It’s been wide­ly report­ed that in the post‑9/​11 rush to res­cue vic­tims and clear rub­ble, recov­ery work­ers’ health and safe­ty were com­pro­mised. Under Pres­i­dent Bush, the fed­er­al Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Admin­is­tra­tion (OSHA) relaxed enforce­ment of work­place safe­ty rules dur­ing the clean-up. Many work­ers were not prop­er­ly trained in how to use the res­pi­ra­tors that are essen­tial health safe­guards for those han­dling tox­ic debris.

Many worker advocates say that OSHA and the Obama administration are failing miserably on the biggest lesson of 9/11: the need to properly train workers on how to use respirators.

The result was dis­as­trous: Thou­sands of ground zero work­ers need­ed treat­ment for res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es, can­cers and oth­er health prob­lems linked to their 9⁄ 11 clean-up work.

Now, in the recov­ery from Hur­ri­cane Sandy, In These Times has heard from unions, work­place safe­ty activists and a for­mer OSHA offi­cial that cor­po­ra­tions and fed­er­al, state and local gov­ern­ments are repeat­ing the mis­takes of 9⁄ 11 . Again, OSHA is oper­at­ing in a reduced enforce­ment state known as ​“com­pli­ance assis­tance mode,” in which the agency warns employ­ers about safe­ty prob­lems and helps with fix­es instead of issu­ing citations.

​“The gen­er­al poli­cies are almost exact­ly the same” as in the after­math of 9⁄ 11 , says Dave New­man, an indus­tri­al hygien­ist employed by New York Com­mit­tee for Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (NYCOSH). New­man served on the Expo­sure Assess­ment Work­ing Group of the World Trade Cen­ter Work­er and Vol­un­teer Med­ical Screen­ing Pro­gram, which exam­ined how to effec­tive­ly treat 9⁄ 11 response workers.

Accord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources who spoke exclu­sive­ly with In These Times, work­ers engaged in Sandy clean-up are being asked to go into areas with unknown haz­ards; not all work­ers are being pro­vid­ed with prop­er res­pi­ra­tors; and work­ers who do have res­pi­ra­tors are not trained in their use.

Sandy has left many build­ings flood­ed with raw sewage and choked with asbestos, fiber­glass and oth­er harm­ful sub­stances that broke loose dur­ing the storm. Yet first respon­ders are often instruct­ed to hur­ry into these dis­as­ter areas with­out check­ing for haz­ards, and to get things work­ing as quick­ly as possible.

New­man believes this lev­el of haste isn’t nec­es­sary. ​“This is not a res­cue oper­a­tion; we have the lux­u­ry of spend­ing a lit­tle bit of extra time in doing it right. Even when trained fire­fight­ers rush into build­ings, we don’t tell them to leave their per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment behind to make the res­cue quick­er. We want them to be as safe as pos­si­ble. It’s the same thing here: We want cleanup work­ers to be as safe as possible.”

A first step, say work­place safe­ty advo­cates, would be a com­pre­hen­sive gov­ern­ment assess­ment of the risks. ​“In terms of expo­sures, there isn’t real­ly an agency that has been [in] charge of help­ing to char­ac­ter­ize the haz­ards,” says CWA Dis­trict 1 Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Direc­tor Mic­ki Siegel de Her­nan­dez, whose union rep­re­sents san­i­ta­tion work­ers and tele­com work­ers involved in Sandy recov­ery. ​“The EPA has done very lit­tle on that. They have done some sam­pling of the Super­fund sites.”

Inad­e­quate res­pi­ra­tors, inad­e­quate training

To its cred­it, OSHA has pro­vid­ed free N‑95 res­pi­ra­tors to work­ers involved in Sandy recov­ery. How­ev­er, these res­pi­ra­tors do not pro­tect against asbestos, one of the major poten­tial haz­ards at dis­as­ter sites. More­over, many work­er advo­cates say that OSHA and the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion are fail­ing mis­er­ably on the biggest les­son of 9⁄ 11 : the need to prop­er­ly train work­ers on how to use the respirators.

​“I am not aware of any train­ing at this point,” says NYCOSH’s Dave New­man. ​“Just get­ting a res­pi­ra­tor and slap­ping it on your face does­n’t pro­vide pro­tec­tion. You would­n’t know how to posi­tion, to change it, to pre­vent a seal leak. If you aren’t using a res­pi­ra­tor prop­er­ly, it’s the equiv­a­lent of nothing.”

​“Most of the work­ers we rep­re­sent have not had train­ing,” says CWA’s Siegel de Her­nan­dez. ​“Ver­i­zon is not requir­ing peo­ple to wear res­pi­ra­tors, so there­fore they are not pro­vid­ing res­pi­ra­tor train­ing. It’s some­thing that we are con­tin­u­ing to have con­ver­sa­tions with the employ­er about.”

Her­nan­dez feels Ver­i­zon has failed to pro­tect its work­ers, many of whom are sent to fix tele­com wires in base­ments that have been flood­ed with raw sewage or have had insu­la­tion and oth­er haz­ardous build­ing mate­r­i­al knocked loose.

Ver­i­zon did not return requests for comment.

An agency that’s trying

Health and safe­ty advo­cates such as New­man and de Her­nan­dez do note some improve­ments in the fed­er­al response since the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. They say OSHA has active­ly pro­vid­ed edu­ca­tion­al out­reach to day labor­ers and oth­er front-line work­ers who are at the high­est risk of expo­sure. On Thurs­day, Depart­ment of Labor Sec­re­tary Hil­da L. Solis vis­it­ed the El Cen­tro work­er cen­ter in New York City to talk about clean-up safety.

In an inter­view with In These Times, Jor­dan Barab, Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Labor for OSHA, defend­ed the agency’s response. ​“From the moment the hur­ri­cane hit, we basi­cal­ly saw the need right away,” she says. ​“We imme­di­ate­ly sat down with com­mu­ni­ty and faith-based groups, espe­cial­ly the most vul­ner­a­ble. We have done over a thou­sand out­reach con­tacts. We did a big media blitz.”

Barab notes that OSHA sent an extra 20 com­pli­ance offi­cers to the regions affect­ed by Sandy, bring­ing the total num­ber of inspec­tors there to 50.

​“In terms of the lessons, edu­ca­tions, and enforce­ment, I think we have come an enormous[ly] long way since 9⁄ 11 ,” he con­tin­ues. ​“We have lead­er­ship there that knows how to respond to this kind of stuff and works with vul­ner­a­ble work­ers. This is a major con­cern of the whole Labor Depart­ment. Sec­re­tary Solis is very inter­est­ed in what is going on here; we brief her every day. We have tried to put work­place safe­ty and health upfront. The day labor­ers are our real focus and concern.”

While many health and safe­ty advo­cates agree that OSHA has tried to do a good job with its lim­it­ed resources, they say it’s not near­ly enough for the scale of the prob­lem. ​“The fact that they did learn lessons from the spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure around 9⁄ 11 does­n’t mean they are able to alle­vi­ate or imple­ment those mea­sures,” says Newman.

One of the biggest fac­tors hin­der­ing OSHA’s response is its rel­a­tive­ly small size. The agency’s annu­al bud­get is only about $500 mil­lion (in con­trast, the Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency has a bud­get of near­ly $9 bil­lion). Many advo­cates say hav­ing only 50 OSHA inspec­tion offi­cers in the hur­ri­cane-rav­aged North­east is still vast­ly inadequate.

Anoth­er con­straint on OSHA is that it must coor­di­nate its dis­as­ter response with a num­ber of fed­er­al agen­cies — the EPA, the Depart­ment of Defense, and state and local gov­ern­ments — all over­seen by FEMA. ​“We have had great con­cerns and dif­fi­cul­ties over the years in deal­ing with FEMA,” says AFL-CIO Health and Safe­ty Direc­tor Peg Sem­i­nario. ​“I think OSHA has been doing a real­ly good job. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, work­er safe­ty and health does not have a seat at the table when it comes to dis­as­ter response.”

New­man argues that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment could be mobi­liz­ing more resources to pro­tect work­ers, not­ing that the Nation­al Insti­tute for Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (NIOSH) could pro­vide res­pi­ra­tor train­ing for free. In an email to In These Times, NIOSH spokesper­son Nura Sadegh­pour con­firmed that ​“NIOSH has not been request­ed to pro­vide train­ing on respirators.”

In response, OSHA spokesper­son Jesse Lawder told In These Times, “[Nation­al Day Labor Orga­niz­ing Net­work] and some oth­er folks have request­ed OSHA do train­ings and they have when needed.”

​“Com­pli­ance assistance”

One of the most star­tling polit­i­cal lessons that OSHA seems to have failed to learn is not to relax enforce­ment rules. OSHA is cur­rent­ly work­ing in ​“com­pli­ance assis­tance” mode, says Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Labor Jor­dan Barab. ​“In the imme­di­ate impact­ed area, we [first] go in and give them infor­ma­tion [about safe­ty laws]. If we keep com­ing back and they won’t do what we request them to do, we will ini­ti­ate enforce­ment activ­i­ties,” he explains. Sev­er­al employ­ers involved in Sandy cleanup have been cit­ed for vio­la­tions, but only after being ​“recal­ci­trant” in the face of sev­er­al warnings.

This approach of lim­it­ed inspec­tions doesn’t please Celeste Mon­for­ton, an OSHA offi­cial dur­ing the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion who now teach­es at George Wash­ing­ton University.

​“Most employ­ers would love an OSHA that says, ​‘The first few times we see [a prob­lem], we will just give you a warn­ing — if you don’t take actions to cor­rect it and we find it again, we will issue a cita­tion,’” says Mon­for­ton. ​“It’s an employer’s dream. It’s what anti-reg­u­la­to­ry forces and peo­ple who want to ​‘reform‘ OSHA have want­ed for a long time.”

Barab dis­agrees. ​“We need to get infor­ma­tion out there. If we have to do enforce­ment we will do it. [But] when we do enforce­ment it’s a lot of paper­work, a lot of time before we issue cita­tions. In emer­gency sit­u­a­tions like this, we real­ize it’s not the most effi­cient way to work.”

Mon­for­ton argues that over the long run, this approach hurts OSHA. ​“The broad­er con­se­quence is this idea that OSHA can be more effec­tive in com­pli­ance assis­tance than enforce­ment role. Peo­ple who oppose OSHA can say, ​‘You your­self say you can be more effec­tive in com­pli­ance assis­tance. So why don’t we have a com­pli­ance assis­tance and for­get about being an enforcement?’”

Haz­ards ahead

Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuo­mo has announced that he is going to hire 5,000 out-of-work New York res­i­dents affect­ed by Sandy to do clean-up work. But health and safe­ty experts are con­cerned these work­ers won’t be prop­er­ly trained or fol­low safe­ty laws designed to pro­tect them. Over a three-day peri­od of cor­re­spon­dence with In These Times regard­ing these clean-up work­ers, the NY State Com­mis­sion­er of Labor office failed to respond to ques­tions about what type of train­ing they planned to provide.

​“Right now we have groups of work­ers who have been unem­ployed or under­em­ployed, who are real­ly eager to work hard and who aren’t going to call OSHA,” says Mon­for­ton. ​“You have the poten­tial for a long-term dis­as­ter and nobody enforc­ing the law.”

Mean­while, the health impli­ca­tions of the sit­u­a­tion are seri­ous; after 9⁄ 11 , an esti­mat­ed 1,000 peo­ple died from ill­ness­es linked to the clean-up site.

Accord­ing to NYCOSH’s Dave New­man, the risks for work­ers could trans­late to risks for res­i­dents. ​“The big­ger issue here is that if we don’t iden­ti­fy haz­ards, it’s high­ly unlike­ly we are going to have an effec­tive envi­ron­men­tal cleanup,” he says.

​“In that sense, the cleanup work­ers are the canaries in the coal mine for peo­ple occu­py­ing that space,” New­man explains. ​“It’s unlike­ly that the haz­ards to the occu­pants are being dealt with, either.”

COR­REC­TION: The orig­i­nal text of this sto­ry said that OSHA was in ​“vol­un­tary com­pli­ance” mode; the cor­rect term is ​“com­pli­ance assis­tance.” The sto­ry has been updat­ed to reflect.

On Novem­ber 12, DOL Sec­re­tary Hil­da Solis met with work­ers repair­ing a Stat­en Island, N.Y. home severe­ly dam­aged by Hur­ri­cane Sandy. (U.S. Depart­ment of Labor / Flickr / Cre­ative Commons)