At a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) spoke about OSHA worker protections.
00:00Thank you. Mr. Kassar from Texas. Thank you, Chairman. Mr. Parson, so to be clear, your organization, y'all are advocating against the heat standard as proposed under the last administration. Is that correct?
00:16That's correct.
00:17And you were just talking about paving streets in Austin, Texas. I happen to be an Austin City Council member just recently, helping make sure that we pave those streets. And it sounded like you were saying that we have different conditions in Maine as we do in Texas. But what I'm confused about is when it's 90 degrees in Austin or 90 degrees in Maine, 90 degrees is still about 90 degrees, correct?
00:42Correct. And do you think that it's appropriate for someone to have to work outdoors, paving streets or up on a scaffold in 90 degree heat or 95 degree heat or 100 degree heat for four or five hours without being allowed to come off the scaffold or without being allowed to take a water break?
01:01No, sir.
01:02And would your organization be in favor of having a baseline requirement that, let's say it's a 90 degree day, that you aren't allowed to have somebody out there working on the scaffold without coming down for four or five hours without taking a water break?
01:17I think our view would be more flexibility in the mandate. So exactly what you're saying. So when does that make sense? How do you manage it? How do you implement it? Rather than a hard and fast rule.
01:28So you would oppose a rule that said if you're working in 90 degree heat, and 90 degrees happens more often in Austin than it does in Maine, but it does happen in both places. If you're working paving a road in Austin, Texas or in Maine, would you be opposed to a rule that said you can't have to go work four or five hours without taking a drink of water and 90 degree heat paving a road?
01:54No, I would not be opposed to a rule that says that.
01:56You would not be opposed to that rule?
01:57Correct.
01:58Thank you for that. I appreciate that answer. Ms. Watson, could you tell me the same? If somebody is working in 90 degree heat for four or five hours, paving a road up on a scaffold, would you be opposed to a rule nationwide that says, no, we can't have somebody working four or five hours in over 90 degree heat without being able to take a break?
02:21No, sir. There would be no opposition to that. And the idea behind working in temperatures like that is that they take their rest breaks as needed.
02:30Yeah, I think that people likely need to take rest breaks more often than that.
02:33But I think it's helpful to hear, because I heard your advocacy, I appreciate that while there may be some differences around the Biden era rule as it relates to acclimatization, which I understand is not the easiest word to say,
02:47or differences or questions on some of the different triggers, that at least it sounds like there's some level of agreement between the witnesses here and me, a progressive Democrat that was for the Biden era rule,
02:59at least on saying we shouldn't have folks out there working four or five hours straight in over 90 degree heat without being allowed to take a drink of water.
03:07Having that kind of a rule makes sense, it sounds like to me, across industries and across the aisle.
03:14And that is that is very helpful. And I and I appreciate it.
03:19Mr. Barab, I thought that one of the things you said earlier about OSHA was very important when you said that at current staffing levels,
03:27it was going to take a really long time for OSHA to investigate every workplace in America.
03:32Can you remind us how many years it would take for OSHA to investigate every workplace?
03:36Yeah, in 2024, it would take 185 years. That's almost two centuries with OSHA getting stretched so thin.
03:45I think that major employers that do not focus enough on workplace safety can count on their workplace never being investigated.
03:55Last year at a Tesla factory in my district, a worker was electrocuted to death because Tesla failed to follow OSHA regulations that would have protected him.
04:05That was the second death at that factory in my district in Southeast Austin.
04:11Tesla was fined just $50,000 for their workers death. For a company valued at about a trillion dollars, that is a drop in the bucket.
04:20In fact, on his federal government contracts alone, Elon Musk makes that $50,000 back in nine minutes.
04:29And in my view, workers' lives are worth much more than nine minutes of that man's time.
04:35What kind of penalty is that really?
04:37In my view, we are not facing a situation where we're talking about OSHA overreach.
04:43In my view, what we need to have is a sufficiently staffed OSHA that all employers feel like they've got to play by the rules because an employer doesn't feel like they don't know if they're that one employer that gets inspected every 180 years.
04:58We've got to be protecting workers' lives, and I actually really do appreciate the testimony today, where even if there's some disagreement on things like a baseline heat rule, that maybe we could at least agree, gosh, if you're working in Texas, where in my district, in the San Antonio part of my district, we might hit 105 this week, the highest temperature ever recorded in San Antonio history in the month of May.
05:22We've got to be able to come together and say workers' lives are worth a lot more than they're being priced right now.
