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Federal Judge Orders Labor
Department to Answer for Eight Year Delay in Requiring Employers
to Pay for Safety Equipment
A United States Court of
Appeals ordered the Department of Labor (DOL) to respond in 30
days to a suit requesting the court to order OSHA to implement
a long-delayed standard that would require employers to pay the
costs of protective clothing, lifelines, face shields, gloves
and other equipment used by an estimated 20 million workers to
protect them from job hazards.
The United Food and Commercial
Workers (UFCW) and the AFL-CIO sued the DOL January 3 over an
eight-year delay in implementing an Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) rule requiring employers to pay for personal
protective equipment (PPE).
The lawsuit asserts that
the Bush Administration’s failure to act is putting workers
in danger. By OSHA’s own estimates, 400,000 workers have
been injured and 50 have died due to the absence of this rule.
The labor groups noted that workers in some of America’s
most dangerous industries, such as meatpacking, poultry and construction,
and low-wage and immigrant workers who suffer high injury rates,
are vulnerable to being forced by their employers to pay for
their own safety gear because of OSHA’s failure to finish
the PPE rule.
The rule was first announced
in 1997 and proposed in 1999 by the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) after a ruling by the Occupational Safety
and Health Review Commission that OSHA’s existing PPE standard
could not be interpreted to require employers to pay for protective
equipment. The new rule would not impose any new obligations
on employers to provide safety equipment; it simply codifies
OSHA’s longstanding policy that employers, not employees,
have the responsibility to pay for it.
In 1999, OSHA promised to
issue the final PPE rule in July 2000. But it missed that deadline
and has missed every self-imposed deadline since. The agency
failed to act in response to a 2003 petition by the AFL-CIO and
UFCW and requests by the Hispanic Congressional Caucus. The
lawsuit seeking to end this eight-year delay, called it “egregious.”
The lawsuit, filed in the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asked
the court to issue an order directing the Secretary of Labor
to complete the PPE rule within 60 days of the court’s order.
Source: United Food and Commercial Workers
News Release 2/21/07
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