What’s the bad outcome if your business plan involves exposing workers to hazardous materials and it kills two of them? The Occupational Safey & Health Administration (OSHA) will seek some money from you. In the case of Victor & Carlos Diaz, who died Dec.1, 2007 in a dilution tank at North East Linen of Linden NJ, OSHA seeks $79,250 in penalties. Killing workers certainly seems cheaper than killing pedestrians. Based on what I’ve been told, I think the OSHA charges and proposed penalties understate the wrongs that North East Linen and its owner committed.

For links to my prior posts on this click here.

North East Linen is an industrial laundry. It washes table clothes, napkins, uniforms. It discharges the used wash water to Linden NJ sewers. That water would be too corrosive because the washing process uses alkaline chemicals to clean, so North East adds sulfuric acid to the water to neutralize it. Sulfuric acid, itself, is a dangerous chemical to work with. When you buy it, you get a “material safety data sheet (MSDS)” which tells you about the dangers.

You may have forgotten but, almost six months ago, two work-place incidents resulted in three deaths:

At the Linden NJ industrial laundry “North East Linen,” on Dec. 1, 2007, Victor & Carlos Diaz, a truck driver and a laborer, died while cleaning a 20,000 gallon dilution tank without respiratory protection or supervision. (As I read the facts, their employer apparently knew about the violation of OSHA rules see prior reports, below).

In New York City, at the East 62nd Street, Solow Residential Tower, window washers Alcides & Edgar Moreno fell 47 storeys when the permanent scaffold from which they worked collapsed. Edgar Moreno was killed on the scene, but his brother Alcides, survived the fall.

For some earlier reports click here, here, here, and here

I remind you of these now somewhat ancient tragic tales because six months is the total time the Federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration gives itself to investigate a case. Before six months, OSHA won’t comment. After six months, OSHA still may not comment, but enforcement actions, if any, will be announced. One outcome of this policy of silence is that people following the issues lose track of them. So here are three related updates: one hopeful, one business-as-usual for Mayor Bloomberg’s Buildings (all-fall-down) Dept., and one concrete proposal for improving OSHA criminal enforcement.

I wrote previously about labor-management neutrality agreements which have been the subject of intense debate among union activists and labor scholars. Under these confidential agreements, union leaders and employers make deals which facilitate union organizing.

“Neutrality Agreements”-- more or less secret deals -- between a union and management involve give and take on both sides. The unions agree to limit their organizing efforts to specific locales, to not campaign against management, and to not strike (under most circumstances). At some sites, Management agrees not to oppose the union’s organizing efforts and to recognize the union where a majority of workers have signed cards asking for union representation. Management gets some stability, some immunity from workplace disruption. Unions get the freedom to organize. Some have charged that such agreements lock out other unions, allow parent unions to dominate locals, and erode workers rights. It’s a difficult balance. At what point does an agreement go too far and align the union with the boss?

To be fair, for a change, I called up SEIU, Unite-Here and a few observer-activists to get their views:

Andy McDonald, an SEIU voice, pointed out that – of the private-sector work-force, 92½% are without union representation. “SEIU is obsessed with addressing the needs of the 921/2 %.” Psychologically obsessed?” Obsessed, he affirmed.

The union song , above, by Florence Reese, underscores the complete divide many of us grew up with between workers and their labor unions and the bosses. Like many things I learned on my parents’ knees, this model of class struggle may be subject to revision. Some of you may know that, as total labor union membership and share of the workforce has dropped dramatically over the last many years, unions have developed competing labor federations: the AFL-CIO rooted in a long complex history and a newer federation Change to Win (CTW) .

Initially the differences between the AFL-CIO and CTW seemed to be about how to organize new workers. CTW unions, like the Teamsters, the Service Employees and Unite-Here wanted to devote more money and resources to organizing new members than the AFL was prepared to. As time has gone by however, it appears that Change to Win has changed in another way. They’ve abandoned the old paradigm of workers vs. bosses and changed. Will they win?

The Service Employees International Union (Andy Stern Pres.) and Unite-Here (Bruce Raynor & John Wilhelm, Co-Presidents) have embarked on a new era of labor-management relations. While their reasons for doing so are clear and understandable (to me at least) not everyone is clapping and there appear to be some very unpalatable outcomes.

In brief, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, (subscription required, sorry)

Two of the nation's largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements with large employers that give the companies the right to designate which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can seek to organize.
The agreements are raising questions about union transparency and workers' rights. A summary document put together by the unions says it is critical to the success of the partnership "that we honor the confidentiality and not publicly disclose the existence of these agreements." That includes not disclosing them to union members. [emphasis added by me]

Friday, February 1 marked, among other things, two months since the work-place deaths of Victor & Carlos Diaz, which occurred while they were cleaning out a 20,000 gallon dilution tank inside the North East Linen plant, an industrial laundry in Linden NJ -- with no respiratory protection at all. (For those who are new to the story and want prior stories with hot links , try my prior posts here , here, here and here . )

Since last I wrote about the Diaz deaths, I’ve learned more both about the state of work site danger and illness and about the events of Dec. 1 at North East Linen. I’ve talked to experts, studied the testimony of witnesses at a Congressional hearing and listened to the stories of individual current and former employees. All of the current and former employees demanded that I not identify them and I won’t. Most of them spoke much more Spanish than English and I heard their stories with the help of translators. So what I know so far is not complete and relies, in part, on third-parties. In addition, management of North East Linen has, thus far, declined to respond to my requests to talk to them. If, as a result, I’m making a mistake, tell me and I’ll try to fix it.

Do you ever get so interested in a subject you chatter on about it while everyone’s eyes are glazing over? This may have happened to me here. So, if you are not interested and only want the punch line it is this: Workers are more at risk of injury, disease and death at work if they work in non-union settings. Unions, which represent an ever shrinking portion of US workers, help workers force management to focus on safety and health issues. I conclude from that that national safety & health improvements on the job will come only after we drive from office Mr. Bush and his Congressional supporters.

There are two parts to the story – unions and safety audits & training.

The House Committee on Education & Labor will hold a field hearing on January 14, 2007: "Workplace Tragedies: Examining Problems and Solutions," scheduled at 2:00 p.m. in the Linden, NJ City Hall.

Its Sub-Committee on Work Force Protections, chaired by Lynn Woolsey (CA-06), will focus on recent on-the-job deaths, especially those of Victor & Carlos Diaz who died Dec.1, 2007 while cleaning a 20,000 gallon dilution tank. (Need background? Try prior posts here , here, and here .)The workers (who were not related) had no respiratory protection whatsoever. A key sub-committee member Donald Payne (NJ-10) represents Linden so I spoke to his senior labor staffer, LaVerne Alexander. She said she expected other NJ Congress Members to attend and that experts on confined space safety, union experts and relatives of the families to testify.

I also spoke to one union expert, Eric Frumin, who is the Safety & Health Director of Unite-Here –

DEAD WORKERS IDENTIFIED & REMEMBERED; MORE UPDATES AFTER THE JUMP.

Sunday's NY Times & Newark Star-Ledger reported the death Saturday of two workers at North East Linen a non-union industrial laundry facility. On Saturday, Victor & Carlos Diaz (friends but not related), who were not specially trained or equipped for handling hazardous materials or situations, were cleaning out a huge dilution tank (used to dilute dry cleaning chemical wastes to a level that they can be poured into the sewer system). The Linden NJ chief of police characterized the incident as an "unfortunate accident."

No safety equipment, respiratory equipment or supervisor was on the scene while the men worked. No rescue crew equipped with respirators or supplied air was on site. A supervisor stopped by at 2PM, saw one man down and called for help. By 5PM, Hazmat teams arrived and found Methane levels were too high and oxygen levels were too low they also found the other man in the tank and both were declared dead at the scene. Police described the vat-contents as "chemical stew". Read the NY Times article here, the Star-Ledger story here and then ask yourself..."

I am, by sentiment, by heritage and by political perspective, a fan of the organized labor movement --which, as I see it, improves the lives of its members and the content of the body politic. As a result, each Labor Day seems an occasion more for nostalgia than celebration. My ideas about the decline of the labor movement are confused and the solutions, tentative.

The proportion of the US work force which is represented by union continues its decline year-to-year. The sectors in which union-membership growth occurs at all, public employment and health care, are largely outside of the profit-making sector of the economy so that those employers are somewhat less frantic and use fewer scorched-earth “preventive labor relations” tactics. Retail giants like Wal-Mart and Starbucks fight unions tooth and nail, mostly with success. For a thoughtful, but somewhat dated, essay by labor educator-gadlfy Harry Kelber on unions’ very long losing streak click here.