Workers Health & Safety, OSHA and Workers Compensation & Our Unions

Workers Health & Safety, OSHA, Workers Compensation & Our Unions
https://laborfest.net/2025/event/workers-health-safety-osha-and-workers-compensation/
July 8 @ 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm PDT

Labor Under Attack (Zoom event)
The destruction of OSHA and CA OSHA means more workers will die, and the retaliation of workers for being whistleblowers is escalating. Cal OSHA is understaffed by 40% and is incapable of enforcing the health and safety laws on the books. This is also the case nationally where there are less than 2000 OSHA inspectors for 130 million workers.
At the same time, millions of workers have been injured on the job and have suffered from a corrupt Workers Compensation system that benefits the insurance companies and bosses.
This panel will look at these attacks, how workers and unions should do to defend their members.
Panelists:
Ashley M. Gjøvik, Apple Whistleblower
Becky McClain, Pfizer molecular biologist & whistleblower
Vina Colley, OCAW Atomic Workers National Nuclear Workers for Justice/OSHA EPA, Pres P.R.E.S.S./EEOICP Claimant Worker-National Advocate/Downwinder, President of Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for
Environmental Safety and Security (PRESS) Co-Founder of National Nuclear Workers for Justice (NNWJ) OCAW member
Vincent Ward, ILWU Local 10 injured worker
Sponsored by WorkWeek

Cal/OSHA faces a perfect storm: Inspector vacancies remain above 40% while Governor Newsom proposes a $21 million cut in Cal/OSHA enforcement, and employers get a 74% decrease in assessments to fund Cal/OSHA

The latest available staffing information documents that the vacancy rate for Cal/OSHA field inspectors is 42.5% with eight enforcement offices with vacancy rates at or above 50%. These crippling vacancies mean the agency is unable to meet its mandate or mission, with the cost paid in blood and tears by California workers and their families.

At the same time, in January 2025, Governor Newsom proposed cutting Cal/OSHA’s enforcement budget by $21 million dollars ($21,028,000) for the fiscal year starting on July 1, 2025. Cal/OSHA is not funded by the state’s General Fund but rather from an annual grant from Fed OSHA, an assessment on employers’ workers compensation insurance premiums for the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Fund, and a fee-for-service for equipment inspections on elevators, amusement rides, etc. All these funds are independent of the state General Fund.

The Governor’s proposed $21 million cut to Cal/OSHA enforcement is not prompted by any concerns about the state budget, but is a deliberate decision to reduce worker protections in California that are fully funded by an independent sources of revenue.

Also in January, the Cal/OSHA Reporter trade journal reported that the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) sharply decreased the assessments employers paid to the Occupational Safety and Health Fund by 74% in state fiscal year 2024-25 (COR, January 17, 2025). The assessment paid by employers this year is 0.001885% of their workers comp premiums.

Cal/OSHA faces a perfect storm of years-long inspector vacancies now compounded by the Governor’s decision to reduce worker protections and provide employers with refunds on their assessments to the OSH Fund.

Cal/OSHA had 114 vacancies in positions for compliance safety and health officers (CSHO) in November 2024, for a vacancy rate of 42.5%. The data, released by the DIR in March 2025, is from the October 31, 2024, “Organization Chart” for Cal/OSHA. DIR withholds release of staffing data for months after it has been generated.

Fifteen enforcement District Offices have CSHO vacancy rates at or above 40% -- with eight offices having vacancy rates of 50% or more. These offices are: Santa Barbara (80%), Riverside (71%), PSM Refinery unit (70%), San Francisco (67%), Bakersfield (62%), Fremont (60%), San Bernardino (57%), Oakland (50%), PSM/Non-Refinery (47%), American Canyon (45%), Santa Ana (45%), Van Nuys (45%), Fresno (45%), Monrovia (40%), and Long Beach (40%).

There were six District Offices without a District Manager in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Modesto, Santa Barbara, Van Nuys, and the San Bernardino Mining & Tunneling office in November 2024. In theseDistrict Offices, a CSHO must serve as Acting District Manager, so those offices effectively have one additional CSHO vacancy as the ADMs do not conduct field inspections.

Four District Offices had zero clerical staff – Fresno High Hazard Unit, Riverside, Santa Ana, and Santa Barbara – which means CSHOs must spend time doing administrative work.

The California Employment Development Department (EDD) reported the California civilian labor force in November 2024 as 19,396,500 workers. The 161.5 FTE CSHO positions represents an inspector to worker ratio of 1 inspector to 120,102 workers. Cal/OSHA’s inspector to worker ratio of 1 inspector to 120,000workers is much less health protective than Washington State’s ratio of 1 to 26,000, and Oregon’s ratio of 1 to 24,000.

The new Agricultural Safety unit had zero CSHOs in November 2024, and only five designated position for the four slated enforcement offices (Bakersfield, El Centro, Lodi, and Salinas), plus about 10 satellite offices throughout the state.

The Cal/OSHA Org Chart indicates that 10 field CSHOs are “bilingual.” Region II (Northern California and Central Valley) and Region VIII (Central Valley and Central Coast) – regions with numerous farmworkers – both have one bilingual CSHOs in the field. It is estimated that 5 million of the state’s 19 million worker labor force speak languages other than English, with many monolingual in their native tongue.


Information compiled by Garrett Brown on March 11, 2025.



Worker safety agency NIOSH lays off most remaining staff healthwatch
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worker-safety-agency-niosh-lays-off-most-remaining-staff/?linkId=810633593

By Alexander Tin Edited By Faris Tanyos

Updated on: May 3, 2025 / 12:27 PM EDT / CBS News

Nearly all of the remaining staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health were laid off Friday, multiple officials and laid-off employees told CBS News, gutting programs ranging from approvals of new safety equipment to firefighter health.

Much of the work at NIOSH, an arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had already stalled after an initial round of layoffs on April 1 at the agency ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

New requests for investigations of firefighter injuries and workplace health hazards had already stopped being accepted. A CDC plan to help Texas schools curb the spread of measles infections was also scrapped due to the layoffs.

NIOSH was started in 1970 as part of the same law that created another federal agency called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. In addition to its own voluntary recommendations for employers, NIOSH produces research to inform OSHA's regulations and enforcement.

NIOSH employees receiving layoff notices late Friday included some workers for the World Trade Center Health Program, miner safety, and firefighter health programs. Some workers for those programs had been asked to temporarily return to work for another month or two, after pleas from members of Congress.


Among the layoffs to NIOSH's World Trade Center Health Program were nurses and scientists, two CDC officials said. Staff dealing with enrollment, member services and other administrative duties were also cut.

An organizational chart annotated by a group of NIOSH staff showing the divisions that were eliminated by the layoffs.

Layoff notices received by workers Friday were almost identical to those received in the initial round of Kennedy's cuts, which said that their duties "have been identified as either unnecessary or virtually identical to duties being performed elsewhere in the agency."

The main difference with Friday's layoff notices was the date they take effect: workers are being put on leave until an official separation from service on July 2, instead of in June.

The layoffs also stopped work at the agency's National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory. This NIOSH division had been the government body tasked with vetting safety equipment like N95 masks and breathing devices used by emergency workers.


The laboratory's respirator approval program had been in the middle of processing around 100 applications for personal protective equipment, one laid-off official said.

Stalled work includes changes needed to meet new standards issued by the National Fire Protection Association for this year. No equipment is currently certified to meet those standards, nor has the agency been able to issue refunds to application fees paid for by manufacturers.

Efforts to spot and warn of counterfeit personal protective equipment was also halted due to the layoffs, officials said.

"Millions of workers across various sectors - including healthcare, construction, and emergency services - depend on NIOSH-approved respirators. Without these approvals, their safety is compromised, leading to potential illness, injury, or even death," laid-off employees wrote in a letter shared with CBS News.

HHS responds to NIOSH layoffs

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday, asking what would happen to the agency's work now that most of its teams had been eliminated. The department had previously said that NIOSH would be absorbed into a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America.

In a post Saturday on X, the department said that firefighter programs were still a top priority and that as "the agency continues to streamline operations, the essential services provided by NIOSH will remain fully intact and uninterrupted."

The department also claimed no CDC employees had been terminated on Friday and only a "required notice was sent to NIOSH employees, following the agreed-upon standard process with the union."


Laid-off NIOSH workers told CBS News that the department's post was misleading, since workers represented by unions were still on the job until Friday, when they received letters from HHS informing them of the layoffs and that they would be locked out of the agency's buildings.

That capped a process which started in late March, after unions received a notice saying that most NIOSH employees could be cut by the end of June. In the past, unions could use that time to negotiate with the department, allowing employees to continue to work during talks that might mitigate or avoid a "reduction in force" of their members.

However, unions were unable to initiate negotiations with Kennedy's department to head off the layoff notices Friday. An executive order issued by President Trump ended collective bargaining with unions representing the CDC and some other agencies, which is now being challenged in court.