that, you know, you might have with the Park Service, DoI or
DoD, but in the aggregate, we certainly have a lot, you know, one
million occupants. So I forgot to mention that.

But anyway, things that you\'ve probably heard of. You know, if you
can\'t get parapets on the roof, move the equipment inboard if you can
so it\'s not near the edge. If you can\'t move it inboard, well, think
about it. Can you turn it so that the access panel is not near the edge,
it\'s on this side? You know, simple things like that. Integrated
skylight protection \-- is there a way we can build it in rather than
figure it out later, things of that sort.

We\'re seeing antennas all over our roofs, and it\'s a hazard with
cables and so forth. Can\'t we put conduits in anticipation of these
cables? A big thing that, you know, GSA is looking with the \-- they\'re
going to, I guess, put 1910 subpart D out again next year for public
comment, the fault protection standard.

There is this big push by the window washers \-- what is it,
International Window Washers Association \-- I\'m not quite sure, but
there\'s an ANCI 14.1 standard on window washer safety, and it affects
more than just them. But the installation of anchor points. You know no
one\'s \-- you know, we need to figure out in our design guides, well,
we know we want to put them in, but how \-- you know, we know that they
have to be 5,000 pounds, but where do we put them, how do we locate
them, how do we test them, things like that. It\'s not required as of
yet.

Walking working surfaces. There\'s a new ANCI standard out that talks to
slip resistance and actually gives a number and how to test for it. Why
are we not specing that when we design buildings for the surfacing
materials? It shall have at least 0.5, you know, resistance or greater.
You know, we just don\'t do that. It\'s not required anywhere.

There have been some lesser things we found. We like to clean the water
for the tenants. We put charcoal filtration in public water systems. We
put them on chiller loops, and we\'ve come to find out, oh, geez, the
charcoal takes the chlorine out on these loops, and we start developing
bacteria. You know? So we\'re like it\'s just design practice. So what
we\'re doing is going back to the buildings operations people saying,
you know, as far as your risk goes, leave it the way it is. It may be
able to get some odors or so forth, but at least it\'ll stay
chlorinated, and we won\'t have health concerns.

We had a building we built with a railing \-- it\'s a rather new
building \-- it has a 10-story open atrium, and the railings are
substantial, and they\'re horizontal. And because of the way the
architect did the paint schemes, everything\'s all white, people didn\'t
realize that not only was it a place to put things, but you couldn\'t
see that there was a sheer drop behind it. So people were putting books,
sodas, children \-- public building \-- on these railings right behind
which was a 90 foot drop. So we had to go and modify this later by
putting a little stop plate up there. But just things like that.

For the longest time \-- well, not for the longest time, probably last
two revisions of our design guide \-- we prohibited the installation
insulation inside of ducts. We just know that\'s bad having that on the
inside. You can\'t clean. It harbors microbials and things of that sort.
It\'s not a requirement anywhere in the Codes.

Fomite \-- fomites are essentially surfaces that can transmit disease.
You know, we talked about pandemic flu here. How many times have you
gone, you know, you\'ve gone somewhere, you\'ve washed your hands real
well in the restroom, then you go to leave, and, oh, you got to pull a
door handle. You know? Think about these things. What do we do? We
design them so you can just push your way out so you don\'t have to grab
a tissue and get out. Or look at your airports and public places,
there\'s no doors. They designed it so you can just walk around. So
things like that.

Pressurizing our buildings. Can we design in controls so that if we need
to, during shelter in place or safe harbor or whatever it may be, we can
control the pressurization and perhaps filter the air and stay in that
building. We don\'t design for that now. We design for HVAC.

And finally, just one last thing that just came up in one of our
buildings here at White Oak, which was on an old \-- well, it\'s a radon
\-- medium radon, I believe, but it\'s also a Brownfield sub-slab
depressurization. You know, we think of that in the residential market.
Well, if you\'re going to build where there\'s radon, you should put
this gravel in anyway. It\'s very inexpensive when you build.

New Jersey has recommended, in public buildings, especially if you\'re
going to be near any Brownfields, regardless of whether there\'s radon
or not, put this in, this sub-slab depressurization. Then later if you
get pesticides or VOCs or whatever may be, you know, you\'ve got the job
half tackled. So just things like that.

So what we\'d like to recommend, GSA is going to get back on the whole
building design guide effort. It\'s a wonderful resource if you\'re an
agency that\'s into designing buildings. It\'s just www.wbdg.org and it
goes in there and it gives best practices. I you drill down, the Council
has copies, and I made a few copies of a sort of a paper I wrote up on
what I\'m talking about here \-- if you drill down, there\'s a design
guidance and there\'s a design objectives. Then there\'s a session
called secure safe, and then there\'s a subsection called ensure
occupant safety and health.

And there is a reasonable effort in there on what I\'m talking about,
but it hasn\'t been updated in a while. The main players, unfortunately,
are GSA, NAVFAC, Army Corps of Engineers and, to some extent, the Air
Force, but GSA \-- I just came over to this position about a year ago,
so we\'re going to be now putting more effort back into this, how should
I say, design guide for safety and health.

And what I\'ll leave you with is, you know, if the FACOSH Council would
consider a subgroup that ties into this whole building design guide,
that would be something GSA would offer to coordinate. So that\'s really
the gist of what I\'m at here.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Any questions of David? What I think we can
do, you know, before our next meeting, maybe we could put together some
type of what this subgroup would look at as to when and what their
mission could be charged for, and we can talk about it at the next
meeting so we know.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: And also a timeframe of when things would be happening
and when the product that you expect to come out of it, you know, what
kind of time are you working with. I think that would be helpful to the
Council members.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Go ahead.

MR. MARTIN: Can I ask you a question? Do you have some of these
practices for safety purpose and others are for preventive purposes,
because it seems like the cost would get real high with a lot of the
things you mentioned. But some of them \-- do you have them like
categorized where some might save a life and other things are just
things that may happened. You know, it might be something to look at?

MR. MARCINIAK: Well, no, I think they all \-- I think everything \--
nothing gets into our design guide unless it\'s \-- let\'s put it this
way, the architects and engineers have to buy in on it. If they think
it\'s unreasonable \-- if they don\'t think there\'s a reasonable risk,
it\'s not going to go in. So oftentimes what we\'ll do in the safety and
health profession is I\'ll parlay it off something else. The anchors on
the roof aren\'t just for, you know, they\'re not just for the safety of
the window washers.

You know, I\'ll sell it in the fact that if you have to wrap a cable
around a penthouse and rig up that, it\'s going to cost you more than if
you can anchor off, and you\'re not just using it for that, you\'re
using it for facade inspections, there\'s other things they do.

So I\'m not quite sure if I answered your question, but a lot of times,
these things are wrapped up into maintenance issues, too,
maintainability. And that\'s the way \-- you know, maybe it\'s cheating,
but that\'s how I get safety sold sometimes.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Does GSA also have some guidelines on, like,
equipment and machinery that you might \-- that would be \-- I notice
probably all these buildings \-- like at the Department of Labor, we
have some large trash compactors and stuff like that. Does GSA also have
guidelines on proper guarding and stuff like that of that type of
equipment do you know?

MR. MARCINIAK: It\'s in the MEP, the Mechanical Electrical Plumbing
section, but they have not been that \-- it hasn\'t been that detailed
in both maintainability and safety. Unfortunately, I guess the whole
government is that way. They try to go towards performance work
statements. But that\'s one of the things we\'re specifically looking at
in this rewrite. For instance, it\'s not just going to be rooftop
tie-offs. We look at elevated equipment, cooling towers, try to put
platforms there if we can, things of that sort. But, yes, that\'s all
going to be looked at. It\'s spotty. I must admit it\'s spotty as far as
the requirements.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All right. Yes. Go ahead, Curtis.

MR. BOWLING: Is there a federal facilities group that looks at
construction and maintenance activities across the various federal
agencies that\'s in existence now?

MR. MARCINIAK: That I don\'t know. That I don\'t know. The closest thing
we can find \-- it\'s not federal, but they play \-- is the whole
building design guide, yes.

MR. BATHURST: There is, under the Offices of the National Research
Council, the Federal Facilities Board \-- I can\'t remember the exact
title of it \-- National Research Council does \--

MR. BOWLING: That\'s the one I\'m thinking of.

MR. BATHURST: \-- sponsor a forum for federal construction agencies to
coordinate such things.

MR. BOWLING: And of course NIST does a lot of that research, too, right?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes. Tom.

MR. GALASSI: AS you probably know, OSHA\'s regulations in this are have
been revised and they are somewhat performance oriented. And in our
regulations, we reference the Life Safety Code 2000. There\'s a
compliance approach. And the Life Safety Code is a quite ponderous
document, and it\'s broken down by occupancy. How would your proposed
document relate to the Life Safety Code guidance that is out there?

MR. MARCINIAK: It probably wouldn\'t, at least from GSA\'s standpoint,
because we adopt it, so I mean it\'s already codified on \--

MR. GALASSI: I guess it gives a lot of guidance, so you\'re proposing a
solution that would go beyond that and would give specifics, best
practices, lessons learned, recommendations to specific issues.

MR. MARCINIAK: We\'re looking for those anomalies that just don\'t get
caught. It\'s not exactly Life Safety, but it\'s fire, testing the fire
pumps in high rises. You\'re supposed to do them under load with water.
Okay? I don\'t believe the Fire Protection Code tells you that, gee, you
have to pipe the exit somewhere where you can run the water. They just
leave it in a basement somewhere and, you know, things like that that
aren\'t \-- that\'s really what \-- that\'s really our intent. We think
that, at least speaking for GSA\'s design guide, they don\'t want me
rewriting what\'s in the codes, just refer to it, but just give guidance
to areas that either aren\'t clear or are just missed. Did I answer
that?

MR. GALASSI: Yes.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Any other questions or comments from
anybody? Yes.

MR. GREULICH: Owen Greulich with NASA. I remember reading recently an
article in the *Wall Street Journal* about a hospital that was designed
for safety, and there has been a lot of resistance to this whole
concept, because it\'s going to cost so much more and this particular
hospital \-- it was a small one \-- I think it was a 70-bed or a 100-bed
\-- but I recall reading that they came in no more expensive and, I
think, actually saved money from the original planned budget but also
were able to incorporate all kinds of safety features that you don\'t
find in every hospital and things that \-- some of them actually saved
them money, because they standardized locations of the oxygen in the
hospital rooms and things like that so that everybody knew exactly where
to reach for something.

I think this is the kind of thing you\'re looking for. You\'re looking
for designing things smart so that you not only can accomplish what
you\'re trying to accomplish but save some money at it besides. And you
can say it\'s well worth doing. I say this as a former design engineer
that, you know, a lot of times if you stop and think about it, you save
a lot more by thinking up front than by going and trying to implement
something after. Certainly that railing problem for example. It was
probably a real cool design when they started out.

MR. MARCINIAK: Oh, it looked beautiful.

MR. GREULICH: Thank you.

MR. MARCINIAK: Just real quick.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes, sir.

MR. MARCINIAK: One of the other things \-- \-- I\'ll speak again for GSA
\-- that\'s being emphasized or I should say strengthened in our rewrite
of our design guide is life cycle cost, so you have to do exactly what
this gentleman says. You have to look at that whole cost route.

MR. DICKERSON: Just briefly. It just sort of sounds somewhat like
retrofitting and mitigation in terms of from one perspective to a safety
perspective, and I think one of the bigger issues is about the cost,
because if you do that \-- first of all, all this has to be brought up
in the design phase for the construction of new construction, but then
the bigger question becomes what happens to those existing facilities,
and how do you retrofit those to bring those up to meet the same new
safety codes or new retrofitting efforts that you have for new
buildings.

Obviously, in the design phase of all new buildings, you can almost
incorporate those things in the very offset. But the federal government
is not building a whole lot of new buildings per se. Most of the cases,
they\'re acquiring buildings that are currently existing. The question
then is how do you retrofit or how do you mitigate those types of things
in an existing building. And then it comes back to the question somebody
mentioned earlier about dollars. It becomes a dollar issue, so.

I think it\'s an excellent concept, but I think that getting it done is
going to probably face some hurdles, and I don\'t know if champions of a
cause such as that, when you look at the dollars versus having to
retrofit all of the different government buildings that the federal
government occupies that are older \-- they\'re not \-- like I said,
they\'re not building any new ones per structural elements \-- and so
with the new ones, you have a chance of addressing those concerns for
new construction, but what about the ambiguity that exists when you got
existing buildings and the same safety concepts that you\'re trying to
impose for the newer facilities, you still have federal workers there,
so then we have this bigger \-- big chasms. Just a comment.

MR. MARCINIAK: Usually, in GSA it\'s called prospectus level projects.
Anything over I think it\'s \$2.3 dollars, our design guy says if you do
anything of those, you incorporate those new designs, so I mean \--

MR. DICKERSON: I absolutely agree.

MR. MARCINIAK: So If I\'m going to change the MEP in this whole
building, I\'m going to have to put in \-- you know, the right
filtration \-- you know \--

MR. DICKERSON: You know, on the construction side, it\'s one thing. I
think one of the key issues, if everybody in her has some connotations
to safety, is that normally if the engineers \-- I hope there are none
in here \-- but if the engineers would allow us to sit down and talk
with them as they\'re going through their design phase, we\'d probably
catch a lot of those things in terms of the HVAC systems and the
railings and things of that nature, but in most cases, they go off willy
nilly and get the construction project going, and then they\'re gone.
And most safety professionals normally end up having to address those
things after the building has been constructed. That seems to be
pervasive in what\'s my entire professional life in the field of safety,
about 35 years. It just seems that most of the time if we could get
there early, we could address those concerns.

But the bigger question that I was just wanting to raise, what about the
pre-existing buildings, and obviously, in my genre, we\'re dealing with
building that we just have to sort of \-- you know, we work with you
guys all the time, but what happens when we\'re in a disaster, we have
to get a building? Now we got a building that we\'re just trying to make
it livable and doable. And then if we\'re talking about having to bring
it up to a level of \-- that people can inhabit it with some of those
nuances you mentioned, then there comes a cost factor. So I\'m just \--
just for dialogue.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. Thank you. Any other comments or
questions for Dave? Okay. Thank you, David. I appreciate it. And you\'re
going to get with our people and talk a little about \-- that\'s great
\-- that\'d be good.

Okay. Do you want to take a ten minute break, or do you want to
continue. Any thoughts? Is that a continuance? Just want to make sure I
have my signs right, you know.

MR. ROWE: A ten minute break or a five minute break would be great.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. We\'ll split the difference. We\'ll go
to a quarter of, so we\'ll be just recessed for about eight, nine
minutes.

(Whereupon, off the record for a brief recess.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All right. We\'ll go back into session. And
we\'re going to go back to program updates and on the report dealing
with cooperative programs. OSHA offers several cooperative programs to
assist employers in improving their safety and health programs. And we
talked a little bit about this earlier.

Among these programs are the Voluntary Protection Program, VPP,
Strategic Partnerships and Alliances. While there are a few federal
agencies participating in these programs, federal agencies remain under
represented compare to the private sector, although we do have a fair
number of VPP sites represented here today. We have had several people
who I\'ve mentioned earlier. And as I indicated before, I\'d like
encourage the agencies to participate and expand their participation in
these cooperative approaches for improving federal workplace safety and
health and to assist their agencies in meeting their SHARE goals. We
have Cathy Oliver, Director of OSHA\'s Office of Partnership and
Recognition and Laura Seeman and her staff to update you on the federal
agencies cooperative programs. So I\'ll let you-all go at it.

MS. OLIVER: Okay. Great. Well, Laura and I are delighted to be here this
afternoon to give you an update on what\'s been going on with federal
agencies and our cooperative programs. I think that we\'ve really taken
some strides in the growth of participation of federal agencies in our
cooperative programs over the passed few years.

We have about seven agencies right now with 83 VPP sites, for example.
And as you can see up there, there\'s some representation in our
cooperative programs by several agencies across the departments, and
through these cooperative programs, they focus on safety and health
management systems. And what we\'ve found through these programs is we
are achieving some results in terms of reduced injuries and illnesses
and reduced workers\' compensation and also improved relations between
labor management and government.

As Mr. Foulke just mentioned, we have three primary cooperative programs
in OSHA, one is our VPP, which is our premier recognition program, and
we have over 800,000 employees covered by this program in both the
federal and the private sector and over 50,000 employees of those
800,000 are covered in VPP for federal agencies.

Our Strategic Partnership program, which Laura will tell you a little
bit about in just a few minutes, is basically a program where we set
goals and measures to reduce injuries and illnesses. It can either be
focused on safety and health management systems or a specific type of
hazard in the workplace such as ergonomics. And we have over 6,000
employees covered in those programs, and I\'m delighted to say there are
about 12 federal partnerships covered by the Strategic Partnership
program.

And then finally, the Alliance program which Laura will also talk about.
We have over 435 agreements, and some of these agreements are with
federal agencies including EPA, MSHA, the Department of Labor and NIOSH
and the IRS.

VPP, again, is all about an effective safety and health management
system, and those of you in federal agencies have the 1960 standard so
you\'re very familiar with that. We found, though, that the model for
VPP is a little bit stronger than 1960, and we found that the model does
work for federal agencies, both large federal agencies and small federal
agencies and at union sites as well. And I\'m hoping to demonstrate that
in just a few minutes.

Some of the processes in terms of getting into the VPP hasn\'t changed.
The program has been in place since 1982 and has continually
demonstrated that you have reduced injuries and illnesses over the
years. Over that span of years, those sites that are in VPP experience
injuries and illnesses more than 50 percent below the industry average.
And so we think that speaks very well for this model.

In terms of the process in case some of you in the room have not ever
gone through the VPP process, it is an application process. It is not
easy, but in terms of putting together your application, we\'re not
looking for volumes of paper, but actually an overview of how your
safety and health management system keeps employees safe in the
workplace. There is some program criteria to be in VPP. Generally, to
get star level, which is the highest level of recognition, you would
have to have injuries and illnesses rates below the BLS injury average
for the work that you do at you are worksite. Your safety and health
management system must meet the VPP requirements and be in place for one
year, and we\'re looking that you\'ve done at least one annual
evaluation before you apply for the program.

One of the key elements of VPP, of course, is to have union buy in if it
is a unionized site. We do want an assurance that the unions have bought
in to having VPP at their worksites.

Once you\'ve applied, you do go through an onsite evaluation. There\'s a
team of safety and health professionals that do this evaluation. It
does, in general, last about three to four days, and we\'re doing
document reviews and interviews with employees and walking through the
workplace. And, again, what we\'re trying to determine is whether or not
the management system that you described in your application is
effectively implemented at the workplace.

If you get in, we normally have a ceremony, and people invite
dignitaries from their particular regions. Also, sometimes national
office participation. And of course, once in VPP, I think a really
important point about this model is we like to say it\'s not a flavor of
the month model, because once you are in the program, we do come back
and do re-evaluations to determine whether or not you still meet the VPP
requirements.

So I believe most of you in this room are probably familiar with the
site-based VPP, but what I\'d like to just mention briefly are some of
the things that we are doing that we think are very exciting in terms of
meeting the demand for VPP. And this means that we want to get more
efficient and more effective while maintaining the integrity of the
programs.

And so three ways we are doing this is through a VPP corporate pilot,
our OSHA Challenge pilot, and also we have some Mobile Workforce
Demonstration that we\'re just launching at the first part of October,
which is for the construction industry. And I\'m not going to talk a lot
about that today.

But what I\'d like to say is if you do have construction subcontractors
in your federal agencies, and they\'re looking for a program to improve
their safety and health management systems which, of course, would in
the long run benefit you, then you may want to contact us and get some
more information about the Mobile Workforce Demonstration.

But what I\'m going to really concentrate on right now is the VPP
Corporate and the OSHA Challenge program. In our OSHA Corporate, the
whole idea about corporate is if you have an organization that\'s going
to make a strong overall commitment to workplace safety and health
through VPP, and if that company, or in this case a federal agency, has
a comprehensive safety and health program that covers all of your
worksites, rather than us getting applications that continually repeats
how your safety and health management system meets the VPP requirements,
you only have to put that application together once. So I think that\'s
really exciting for those organizations that want to bring in a lot of
sites but want to ensure that they\'re able to do it effectively with as
few resources as possible.

One of the federal agencies that\'s made this corporate commitment is
the United States Postal Service. So for example, when they applied to
VPP, we went and did an overall evaluation of their safety and health
management system, and once we determined that that system met the VPP
core requirements, then we can streamline the paperwork that comes in
from each one of those sites, those U.S. Postal Service sites, and then
when we go onsite, we can streamline our onsite evaluation.

And one key difference between this and the standard VPP or traditional
VPP is that those corporations would have a process in place whereby
they would look at the applications before we receive them at OSHA and
determine that they are complete and also that they would make sure that
their worksite is ready for us to come out and do our onsite review. And
this has been very, very effective in terms of reducing the amount of
resources OSHA has to expend as well as, in my example, the United
States Postal Service.

We\'re looking to expand this program in 2007 and add at least four to
six companies to that or federal agencies to the program. And here\'s
just a result of the participation so far for the companies and the U.S.
postal service that are in this program. When they compared their sites
that were in VPP with their sites that were not in VPP, and they looked
at what the cost savings was in each of these cases, you can see, for
example, International Paper said they reduced their workers\' comp and
other related costs by \$1.5 million dollars, and Georgia Pacific \$2
million, and the U.S. Postal Service \$5 million, so we really believe
that this program is having a major impact on these companies and the
postal service.

Another new pilot that I think might be of interest to you is our OSHA
Challenge pilot, and what we tried to do with Challenge is break down
the elements of VPP into three stages. And for each one of those states,
we identified what actions needed to be taken, what documentation is
expected, and what outcomes are expected. And then at each one of the
stages, when a site goes through the OSHA Challenge process, they get
some OSHA recognition. So if you\'re applying for VPP, sometimes it
might take three or four years to get into the program, but through
Challenge, you\'re kind of getting some incremental recognition from
OSHA along the way. And we think that is very exciting.

The one unique aspect of this program is that it\'s done through
Challenge administrators, so an administrator kind of adopts worksites
to go through the challenge process and share information with OSHA from
the time they start the challenge process to the time they get through
the third stage. And the DLA is one of the agencies that is one of our
Challenge administrators, and they\'re not only working to get their
sites into VPP, but they\'ve also adopted other worksites as some of
their Challenge participants. So that\'s, again, another way of
leveraging and sharing resources.

Right now our Challenge program has over 31,000 employees and 74
participants, and some of our Challenge applicants have actually
graduated to VPP. So we\'re learning a lot through this process. It\'s
been really good for the agency in terms of getting data at the start of
the VPP process, and we think that\'s going to be really valuable for
the agency to be able to demonstrate that an effective safety and health
management system, once you make the commitment to implement it, that
you will reduce injuries and illnesses and your costs in the workplace.

We\'re delighted that the Department of Defense, and I know we have
representation here from the Defense Department, has selected the VPP as
the process of choice for tackling reducing injuries and illnesses in
the workplace. And they\'ve actually - and maybe it was talked about
earlier \-- I apologize we weren\'t here earlier \-- but they\'ve
actually \-- and I know there are some gentlemen in the room that are
with the VPP Center of Excellence \-- they\'ve actually pulled their
resources together to establish this center of Excellence so that those
people in the Department of Defense, those worksites that are going
through the VPP process can have access to tools that will help them
through that process. And we think that\'s going to be really effective
bringing them in. This all came about when Secretary Rumsfeld actually
made a challenge for them to reduce their injuries and illnesses by 75
percent.

I\'m going to go very quickly through these, but I just wanted to give
you an idea of the type of participation we have. For example, in the
Army, right now we only have one actual VPP site, but we have signed a
partnership, which Laura will mention in just a few minutes. And
they\'ve got 21 installations actively working on getting into VPP.

In terms of the Navy, we\'ve gotten in three shipyards recently, and we
have three more naval stations who are getting ready to apply for VPP,
so the Navy is very active. And we are also negotiating a partnership
agreement, again, for them to facilitate getting their sites into the
program.

The Department of Air Force is also negotiating a partnership with OSHA.
I\'m going to go through these really quickly, Lewis, if I could. Here
are some other organization in the Department of Defense, the NSA and
also the Defense Logistics Agency, and I can\'t thank them enough for
the work that they\'ve done in OSHA Challenge. I think we\'re really
going to have some exciting data. They\'ve got six sites participating
now. They\'ve got four more sites expected to come on, and we\'ll be
tracking their reductions over the course of their participation in this
Challenge program.

Here are just a couple of the results from two of their sites. In the
first six months, they reported a 45 percent reduction in lost time
rates at their depot in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania and a 60 percent
reduction in lost time rates at their distribution depot in California.
The attribute some of this not only as part of their VPP process,
they\'ve implemented this 3-D training program, which sounds really
exciting, and it\'s something we really want to go over and take a look
at, but it kind of puts visual and sound together in one type of
training program, and they say that it\'s been very effective in getting
the results that they\'re looking for.

In terms of NASA, you can see the sites there that are participating in
the program. One of the things I\'d like to mention \-- in the Kennedy
Space Center, we did something a little bit different for them with the
standard VPP. What we did was we brought their contractors in at the
Kennedy Space Center first and then NASA came in at the end, and that
was a demonstration program. But it worked very effectively, and now the
entire Kennedy Space Center is a VPP site.

At the Department of Interior, we have several sites. We\'ve been
working closely with the Park Service over the years, and I think that
they found that VPP, and I\'ll defer to Louis back that, has had some
impact on their injuries and illnesses, and we hope to continue working
more with them in the future.

And as far as the U.S. Postal Service, that\'s who has the most
participation now in our VPP program, if you talk to them and you talk
to us, there\'s a different number of sites always being reported,
because we report them after their approved by our Assistant Secretary,
and the Postal Service kind of counts them after the onsite team leaves
and says you\'re recommended for Star, so I\'m not really sure what that
means. But essentially, they have quite a number of sites in the
program, over 116 active sites by our count, and certainly have made a
commitment to bring in at least 100 more next fiscal year. So they are
gradually going to be \-- well, not gradually \-- they\'re going to
quickly become the participant and VPP with the most worksites. So
that\'s going to be very exciting, I think, as a statement for federal
agencies and their commitment to workplace safety and health.

Here are some of the results of their participation in VPP. They\'ve
reported a 50 percent reduction in their workers\' comp costs since 2003
and, again, a \$5 million dollar savings based on their DART rates.

And here\'s just one of their worksites. This is a process and
distribution center and in 2001, their overall rate was 11.38, and in
2004, they reported a rate of 5. We looked to get their 2005 rate, and
it was not available yet, so hopefully we\'ll have an update that will
show even more of a decrease.

NIOSH is interesting. And I like this quote by John Howard. I mean what
he basically says, if they\'re the federal agency that conducts research
on safety and health, then they need to walk the talk, and so \-- or I
guess he said \-- that\'s right \-- walk the walk \-- apologize. Anyway,
what he \-- you know, he wanted to make sure that he had a site in the
program, and I believe we will be getting more participation in NIOSH in
the future.

And one of the best success stories is the U.S. Mint for VPP. And as you
can see from here, they had one of the highest injury rates in the
federal government, and they had 81 violations in 2002. And they said
that if they\'d been a private company when we did those onsite reviews,
they would have had fines up to \$250,000.00. So they had a stand down.
And the results, I think, are very, very dramatic. I mean in 2000, they
had an 88 percent decrease in their TCIR rates from 2000 to 2004 and a
94 percent decrease in their DART rates from 2000 to 2004, also a
reduction in their first aid cases as well as an 85 percent decrease in
their injuries and illnesses cases. So I think that right there tells
the story of what bringing the VPP model can do to a workplace.

This is my favorite part \-- being able to say that now OSHA has stepped
up to the plate and again shown that VPP can work in even federal work
facilities that have compliance officers that go out and make
inspections in the workplace. Our Region V has been very active in bring
sites into the VPP. And, again, they\'ve shown decreases in their
injuries and illnesses rates, and while they had to work through some
specifics in terms of their health monitoring program as well as their
job hazard analysis, since our CSHOs are going out to workplaces every
day, they were able to work through those issues and demonstrate that
they could still do that and meet all of the VPP requirements. So
that\'s been very successful, and we\'re really working in OSHA to share
their safety and health management system with the other area offices in
the hope that some of our other regions will also begin brining sites
into the workplace.

So I think overall what we\'re trying to say is the VPP model works.
We\'ve seen, again, reductions in injuries, reductions in workers\'
compensations costs. That improved labor management and government
working together is really an important point of this program. I think
DLA reported to us that at the beginning, they couldn\'t get the union
to buy into this program. They worked slowly with them, and after 15
months, now the union has bought in, and they\'re going full force for
VPP. So I think, you know, any time you\'re having some \-- if you do
have some labor-management issues or you\'re not communicating, well,
VPP is one of those models that can maybe break down some of those walls
and help with that.

In the federal worksites, we ran the numbers for the federal
participants in VPP, and their TCIR rates were 53 percent below the
industry average, and their DART rates were, on average, 44 percent
below. So almost consistent with the overall but a little bit less for
the DART rates.

We\'re excited that we have the Postmaster General of the Postal Service
talking about the VPP and what it\'s brought to his organization.
Here\'s a quote from John Potter, and he\'s a terrific speaker, and
whenever he goes out, he really makes a point to talk about the VPP \--
I hope Corey will nod his head as I\'m saying that but \-- and talk
about the value that it\'s brought to the U.S. Postal Service.

I just want to mention that one of the benefits of being in the VPP is
our special government employee program, and what that does is it allows
participants in VPP sites to actually take participants, we train them
for a week, and then they join us on onsite evaluations.

And we found the feedback of that is really terrific in the sense that
safety and health people from one agency then go to another federal
agency or even the private sector, they evaluate the safety and health
management systems, and they bring back with the some new ideas about
how to have an effective safety and health management system, and it\'s
a terrific exchange program. And right now we have 52 SGEs from federal
agencies that are helping us with those agencies that are listed up
there on the slide

And, of course, for OSHA it\'s a true benefit. It\'s the only way we\'ve
been able to grow this program, because we only have so many resources.
And it gives us an avenue to continue to bring new people in plus
re-evaluate people that are in the program.

So that\'s kind of VPP and federal agencies, and if there aren\'t any
questions on that, or are there any questions on that, or I can turn it
over to Laura.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. Any questions on the VPP. We did have
some discussion earlier. Laura, why don\'t you go ahead.

MS. SEEMAN: Sure. Good afternoon, and as Cathy said, I\'m Laura Seeman.
I\'m the Team Leader for the Strategic Partnership Program. Formalized
in 1998, the OSHA Strategic Partnership Program allows OSHA to work with
groups of employers, employees, labor representatives and other
organization to reduce illnesses, injuries and fatalities at multiple
worksites. One of the most important characteristics about Partnerships
is their flexibility, which enables OSHA to address either specific
industry hazards or issues or work on overall safety and health
management.

Partnerships are written signed agreements usually lasting between three
to five years. They have measurable goals and must include language that
addresses things like who will be partnering, how partnerships will be
verified, and what type of benefits partners will receive \--
participants will receive. At a minimum, partners provide OSHA with
illness, injury and fatality data. However, other measures may be
included and may be captured as well, for instance, training performed,
technical assistance provided or self-inspections conducted.

Each partnership is evaluated annually and partnerships are often
managed jointly by a team of OSHA and its representatives from OSHA and
it\'s partners. Partnerships are developed and run at the national,
regional and/or local level. We have currently 157 active partnerships
with 9 managed at the national level, and we have signed over 420
partnerships since the program started.

We currently impact approximately 6,000 and a half a million employees.
Since the partnership program started, more than 22,000 employers and a
million employees have participated in the program. So as you can see by
these numbers, we and our partners are leveraging our resources very
well to impact a large group of participants at a number of worksites.

Let\'s talk a little bit now about who\'s partnering with OSHA. The
majority of our partnerships, over 80 percent, are in the construction
industry, but partnerships have been a very effective tool for OSHA to
work with other federal agencies outside of the enforcement arena.
We\'ve had a total of 29 partnerships with other federal agencies, 12 of
which are active today.

On a national level, we\'re partnering with the United States Postal
Service, which I\'ll talk more about in a minute, and the Department of
the Army, as Cathy mentioned. We have done kick-off visits at, I
believe, four sites now at the Army, so we\'re looking forward to
stepping that pace up and doing additional visits before the end of the
calendar year. We\'re also working closely with the Air Force and the
Navy to develop national partnerships and we expect to see those
launched within the next few months.

We have several local or regional partnerships, several with the Park
Service, and we\'re also working with agencies like the Federal
Corrections Institute at Three Rivers in Region VI and the Department of
Interior\'s Indian Health Services at the Crow Norther Cheyenne Hospital
in Region VIII.

The information we received from partnerships, both quantitative and
anecdotal, tell us that partnerships work. A wonderful example, and I
realize now that we\'re really saying really good things about the Post
Office today, but they truly have been an example of a good partnership.
We have this partnership with the Postal Service, the National Postal
Mail Handlers Union and the American Postal Workers Union, so OSHA is
working with labor and management to make this work.

This partnership was originally signed in 2003 and just recently renewed
and aims to implement an ongoing process to identify musculoskeletal
diseases and control the risk factors that lead to those exposures
before employees can be exposed. To date, there are 116 sites in the
partnership. As I just said, we\'ve renewed, and we\'re going to be
launching several more kick-off phases over the next three years, so we
expect to see that number increase substantially.

The most recent annual evaluation for this partnership showed a 15
percent reduction over the previous year for the musculoskeletal \-- can
I say MSDs \-- MSDs and, on average, the sites that are participating in
the partnership have rates that are about 33 percent below the
non-participating partnerships or non-participating post office sites.
So clearly, the impact can be related back to the partnership.

Two recent onsite verifications that were held highlighted the actual
cost savings that these reductions represent. The South Suburban
Processing and Distribution Center in Bedford Park, Illinois decreased
their MSD compensation costs from \$880,000.00 down to \$45,000.00 in
four years, which was a 95 percent drop, very impressive. During that
same timeframe, the Mid-Island Processing and Distribution Center in
Melville, New York dropped their MSD compensation costs 66 percent, from
about \$400,000.00 to \$137,000.00.

Now one of our local successes that is taking place is with the National
Park Service\'s Glacial National Park. The Park employs about 130
employees full time. They have an additional 350 employees that come in
on a seasonal basis. They also have another 480 volunteers working at
this park, so we\'re talking about a very large and diverse work group.
They\'ve been working with OSHA\'s Billings Area Office to reduce their
total case rate, and it has gone from 13.1 to 7.3 in just two years,
which is a 47 percent drop. The days away, restricted and transferred
rate went from 6.3 to 5.1, about 20 percent drop. Within the last year,
the Park has also written and implemented various safety and health
programs including chainsaw safety, motor vehicle safety, and accident
reporting and investigation. Together, OSHA and the Park Service have
provided more than 12,000 hours of training to more than 300 employees.
So clearly, we\'re working together to make an impact there.

We\'re going to talk briefly about the Alliance Program. As, I think,
Cathy mentioned and you saw on a slide in the beginning, there are 435
Alliances right now, and there are several Alliances with federal
agencies including EPA and MSHA, NIOSH and, I believe, IRS as well. The
Alliance Program is OSHA\'s newest cooperative program. It was launched
in 2002. And Alliances are also managed by the Directorate of
Cooperative and State Programs in the Office of Outreach Services and
Alliances. Alliances are similar to partnerships in that they are
written signed agreements with a limited term.

However, Alliances are not worksite-based nor do they have an
enforcement or data collection component. Instead Alliances offer an
opportunity for associations and groups to work with OSHA on a broad
scope, and generally there are three main areas that they focus on \--
training and education, outreach and communication, and promoting the
national dialogue on workplace safety and health.

And as you can see, there are several examples there of the benefits
that are realized not only by our allies but by OSHA as well. And this
program has been highly successful, especially in the area of developing
various tools that are used not only by the association but are
available to everybody on OSHA\'s worksite. We\'ve got a number of
wonderfully produced e-tools that are available and are used very
extensively.

Lewis, can you go ahead and skip that slide, please, and I will go ahead
and turn it back over to Cathy.

MS. OLIVER: Okay. Are there any specific questions that you have on any
of the three programs that we described? And we just have one or two
little short wrap-up slides here now.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: You know, even some of BI=m sure you=ve heard before the
unions have had a lot of problems with the VPP program, and mostly
because, I guess, our experience with in the private sector has been the
fact \-- the concern that once an employer goes through the VPP process
that OSHA is not there anymore, and then things can go back to the way
they used to be, you know, that all the great things that were done to
get there are no longer there. Can you talk a little bit about that for
those of us aren\'t \-- you know, who haven\'t been through the process
and to see how that would work, what your involvement continues to be?

MS. OLIVER: Sure. I think the most important point is employees don\'t
give up any rights when you participate in the VPP program. I mean if
there\'s a complaint or an accident or a referral at the worksite, I
mean the same enforcement policies and procedures kick in. OSHA will be
there if that\'s the policy or procedure that they should be there. The
only thing VPP does in terms of OSHA is just eliminate a programmed
inspection, so in the case of federal agencies which, you know \-- so I
think that the key here is that employees are still fully protected
under VPP.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: Okay.

MS. SEEMAN: I would just like add one of the important parts of a VPP
onsite visit are the interviews that are done with employees and
supervisors, but during the employee interviews, one of the things
that\'s really stressed is the comfort level of employees. Do you feel
comfortable going to your management with safety and health concerns. Do
you understand your rights. Do you know that you can still call OSHA. So
we\'re looking for a very clear picture that those rights are in place,
that they\'re going to continue to be in place and that the comfort
level is there from the employee\'s perceptive.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: Yes, and I think I talked with Corey in the past about
this very issue, so I think that may be just a misconception from
comments of other people, you know, who have been through the process
maybe in companies where they\'ve worked in the past and not necessarily
how the process actually works. So that\'s \-- yes, that\'s interesting.
Thank you.

MS. OLIVER: Yes. And one of the things we suggested to the DoA when they
had sort of some union concern was we put them in touch with contacts
from other unions who had been through the process and let them ask
those questions just like you\'re asking to Corey now, and it\'s better
to hear it from them.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: Oh, sure. And we represent the DLA folks, so I sort of
went through the process \--

MS. OLIVER: Oh, good.

MS. RODRIGUEZ: \-- of that with them, so. Thank you for addressing that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Any other questions or comments.

MS. OLIVER: Then just quickly, we think that these cooperative programs
obviously can bring some value and benefits. We would look forward to
working with any of your organizations or through this organization to
try to get more federal agency involvement in VPP and Partnerships and
Alliances. I hope that the data that we provided you today demonstrated
that we think these programs \-- I mean these programs really work. We
not only think they work, we know they work.

And also, through the process of being involved in them, you can get
more assistance form OSHA. You have access to tools. We can also set up
with mentors at your worksite so you \-- everyone who gets involved in
the VPP or a Partnership program, they\'re really interested in sharing
their knowledge. And we\'ve had some of our private sector, for example,
take their own private time, vacation time, at their own cost and go
spend a week at a federal agency to try to help them improve their
safety and health management system, and that\'s a true story. So I mean
it\'s a really great thing to get involved in this. And, of course, it
can help you meet the SHARE goals which I\'m sure everybody is trying to
do.

And the last slide, please, Lewis? So we also want to ask you if you
could help us. Are there any venues where you have newsletters and we
can put articles in to promote these cooperative programs and
demonstrate results. We certainly have a lot of information that we love
to share, and if you\'re willing to help us do that or if you\'re
interested in the Challenge program, to contact us for that or the SGE
program, that would be great.

There is one last slide that just gives you our names and phone numbers
should you have any interest in getting more information, and we just so
much appreciate your time.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All right. Any other questions or comments
from anybody? Well, thank you. We appreciate your time, Cathy and Laura.

MS. OLIVER: Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Thank you so much. I guess going back to new
business, I guess the only thing that\'s left on the Agenda is to, I
guess, go around the table and indicate any additional items of new
business that any of the members or their alternates would like to
discuss. And, you know, anything in particular? Yes.

MR. BATHURST: Just as a follow-up to the new reporting requirements, we
thought it might be good for us to really look at it. The issue on the
1904 reporting requirements appears to be a potential data-cull hog on
some of us who have kind of worked off the 1960 requirements and now are
looking to shift to have to collect, you know, possibly a lot of manual
records. I think it might be good for future consideration, especially
if you\'re looking at this next reporting cycle to collect kind of, you
know, the experience, and what might fit is if we could work together,
and just as OSHA did the SHIM system, to possibly expand that. It may
already have some expanded capability that we could cascade that out so
that there\'s a single system, department-wide consistent format without
everybody having to build their own and absorb that overhead.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. I think we talked about it a little
bit at the break, and I think we\'d like to try to do something on that,
so. Okay? Anything else on this side of the room? Corey, anything?
Richard?

MR. MARTIN: Have we accepted the seatbelt report, or is that necessary,
or is that just \-- as far as a presentation? I\'m just curious.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I don\'t know. How would we \-- the
committee had completed its work and issued the report. Had it been
received before or?

MR. LIBERATORE: No. The workgroup finished it. The workgroup that was
formed by the previous committee completed the work but never vetted it
to the full committee, so this is the first opportunity to vet it to the
committee and take it up for further consideration or whatever.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay.

MR. MARTIN: So we call for the vote?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Yes. That\'s right. I\'m assuming you\'re
making a motion then to \--

MR. MARTIN: Yes, to call for the vote to accept the report.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Okay. Is there a second?

MR. WILLIAMS: Second.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Any other discussion? All in favor, say aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All opposed, nay.

(No response.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: The ayes have it. It will be accepted into
the record, and I guess we\'ll maybe have some discussion on it at the
next meeting and provide it to all the committee members.

Anything else on this side of the \-- anything that you\'d like to
discuss before the next \-- okay. Good. Then the only other thing I\'d
say is the date of the next FACOSH meeting \-- I think we\'re looking
for a Thursday afternoon meeting in either March or April, and I guess
we can just poll everybody. What I\'ll do is have our staff contact you
all with the dates, and we\'ll just see where we could get, if not most,
hopefully all, the members.

Does everybody have their calendar with you so we can go ahead and try
that? All right.

(Whereupon, reviewing calendars.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: Right now I\'m looking at the Thursdays in
March. I think because of the other committees, we try to kind of
schedule the things. Thursday, March 1st? Does anybody have any
conflicts there? Are there any of those Thursdays in March, the 1st,
8th, 15th, 22nd, or 29th that anyone has a more stronger preference for?
If not, I propose that we meet March 1st. I kind of like moving things
along to tell you the truth. So, any objections to that?

Well, let\'s tentatively schedule it for Thursday, March 1st, 2007
starting at 10 o\'clock, and that meeting will be held at the Department
of Labor building.

MS. BRAYDEN: Is there some reason we wanted an afternoon meeting?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: I don\'t know. Is there any \-- they were
talking about possibly having an afternoon meeting \-- morning,
afternoon? I kind of like to start at \-- is 10 \-- I mean that way we
have the whole day, and that way we don\'t have to carry over anything
or anything else like that. Let\'s do that. Ten o\'clock on Thursday,
March 1st. And we\'ll be sending out \--

Is there any other discussions or anything else that anybody else wants
to bring up? If not, I would entertain a motion to adjourn then.

MR. MARTIN: Second.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All in favor of that motion, please signify
by saying aye.

(Chorus of ayes.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: All opposed, nay.

(No response.)

ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOULKE: The committee stands adjourned until
Thursday, March 1st, 2007.

(Whereupon, at 3:40 p.m. the forgoing meeting was adjourned.)