We Can Prevent Chemical Disasters; Will Our Government Act?

Workers must be as proactive as possible to minimize their exposure to hazardous working conditions, according to Dave LeGrande, CWA's occupational safety and health director.

The reason? While chemical companies say, "trust us," their numerous environmental and workplace safety violations clearly demonstrate that self-regulation doesn't work.

"We need to identify occupational and environmental safety and health as a top priority in the union's collective bargaining efforts; in our occupational safety and health training and action efforts; and in our political and legislative efforts to ensure adequate funding for national and state OSHAs, as well as other key agencies such as the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and EPA," LeGrande said. "With support from CWA headquarters, these efforts need to include all CWA districts, sectors, and local unions."

CWA activists gathered in Pittsburgh this week to participate in the CWA/USW occupational safety and health train-the-trainer program. With help from an NIEHS grant, workers learned and practiced how to develop a union approach to identifying and resolving occupational safety and health hazards and issues. In turn, local union participants will conduct safety and health training with other union activists throughout the country.

And earlier this month, CWA joined the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters in sending a letter to President Obama, warning him that his August 2013 executive order directing EPA and other agencies to modernize their regulations has yet to yield new safety regulations. The coalition highlighted a new poll that shows that strong majorities across gender, age, race, partisanship, and region support new requirements to use safer chemicals and processes. Check out the full results here. 

Big money in our politics is a huge part of why we don't have better regulation and laws to keep more workers safe from chemical accidents. Between 2012 and 2014, the chemical industry spent at least $182 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies. And 70 percent of the registered lobbyists at the American Chemistry Council, the chemical companies' major trade association, previously held jobs in Congress or the executive branch.

CWA is not accepting the status quo. Our fight for democracy means getting big money out of our politics, protecting the environment and safeguarding workplace health and safety. These issues are all interconnected.

Why do we need to be so vigilant?

A new Center for Effective Government report found that too few chemicals have been tested for safety and too few chemical manufacturing facilities are inspected. As EPA, OSHA, NIEHS and NIOSH deal with smaller and smaller budgets, the resources of our state and local enforcement agencies are also being reduced. And even when we identify serious violations, the penalties are way too minor, making them a small cost of doing business for massive multinational corporations. Check out the rest of the study's findings here.