The Obama administration's "new OSHA" has a simple message for U.S. industry. This message has been delivered loudly and clearly by both Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Acting Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health Jordan Barab. Their message: "There is a new Sheriff in town." And we all know what sheriffs do. They aggressively enforce the law. That is exactly what the new Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) intends to do.
President Barack Obama was elected with the strong backing of organized labor. In return, the new president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, and other union officials have emphatically promised that organized labor will hold the Obama administration's feet to the fire to make sure that the pro-labor commitments made during his campaign are delivered. One of these commitments is a quick reversal of what the Obama campaign and its union supporters claimed was eight years of the Bush administration OSHA "selling out to big business" to the detriment of worker safety and health, allegedly accomplished through an agenda of lax enforcement, cozy partnerships and cessation of any meaningful standards-setting activities. Through its OSHA appointments, the Obama administration has established that it will, in fact, be delivering on its commitments to labor.
The New OSHA's Leadership Team
The tone of an agency is set at the top. The leadership team appointed to head the new OSHA leaves no doubt about what the tone of the new OSHA will be.
The new Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, is a former member of Congress from California. Before being elected to Congress, Solis served in the California Assembly, became the first Latina elected to the California Senate and worked in the Carter administration's Office of Hispanic Affairs. Her official biography explains that her priorities in Congress included "expanding access to health care, protecting the environment, and improving the lives of working families," and that she was the recipient of a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for her "pioneering work on environmental justice issues."
In a June 2009 speech at the American Society of Safety Engineers' annual conference, Solis said: "There is a new Sheriff in town.... Make no mistake about it, the Department of Labor is back in the enforcement business. We are serious, very serious." To demonstrate this, one of her first steps was to order an enforcement blitz by OSHA SWAT teams at construction sites across Texas to combat what she said was the state's "dubious distinction of having the most worker fatalities in the nation." Solis also announced that the U.S. Department of Labor's budget request includes funding for up to 130 new inspector positions.
The Deputy Assistant Secretary and current acting head of OSHA is Jordan Barab. It was reported that "Organized labor was nothing short of giddy when President Barack Obama decided to make Jordan Barab the temporary head, and permanent No. 2 official" at OSHA.
Barab previously served as special assistant to the head of OSHA in the Clinton administration and in that position helped spearhead the promulgation of the controversial ergonomics workplace safety and health standard that was issued by OSHA but subsequently repealed by Congress. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary of OSHA, Barab was senior labor policy advisor for health and safety for the House Education and Labor Committee, and before that he worked for the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. Barab was a health and safety specialist for the AFL-CIO from 2001 to 2002, and directed the safety and health program for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) from 1982 to 1998. In a recent speech at an AFSCME convention, he remarked that "I always tell people that I still bleed AFSCME green." In another speech, he told the attendees: "You are not alone. We have your back and your fight is our fight.... There's a new sheriff in town."
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