It’s shocking, I know, but the Government Accountability Office has confirmed what most people already knew — George W. Bush’s workplace safety program, which depended on corporations voluntarily complying with the law rather than inspection and enforcement, didn’t work:
Businesses that participate in OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program are able to avoid routine inspections, as long as they demonstrate that they have exemplary safety and health program, have no ongoing health and safety enforcement actions, and have an injury and illness rate below the average rates for the industry. The program’s goal is to promote cooperation between workers and management on developing innovative workplace health and safety programs. Prodded by the Bush administration, the VPP more than doubled to 2,174 worksites over the last five years and now covers more than 885,000 out of the 112 million workers covered by Occupational Safety and Health Act…
The GAO found that OSHA did not properly ensure that only worksites which had exemplary safety programs were eligible for relief from routine inspections. The GAO found that 12 percent of the worksites participating in the program had an injury or illness rate higher than rates for their industry. In fact, one worksite participating in the VPP had an injury and illness rate 4 times higher than their industry average. OSHA performance goal is for VPP work sites to have an injury and illness rate of 50 percent less than their industry average.
In addition, OSHA continued to allow businesses to participate in the voluntary program even though companies were cited for serious safety violations. For example, one worksite was allowed to continue to participate in the VPP even though it had three separate fatalities over a five year period. Another workplace was cited for 10 violations related to a fatality, including seven serious violations, and one related to discrepancies in the site’s injury and illness logs, but was able to continue to avoid regular inspections as a result of their participation in the VPP.
Although VPP is intended to increase worker participation in safety decisions, GAO found that some employees at VPP sites said “that injury and illness rates requirements of the VPP are used as a tool by management to pressure workers not to report injuries and illnesses.”