Date: 2011-12-02
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman. this is a very sad day for Americas workers. This country has spent great time and effort. along with the industrial base and the business base in this country. to make sure that when workers go to work every day they will return safely to their home. This legislation begins to bring that to an end because it would needlessly and recklessly expose our Nations workers to preventable workrelated death and injuries. It would do this by obstructing the ability of the Federal agencies to adequately respond to real safety and health concerns of our Nations workplace. Under the current law. both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration would be tasked to protect workers from exposure to risks or toxins over a working lifetime. However. this legislation would override that task. It would change the nature of the idea of protecting workers in the workplace to make sure we have the most effective means possible to protect those workers. It wasnt the dust standards that killed the textile industry in the southeastern part of the United States. The dust standards that were invoked in 1978that were railed against by the textile industryin fact extended the life of the textile industry by making it more efficient by bringing in a new generation of technology to that industry. What killed those textile industries were free trade agreements. They were among the most efficient mills in the world. They just couldnt stand up against the unfair competition from the Chinese and their textile industry. So lets understand whats happening here. This bill would change the standard of providing the most protective standard that is feasible to providing a standard that picks the least costly approach. The least costly approach to protecting your hearing is to cover your ears. to cover your ears while youre working on a ramp at an airline factory. cover your ears while youre putting bags on an airplane. Cover your ears. thats the least costly. Eye protection: close your eyes. cover your eyes. thats the least costly. That doesnt work in the workplaces of America and the employers know it. The employers know it. What do you say to an ironworker working on a bridge? What do you say to an ironworker working on a skyscraper? Hold on tight? Hold on tight? We saw what happened when they went to the least costly effective restraints on workers working on skyscrapers in Las Vegas. They were killing thema record rate of killing construction workersbut it was the least costly. They didnt think they should have to string a net three floors down to catch the workers as they fell. they just chose another method. the least costly. Thats the Republican answer to safety in the workplace. stick your fingers in your ear? What do you do about breathing toxins? Get yourself a paper mask? When we started changing the vinyl chloride standards. not only did it make the workplace more efficient. it protected the workers. It created a byproduct that had great commercial value and expanded the industry by making them more efficient. What they used to waste. they now sell. What they used to waste and injure workers with. they now sell. Thats the difference. This standard. what is it. the least costly approach? Dont tell that to United States Steel in my district. I just went on a safety tour with the workers and with the management. and they told me how theyve changed the traffic patterns. the pedestrian patterns. the vehicle codes. all of the changes inside of the steel mill because they want injuryfree days. injuryfree months. and injuryfree years. Take a tour of the Chevron refinery in my district. Dow Chemical. DuPont. Safety is their number one job daily in that facility. and they take pride in it. They invest a lot of money in it because they know what an unsafe workplace. what a dirty workplace. what a cluttered workplace costs them in lost time and productivity. This bill goes counter to the best practices in industry. counter to the best practices in small businesses. This just doesnt work in modern industry. This is a throwback to the seventies or the sixties. where miners just assumed they had to consume coal dust and die of black lung. where steelworkers. they fell into openhearth furnaces in the old mills. Today. you can get run over by a coal roll conveyance system. you can get caught up in a rolling line. but you dont because they invest in your safety. And now the American Government is telling them you wont have to invest in this safety. I think for most industries theyre going to ignore that because theyve been to the other side. They know what it was like to have casualties. and they know that that doesnt work. They know they cant stand. You can bankrupt the companies with black lung today and cotton dust. We still have grain elevators blow up in this country. When I came to Congress. they were blowing up on a daily basis. But we have dust standards now and we saved workers lives. but we still tragically have a few accidents. You can ignore the standards. as they did on the British Petroleum rig. and you can kill the workers because you avoided the process safety standards on that rig. In Texas City. Texas. you can blow up the workers because you ignore the standardsand they knowingly ignored them. That was the least costly they thought. at British Petroleum. was to ignore the standards. When they went to the boardroom in London and they raised this issue with the board of directors. they chose the least costly approach. They chose the least costly approach. And they had one of the worst safety records in America. British Petroleum. of blowing up their own facilities and killing their workers. They chose the least costly approach. This legislation imposesif you want to do something right. its just delay for delays sake. And the chairman has pointed that out and Mr. COHEN has pointed that out. how you just turn this over to a litigation process before you ever get around to the question of protecting your workers. This legislation makes the workplace that our family members go to. that our neighbors go to. that our friends go to less safe than it is today. It impedes the progress to apply new technology to new knowledge to the workplace to make it safer. Thats what this legislation does. Thats not what a modern corporation wants. thats not what a modern workplace should be for workers who go into it. and its not where they want to go to work. Its just unacceptable that we have this legislation at this time in our history. This legislation is an attack on the workplaces where middle class Americans go to work. These are their workplaces. These are the hot. heavy. dirty workplaces. These are the complex workplaces that pose risk of injury and illness to the workers in our workplaces. This causes you to fall out of the middle class. Millions of Americans are falling out of the middle class because of the income disparity in this country and the unfairness in this country. Theres another way to fall out of the middle class. You can fall out of the middle class. its not just a question of lower pay. You can get hurt on the job. you lose your income. you become disabled. you cant go back to your full earnings. You end up on a disability program because you were injured on the job. All you did was show up and go to work. But under this legislation. youre more likely to be hurt. You can reverse the dramatic downturn in black lung. as we saw in the Massey mines. where they wouldnt clean up the coal dust. and they killed 29 workers in the process. Over thousands of warnings. but the lawyers and the litigators prevented the standards ever from coming into place. the penalties from ever being put into place. They completely gamed the system. Thats how you can fall out of the middle class. or you can die in an explosion. as people did in Tennessee earlier this year. as they did in Georgia earlier this year. because dust standards werent properly met. or as happened in Connecticut. where they didnt apply the safety standards to disconnecting the natural gas lines. Yes. you can do that and you fall right out of the middle class. You lose your spouse in a construction site. in an injury. a trench eaves in. a worker falls off a skyscraperthats how you can fall out of the middle class. And it happens. it happens to American families every day. We made a decision. as a Nation. that we would go in a different direction. We would look out for these workers. we would provide margins of protection. we would improve the safety in the workplace. This legislation undoes that for workers all across the countrythe least costly way. You know. I worked in the refineries in my district. and I saw workers fall face down in the bottom of those huge oil tanks that we were cleaning out because they had no respiratory gear. because it was before OSHA. I saw workers throw up. I worked on the tankers going out to sea. and I saw workers fall a couple of stories into an empty oil tank on an oil tanker because they werent connected to the ladders. there was no safety device. You went up the ladders. but if the fumes got you first. you fell. I saw workers that couldnt tell you what day it was when they came out of those tanks after cleaning them. I saw workers fall into vats in the canneries when I worked in the canneries. I saw workers on construction jobs get hit by moving equipment when I worked on a construction job. This isnt speculation. This is what happens to people all across this country every day they go to work. And yet we stand here. in the Congress of the United States. and we say we want to make sure when a member of your family goes to work. that they return home safely every day. Thats not what this legislation does. This legislation makes it more likely that theyre not going to return home safely and theyre not going to return home at all. We ought to reject this legislation and understand how far back in the past it takes us. Its against the best business practices of this Nation. Its against all of the success weve had in making the workplace safe for the workers and safe for the employers and safe for the profit measure.