OSHA Threatened by Congressional Bill

New York (LNS)-The most serious attack ever against the 10-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been launched by pro-business interests and carried into Congress by a curious coalition of liberal and conservative Senators. And labor leaders, who for years have warded off similar salvos against the agency, fear this one may well be successful.

The chief weapon is bill S.2153, ironically misnamed the "OSHA Improvement Act of 1980", The legislation, introduced last December by Senators Richard Schweiker (R-Pa.) and Orin Hatch (R-Utah), would exempt more than 90 percent of American workplaces from OSHA safety inspections. In addition, it would take away workers' rights to request surprise inspections, reduce the already inadequate fines companies now pay for safety violations, and increase employer incentive to underreport deaths and injuries.

Specifically, the bill would require OSHA to obtain a list from each state workers' compensation agency of all employers in that state which reported occupational injuries resulting in two or more lost workdays during the preceding year. Any workplace not on the list would automatically, qualify for exemption from safety inspections. Other workplaces could qualify for exemption by declaring in an affidavit that they had no employee deaths and few lost workdays due to injuries in the preceding year.

At exempt workplaces, safety inspections would not be permitted except when there has been an accident causing death or hospitaliation or when there is evidence of imminent, danger.

OSHA would be, able to inspect to determine whether a previously cited violation has been corrected, but would not be able to respond with an inspection on the basis of a complaint if the employer

"assures" OSHA that the violation is corrected. Currently, 60 percent of OSHA inspections are the result of worker complaints.

Workers' compensation data reporting requirements vary greatly from state to state. Many companies already falsify data to keep premiums low. The bill would provide further incentive for employers to falsify injury records-even by forcing injured workers back to work. The OSHA area office would have to obtain information from the employer

'LOWER"

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before making a safety inspection, thereby giving the employer effective prior notice that the "feds are coming".

While the Carter administration has taken no official position as yet, Senate liberals such as Labor Committee Chairman Harrison. Williams of New Jersey, Alan Cranston of California and Frank Church of Idaho have signed on as sponsors of the bill to the dismay of their union supporters. They argue that the mood of Congress is such that their

support is an attempt to protect OSHA from even more crippling cuts. Labor groups have been lobbying with them to withdraw their support, but have reported little success in this election year among liberals reluctant to arouse the wrath of big business.

The OSHA law was originally passed to help reduce the suffering of workers and their families caused by job-related accidents and illnesses. About 21 million workers in the U.S. face known health hazards on the job and at least five million are injured in work accidents each year. The direct cost to the economy of workplace injuries alone is more than $21 billion per year, and it is estimated that ten times more workdays are lost each year because of injuries than because of strikes.

The bill is the latest anti-labor, anti-regulatory measure that has swept through the halls of Congress in recent years. Whether this bill passes or not, labor activists have to be discouraged that they are now spending most of their time and energy trying to hold on to to what they have gained instead of fighting for additionally needed benefits.

OSHA has never been as effective as it could be. With business interests constantly on the offensive, its budget has been held to less than three cents per worker and its staff has been held to subsistence levels. Some observers feel that the appointment two years ago of Dr. Eula Bingham, an aggressive advocate of OSHA, as Assistant Secretary of Labor, prompted this latest attack on the progressive measure. They also speculate that despite the vigorous campaign by some labor groups, the OSHA death knell may already be sounding.

Letters to Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, who is on the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, may help. Address all mail to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510.

Deirdre Griswold: A Real Alternative

By Mary Walsh

In the humdrum, dismal affair now passing as a Presidential campaign, with rows of look-alike, sound-alike hopefuls vying for our votes, one candidate stands out as a real alternative-Deirdre Griswold of the Workers World Party.

Workers World Party decided to run a Presidential candidate in order to publicize its socialist perspective to as many people as possible-a national consciousness raising effort. In view of the current economic situation, the worst since the Depression, and the failure of government palliative measures, the socialist alternative to our capitalist/imperialist system is more than ever necessary. Also, the Party believes that the war mentality now gripping the country, besides being a direct result of the failing economy, may lead to a re-emergence of red-baiting hysteria. Workers World Party, through Deirdre Griswold, hopes to awaken non-political people, and make political people bring their positions into focus and solidarity.

Deirdre Griswold was the logical person to be the Party's candidate. A founder of the Party in 1959, she has been the editor of Workers World, the Party newspaper, since 1972, and has represented the Party at many national events. The fact that she is a woman was one factor in her being chosen, but her long and extensive political experience was decisive.

Deirdre was brought up all her life as a political 'person. Her father was active in the labor union .movement, and she was always encouraged to meet her parents' friends and participate in their discus-

sions. She remembers with pleasure joining both her parents in picketing an aircraft plant in 1948, when she was 12, and participating in chasing away busloads of scabs hired by the company to stop the strike. Deirdre has a 10-year-old daughter, whom she is bringing up with the same freedom she experienced as a child. She knows that the first thing a white child learns is sexism-the roles you're taught to play-and she is determined to give her daughter every opportunity to escape that conditioning.

While Workers World Party, an activist group, is fighting for solidarity among oppressed peoples, it recognizes that women are oppressed over and above the societal oppression inherent in capitalism. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world without legal recognition of women's equality. Thus legal protection for women's rights, as is the case in all socialist countries, is an important part of the Party's platform. Other important women's issues include free abortion and an end to forced sterilization, to reverse the current deliberate government policy of genocide against poor and minority women. Many in the women's movement, Deirdre believes, are unaware of the needs of their poor and minority sisters, and more women leaders are needed to encourage solidarity among women so that they can fight their common oppression.

Workers World Party is also against the draft in general, and does not consider forced military conscription to be a part of women's liberation. They plan to mobilize large anti-draft rallies which will be wider and more astute politically than the anti-war movement of the 1960's, linking the draft with the

whole system of capitalist oppression.

Thus running for President, as a socialist and as a woman, is an excellent way to get exposure for socialist and feminist ideas. Deirdre notes with irony that when the Party organized mass demonstrations against the Ku Klux Klan and gathered 30,000 people in Washington to oppose the Bakke decision, hardly a word of coverage was received in the media; as a Presidential candidate, however, she has. received extensive, and mostly objective, media coverage, and has reached millions who had not before heard of the Party. The black press, she notes, is not only objective, but enthusiastic and sympathetic to the Party's programs.

The Party will petition to get on the ballot in many states, including Ohio, New York, Virginia and Mississippi. Deirdre feels the objectives of the Party will be accomplished if by her campaign she is able to awaken people to their own oppression, and to the ways available to fight that oppression.

Our Mother Who Art...

(HerSay)-British members of the Feminist Chris-. tian Movement have announced they are determined to de-masculinize religion. The women say they would like to see the beginning words of the Lord's. Prayer changed from the patriarchal "Our Father..." to the more sexually neutral opening, "Dear God."

More militant members of the group, however, reportedly prefer to change the opening words to "Our Mother."

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