Utah's Laws Do Not Protect Utah's Workers

Safety Enforcement Coddles Employers

I have personally witnessed scaffolding fail, while workers and their supplies were on them.  This meant two men, buckets of mortar, bricks and decorative stones, and all the tools, went tumbling at least nine feet onto a paved driveway.  In Utah, if either had died, odds are nobody would have been fined.  Because, as Chris Hill, the acting director of Utah Occupational Safety and Health (UOSH) explains, “We’re not issuing punitive damages on these citations” and he doesn’t feel heftier fines would increase worker safety.

The Salt Lake Tribune, partnering with The Utah Investigative Journalism Project, ran this story examining Utah’s alternative to the more effective (though arguably still toothless) federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).  The highlights?

• Utah struggles to meet the safety standards of OSHA
• UOSH just recently wrote the first procedural policy hand book
• UOSH is woefully underfunded and too understaffed to protect the 1.3 million Utahns working at the 92,000 businesses in Utah
• In UOSH’s 20 years of enforcement, the workplace fatality rate has remained unchanged

UOSH is a failure

In two decades, UOSH has rejected the proven deterrent of economic penalties.  There has been no noticeable reduction in work place fatalities. One can conclude the only tangible achievement has been writing its policy book of procedures, which was completed this January. 

RTW increases work place fatalities

To make matters worse for working Utahns, this is a Right to Work (RTW) state, which weakens the influence of unions.  In response to increasing popularity of unions in the mid 20th century, laws were passed that allowed states to “free” workers from the "tyranny of unions," and afford them the “Right to Work” union jobs, enjoy union benefits, and exercise their union protections, without actually paying their union dues.  70 years later, half of the states in the US have enacted these laws, and the results could not be more predictable: Fatality rates are higher in RTW states.

In addition to more accidents and deaths, states with RTW laws have depressed wages, reduced health care benefits, increased infant mortality, spend less on education, and have larger populations of working class poor.  

These RTW laws, always billed as necessary to attract business and keep or create jobs, do not actually deliver on that central promise.  In fact, virtually every aspect of RTW laws works against what “pro-business” advocates claim they need, except low wages.

National RTW will only kill more workers

Currently, the sole force buoying workers in RTW states like Utah, are the neighboring Free States that require either full union membership for those enjoying the benefits and services, or at least a fair share contribution to fund the Local unions administering the contracts.  A push is underway for a National Right to Work law to extend these union weakening laws to the remaining states.  Union membership is less than 7% of the US Workforce.  Despite the long list of rather urgent national needs, Congress' top priorities include NRTW.  

Unions are the only viable solution

We have forgotten our Union roots.  There are two groups who get targeted by Big Money: those who organize, and those who educate.  RTW laws expose workers to death and injury, lower wages, and decrease access to meaningful health care.  This leads to higher poverty and illness in the community, which increases infant mortality, crime, and suffering.  Those states with more influential unions not only experience lower rates of these social ills, but they also invest more in education, have healthier children, and can attract those employers who value stable workforces, and strong communities to raise healthy and well educated children.  To leave no rock unturned, RTW states are also notorious for lax environmental regulations, and have higher bankruptcy rates.  This is sold as the “pro-business” mentality.

Union Organizer’s perspective

Every organizing campaign has a life or death element lurking right under the surface.  Unions are the only force protecting these workers and the general public.  Every time a group of frustrated workers approaches Utah’s Teamsters Local 222 for help organizing, I hear the same nightmarish tales:  

• Faulty hoses spraying acidic solutions into someone’s face.  
• Hauling two 45 foot long trailers in windy and snowy conditions (despite clear laws requiring the driver to drop the last trailer), because the boss can punitively force the drivers to work unpaid on their days off to catch up.  
• Workers are afraid to call attention to unsafe conditions for fear of retaliation

The UOSH article should be a wake up call for our community.  These workers are our neighbors.  Their inability to protect themselves impacts Utah in many ways.  Please read this fantastic article by Eric Peterson for the Tribune, and understand how far reaching these “outdated” issues are.