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By early 1975 OSHA was in serious trouble with labor, business, the
Congress, and the White House. One of the principal tasks facing President
Ford's newly appointed Secretary of Labor, John Dunlop, was that of getting
OSHA out of trouble. Dunlop had 30 years of experience in governmental affairs
and was an advocate of the kind of regulatory reform Nixon had called for a
year earlier. A firm believer in the goals of OSHA, Dunlop considered the
agency a victim of mismanagement and was determined to reform it.
Rather than immediately installing a new assistant secretary, Dunlop
put John Stender on indefinite leave and brought in two experts — Marshall
Miller and Bert Concklin — to provide interim leadership to OSHA while they
studied its problems. Miller, a lawyer with experience in government
environmental programs, was to make recommendations on policies for standards
and other OSHA programs. Concklin, who had a background in business and
management, was to be concerned mainly with budget, personnel, and public
relations. Stender resigned in July 1975.26
During this crucial period a recently completed Ford Foundation study
on the politics and economics of job safety and health circulated around OSHA
and strongly influenced the direction of reform.27 Written by Nicholas Ashford of M.I.T.,
the study stressed that the problem of protecting people on the job was too
massive for government to handle alone but required cooperation from all
sectors. While the costs of reducing hazards was not cheap, Ashford contended,
the benefits to society would far outweigh the outlays. In Ashford's view,
health was a more serious but less recognized problem than safety. Also, he
recommended that OSHA be headed by a safety and health professional.28
After studying the agency and its problems, Concklin and Miller took a
number of actions designed to improve OSHA's operations and mollify its liberal
critics. They revised the agency's internal management, developed studies of
its policies, streamlined the development of standards, and sought to better
inform workers and employers of their obligations under the OSH Act. Miller
established the policy that announcements of proposed safety and health
standards would include background on the issues involved and would list the
alternatives considered. Concklin set up a procedure to publicize developments
favorable to OSHA, such as a recent survey of Georgia businessmen which
reported generally favorable responses to OSHA inspections of their workplaces.
In addition, OSHA revised its long dormant national advisory committee and
sought to improve its own relations with other safety and health
agencies.29
One of the most important changes Concklin and Miller introduced was to
have OSHA concentrate more effectively on inspecting the most dangerous and
unhealthy workplaces. They pointed out that there was no solid evidence that
the 80 percent of OSHA's budget that it spent on enforcement was making
workplaces any safer. This was because, despite limited earlier efforts such as
the "Target Industries" and "Target Health Hazards" programs, OSHA had not
systematically aimed its efforts at the 30 percent of all workplaces which
reported worker casualties.30
As what was intended to be a capstone to their reforms, in November
1975 Concklin and Miller announced a "National Emphasis Program" which would
employ a combination of enforcement and educational activities to reduce
casualties in highly hazardous industries. To start off, OSHA chose to focus on
foundries and metal casting and stamping operations. The program included
special training of inspectors and assistance to state governments, industry,
unions and others to achieve voluntary compliance.31
Problems of safety and health in the workplace did not, of course, go
away while OSHA was trying to put its house in order in 1975. The new
leadership had to act on a number of major issues, most of them already under
consideration at OSHA. The most important actions OSHA took in this period were
the issuance of proposed new standards for coke oven emissions and airborne
lead. Under pressure from the unions, OSHA also committed itself to preparing a
tougher standard for cotton dust and held hearings on the noise proposal John
Stender had introduced. OSHA once again resumed sifting through its consensus
standards to weed out nuisance rules.
In an unusual flurry of activity in the fall of 1975, OSHA issued
several proposals for health standards. In addition to the one for lead,
proposals came out to regulate asbestos, beryllium and a number of industrial
chemicals. George Taylor of the AFL-CIO commented that "the logjam appears
broken." The "break", however, was not the result of reforms in OSHA's
procedures, but rather stemmed from its desire to avoid time consuming IIS's.
Secretary Dunlop had secured permission from the White House to publish any
proposed standards that were ready by September 30 without IIS's, though these
might have to be supplied later.32
Efforts to reform OSHA in 1975 mollified congressional and other
critics somewhat, but it also raised their expectations for significant
progress. The departmental appropriations bill Congress passed in the fall of
that year called for improvement in the professional competence of OSHA's
inspectors and for more effective enforcement. Congress also ordered the agency
to set clear guidelines governing which workplaces would be inspected first, it
called for the elimination of irrelevant standards, and it urged OSHA to place
greater emphasis on health problems. Many of these goals had already been
adopted by OSHA's new management team, but Congress was clearly putting the
agency on notice that it intended to see that these goals were realized.33
The key to successfully rescuing OSHA from intense criticism by
Congress and others was to find a highly qualified person to head the agency
and guide it out of troubled waters. Dunlop decided to follow Nicholas
Ashford's recommendation that that person be a safety and health professional.
Concklin and Miller were given the job of finding him or her. Their search led
to a professor of occupational health and chemical engineering at the
University of Pittsburgh named Morton Corn. With special expertise in health,
wide experience as a consultant with management and labor, impressive
professional credentials, and a record of active participation in national and
international health organizations, Corn seemed well qualified for the
job.34
Corn's nomination in October 1975 was well received. Businessmen liked
him because he emphasized cooperation rather than conflict among groups
concerned with job safety and health. Senator Richard Schweiker from
Pennsylvania felt that Corn's nomination was non political. He said, "I do not
know the doctor's politics, nor do I want to know them." Sheldon Samuels of the
AFL-CIO termed Corn's appointment "exactly the kind...designed for the job,"
but cautioned that "time will tell....He's been tested professionally, but
never politically."35
After Corn was sworn in as the new head of OSHA in December, the
critics gave him a brief grace period to allow him time to try to point OSHA in
the right direction. Although he subscribed to the policies already put in
place by John Dunlop and his aides, Corn had a definite approach to the agency.
He was outspoken and articulate in his views and he believed that OSHA was at a
crucial phase in its history. As he said shortly after taking the reins at the
agency:
"The reason I'm in this job is that... Dunlop and others convinced me
that the very survival of OSHA was at stake — that the whole Act might be
repealed... I think the manner in which this agency proceeded...alienated so
many people that the Congress... was ready to take corrective action. And if it
were not for promises of new procedures...we wouldn't have been given a new
lease on life."36
Corn himself had criticized the agency in the past. He felt that it had
operated:
"... in a style that professionals would not subscribe to. I've watched OSHA
from the outside with great concern. I had no contact with this agency in its
first four years — that was not accidental. Many professionals didn't want
contact with OSHA."37
One of Corn's immediate goals was to improve OSHA's relations with
groups in and out of the government. Early visits to Capitol Hill scared him
because of the lack of comprehension there of the agency and its mission. He
immediately ordered an upgrading of the agency's congressional affairs
staff.38 Corn also sought quick
improvement in OSHA's communications with state governments, labor, management
and others. He wanted to bring everyone he could into his office to sit down
and talk.39 Even before he was
officially the head of OSHA, he met with various groups and asked them about
their problems and concerns. Just after the Senate had voted to confirm his
nomination, Corn met with a group of state government officials who were amazed
that he took the time to talk with them about their problems.40
Corn's seeming preoccupation with OSHA's outside relations was the
result of a course of events that had made OSHA itself as much of a public
issue as death, illness and injury on the job. Corn, however, had not really
lost his perspective. His over riding goal was to focus on serious hazards in
general, and health hazards in particular. Corn told a reporter, "I believe we
should focus on real hazards."41 In
order to make it easier for OSHA to set standards once it determined what the
most serious hazards were, he proposed to investigate alternatives to the
current, slow paced program of developing one standard at a time.42
Controversy over OSHA's health standards had come to center around
economic feasibility — the cost of compliance. Corn described his position on
costs and standards as follows:
"I think first of all the agency has an obligation, one which I feel
very strongly, to state in a standard the scientific facts — what is the safe
level based on the best available evidence. That obligation cannot be ignored
and... should be in the forefront of anything OSHA does. Having done that, we
then must decide how we can meet that goal at bearable costs."43
Corn's policy was that the period of time which industry was given in
order to meet a safety or health standard could be lengthened to give
hard pressed companies time to meet the standard without suffering unduly. He
recognized that some companies might find it less burdensome than others to
comply and he would allow for this in setting the abatement periods. Corn
maintained that in this way economic considerations could be recognized with no
sacrifice of health or safety.44
Combining this type of flexibility and consultation with concerned
groups, Corn planned to involve them in the whole standards setting process,
from start to finish. Rather than surprising the affected parties by announcing
a proposed standard of which they had no advance knowledge, Corn thought OSHA
should consult regularly with them during the whole drafting process. The
result, Corn believed, would be greater acceptance of and compliance with
standards once they were promulgated.45
Shortly after Corn took over, a highly publicized workplace tragedy
brought out in bold relief the kinds of problems that Corn had been hired to
deal with. Around New Year's Day 1976 the news media gave national publicity to
the poisoning of workers at a recently closed small chemical plant in Hopewell,
Virginia, that had manufactured a pesticide called "kepone." A total of 29
workers were hospitalized with nerve damage. At congressional hearings in
January it was revealed that OSHA had fumbled an early opportunity to detect
the kepone danger. A worker from the plant had tried to file a health complaint
at a local OSHA office. OSHA, however, treated his case as one of job
discrimination, since he had been fired, and did not recognize or follow up on
the health aspect.
The kepone tragedy gave added urgency to Corn's whole agenda of OSHA
reform, particularly to a goal he had expressed at his swearing in ceremony of
raising the professional competence of the agency. Besides hiring only highly
qualified inspectors, Corn improved the qualifications and competence of those
already on the OSHA staff through special training programs. He also began to
train safety inspectors — the bulk of OSHA's inspection force — in the basics
of occupational health. Corn was well aware of employers' complaints about
nit picking and obnoxious inspectors. To deal with the nit picking he had
inspectors concentrate on the most serious hazards. To deal with the "OSHA
Ogre" image, he began something called "comportment training" (known more
informally in the agency as "'couth' lessons"). To rectify OSHA's failure to
provide the technical information needed in enforcing complex safety and health
standards and in dealing with hazards like kepone, Corn developed a technical
data center to answer questions from inspectors in the field so they could make
quick decisions based on up to date information.46
With the kepone affair as its kickoff, Corn's short tenure was marked
by a great deal of activity and innovation. It was disrupted at the outset not
only by kepone but also by the resignation of Secretary Dunlop in January 1976
over President Ford's veto of a labor bill which Dunlop had strongly supported,
and it ended barely a year after it began when Ford was defeated in his bid for
a second term. The most important action to protect workers' health was a
controversial standard OSHA issued in October 1976 for coke oven emissions
after five years of development and delay. The standard required engineering
controls, which made it very expensive for industry to comply. In December OSHA
proposed a revised standard for cotton dust that also required engineering
controls, though these were to be phased in over a seven year period. The most
innovative action was the development of a proposal, published only after Corn
had departed, for a generic standard for carcinogenic substances. Corn sought
to improve OSHA's relations with the National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health (NIOSH) — a separate research agency created by the OSH Act — and
streamlined OSHA's review of and response to recommendations from the Institute
for regulation of particular health hazards. The last major action was an
agency reorganization that reflected the increased emphasis on occupational
health and that provided greater technical support to the agency's staff.
The election year politics of 1976 put great pressure on OSHA
throughout Corn's tenure, partly because President Ford faced a stiff challenge
for the Republican presidential nomination from Ronald Reagan, a strong critic
of federal regulation. The White House, in turn, became increasingly critical
of OSHA. In January word leaked out of an attack on OSHA in a draft of the
annual Economic Report of the President. The report criticized the
agency for making industry spend billions of dollars a year on safety measures
which, it alleged, had little effect on accident rates. This angered Corn and
many supporters of OSHA. The White House yielded and withdrew the offending
statements from the final draft. As the pace of the presidential campaign
stepped up in early 1976, the president and business groups made the agency a
target in attacks on government regulation. In the New Hampshire presidential
primary election, Ford told a business audience that some businessmen wanted to
"throw OSHA into the ocean." He promised he would not allow "the unnecessary
and unjustified harassment of citizens" and told the group that he had ordered
the agency to treat citizens as "friends, not enemies."47
The culmination of the tug of war between the Ford Administration and
OSHA came over a proposed White House Task Force on federal regulatory
agencies. The idea for such a group originated in February when President Ford
outlined a program for regulatory reform involving both long term legislative
action and modifications in current programs in the agencies. It was decided
that the OSHA effort would deal with the safety standards revision project of
simplifying OSHA's consensus standards.
On May 13, the President announced the creation of task forces for OSHA
and other agencies. Their main purpose, he said, was to "simplify and
streamline" federal regulations. "The Congress had given these agencies a job
to do," Ford said, "but they can do that job without needlessly harassing the
American businessman."48 At the
same time, there was concern at OSHA and among organized labor that the task
force would be used to investigate and interfere with the agency.49
Corn convinced Secretary Willie J. Usery that the task force should be
kept limited in scope. He wanted to have its duties spelled out in writing and
its activities confined to OSHA programs already in operation. In meetings with
White House staff, OSHA insisted that the task force be advisory only, with no
authority of its own. Announced on June 11, this plan limited the task force to
working on the standards revision project only.50 Other than recommending technical
changes in some safety standards, the task force had little effect on OSHA by
the time it completed its work.51
Meanwhile, organized labor monitored OSHA closely to see that it did
not go too far with deregulation. When OSHA announced that it would have to
delay issuance of new standards on asbestos, ammonia, lead, arsenic, cotton
dust and other substances until after November, the OCAW immediately sued to
block the delays and AFL-CIO president George Meany called for an immediate
public explanation from Secretary Usery. The Secretary assured Meany that he
shared his concern for a safe and healthful workplace and that the delays were
purely a result of the difficulty in analyzing the technical issues involved in
the standards.52 In a move that
must have been reassuring to labor, OSHA issued a group of voluntary guidelines
for lead, mercury and silica to be used until permanent standards were issued.
The guidelines called for relatively inexpensive measures such as medical
examinations for exposed workers and use of personal protective
equipment.53
Another issue of concern to organized labor arose when, at the request
of the Interior Department, OSHA transferred its jurisdiction over a group of
cement workers to Interior's Mine Enforcement and Safety Administration (MESA).
The Cement Workers Union, half of whose members were affected, protested and
George Meany complained to Usery. Meany considered the 1966 mine safety law
that Interior enforced to be ineffective and feared that the transfer would set
a precedent for reducing the number of workers protected by the Act.54 Usery responded that OSHA had no choice
in the matter because MESA had the legal right to extend its jurisdiction to
cover these cement workers. However, he told Meany that the Labor Department
was taking special pains to spell out the cement workers arrangement.
(Ironically, the whole transfer was negated in 1978 when Congress transferred
all mining safety and health duties into the Labor Department under the new
Mine Safety and Health Administration).55
Morton Corn was not retained as head of OSHA by the incoming Carter
Administration in 1977 and he left office a week before the inauguration. Corn
sent Usery a final report on his activities at OSHA. While the bulk of the
report was a straightforward discussion of Corn's safety and health policies,
the problems facing OSHA, and so on, the portion that drew the most attention
was his charge that there was a lack of highly qualified technical personnel at
OSHA. Staff members retorted that there were many qualified experts there but
Corn had failed to utilize them. Lost in the controversy was a remark Corn made
shortly before leaving the agency in which he conceded that OSHA had begun "the
slow climb to quality."56
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