Loggers, farmworkers and commercial fishermen are killed on the job far more often than most other American workers.
But, as iWatch News reports, the Obama administration has proposed eliminating a research and outreach program intended to prevent casualties in those high-risk fields. In a related move, the administration also wants to cut a progam that trains occupational doctors and nurses, safety professionals and industrial hygienists.
The savings would be about $47 million if both programs, which are funded through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, are slashed.
The administration says NIOSH’S 17 education and research centers are no longer needed because “the intended goals of the program” – providing seed money to universities enabling them to start occupational health and safety training programs – “have been met.” It also has questioned the value and direction of the eight agriculture, forestry and fishing centers, citing a critical 2007 National Academy of Sciences report.
Although fatalities in the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting job category have fallen, the toll remains high. The job sector accounted for 551, or 13 percent, of the nation’s 4,340 workplace fatalities in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
By way of comparison, the fatality rate among loggers is 19 times higher, and for fishermen it is 58 times higher, than for American workers as a whole.
Supporters of the NIOSH programs have come to their defense since the cost-cutting proposal was made in February, and Congressional backers hope to win over their colleagues when lawmakers return to Washington in September. “It is puzzling that the President would choose to zero out funding for two NIOSH programs that provide the scientific basis for safety and health regulation,” Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote in an April 5 letter to Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
But those supporters face resistance from business interests, according to Marcy Harrington, manager of the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center at the University of Washington. “People in these industries are very regulation-averse,” she said.
NIOSH spokesman Fred Blosser would not comment on the proposal. In a fact sheet , however, the agency says most farmworkers, loggers and fishermen are not covered by federal worker safety laws because their employers are too small and rely on “family members and/or immigrant, part-time, contract and seasonal labor.” It also says the work of NIOSH “is not replicated by any other agency.”
Spokesman Tom Skinner declined to say whether the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is home to NIOSH, proposed or endorsed the cuts. He wrote in an e-mail to iWatch News that the agency “fully recognizes that tough decisions about discretionary spending are ahead.”
