This idea of workplace safety has been top of mind for me, since yesterday morning, when we learned that the six workers killed, at the Amazon facility in Edwardsville, Illinois -- as a result of a tornado, and subsequent roof collapse -- were prohibited by Amazon rules from having a cell-phone turned on, on the shop floor.
Obviously, had any of them had one -- the weather alert beacons, automatically pushed out to all iPhones, with a loud audio warning. . . might have saved all their lives. [Rather than await a new OSHA rule, obviously Amazon ought to declare that workers may keep phones powered on, but on silent -- for safety -- during their shifts, in a shirt- or pants- pocket.]
So. . . it seems almost comical to most college educated adults that OSHA need explain to the Sixth Circuit, that no -- nowhere in the law (as Texas and Louisiana speciously claim) does a workplace regulation have to cover a hazard "more likely" to occur at work, in order to be Constitutional. That is a creation of pure. . . imagination, by Texas and Louisiana.
Consider steel-toed work boots (an OSHA requirement at construction and mining worksites since the 1950s): the notion that after one's shift ends, if one were working on one's car, on a jack -- and the jack fails -- dropping the car on one's toes. . . would that NOT have been properly an OSHA regulation, on workplace standards? Clearly more accidents happen at home than on the job -- of this nature. So the states' arguments in opposition are truly preposterous, here. But let's read it in 26 pages of well-argued context, from OSHA as of late Friday night:
. . .The statute independently covers dangers “from new hazards,” 29 U.S.C. § 655(c)(1), and “COVID-19 is a ‘hazard,’” as the State petitioners admit (State.Opp. Mot. 10, 13-14. Some petitioners’ contention (Phillips.Opp.-5) that a “recognized” hazard cannot be “new” overlooks that a hazard must already be “recognized” before regulation is possible and disregards that during the summer 2021, the danger changed meaningfully. Mot.-13-14. . . .
Equally untenable is petitioners’ claim (BST.Opp.-13) that OSHA “must find that the harm is more likely to occur [in workplaces] than in other places.” That limitation appears nowhere in the statutory text. Petitioners cannot derive this constraint (e.g., RNC. Opp.-6) from scattered provisions with generic references to “workplaces” or “employment” that establish nothing more than the undisputed premise that OSHA can regulate hazards that exist in the workplace. E.g., 29 U.S.C. §§ 651(b) (“working conditions”), 655(d) (“places of employment”). OSHA can address dangers in the workplace, and Congress did not limit OSHA’s authority to petitioners’ atextual and undefined subset of dangers. Mot.-14, 15-16. OSHA regulations have long addressed hazards that exist both inside and outside the workplace, including rules for sanitation and fire prevention, electrical safety, and exit routes [Ed. Note: think here, of the candle factory in Kentucky, or the Amazon facility in Edwardsville, Illinois]. Mot.-15-16; 29 C.F.R. §§ 1910.33-.37 (exit routes), 1910.302-.305 (electrical safety); see Amic.OSHA.Admin.-13-14. . . .
Petitioners’ unsubstantiated allegations. . . make little sense on their own terms. There is nothing pretextual about an agency whose mission is to protect the health and safety of workers taking critical steps to establish a workplace health standard just because those steps are consistent with a broader effort to combat a pandemic that affects individuals inside and outside the workplace. White House statements about the dangers and spread of COVID-19 and the ability of vaccines to address these concerns are fully consistent with OSHA’s analysis and supporting record -- which describe the scientific consensus that COVID-19 is highly transmissible, has significant morbidity and mortality, and can be addressed through several means including vaccination. . . .
So it is that very soon, OSHA will prevail. And I'll say again that Texas is no mythical "Brigadoon" kingdom. . . free to disappear into the mists, when it doesn't favor real science on protecting workers in the state from known (800,000+ dead, now) hazards. Either it is a state of the union -- or it is not. It is time to choose: one of 50, or. . . one, of one? And now a very happy Birthday No. 6, to a very special "Frozen" princess! Sweet! Grinning ear to ear, just the same, forever. . . .
नमस्ते
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