Printer FriendlyOn Tuesday, April 28, 2009, at a ceremony commemorating Massachusetts workers killed and injured on the job in 2008, Governor Deval Patrick announced a new executive order that could help prevent state employees from meeting a similar fate. The executive order calls for the establishment of safety committees in all state agencies to document workplace hazards and safety measures needed. Safety experts and unions have been calling for the state to establish safety protections for public employees for years, but prior to the Patrick administration they had been rebuffed.
"This Executive Order demonstrates the Governor's commitment to protecting the health and safety of state employees in a truly meaningful way," announced Suzanne M. Bump, Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. "We look forward to working closely with our employees' representatives to improve the safety of our state workforce."
Unlike their counterparts in the private sector, public employees in the Commonwealth are not covered by safety requirements under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). When OSHA was enacted in the 1970s, it gave states the option to extend safety protections to public employees. Though 27 states already apply these regulations to public employees, Massachusetts did not.
"State employees do jobs that are just as or more dangerous than those in the private sector," said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, "We applaud the Governor for taking this essential step toward instituting safety measures that will most certainly prevent more needless workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths."
State employees include highway workers exposed daily to lead dust, maintenance workers who work with heavy machinery, and electrical workers exposed to electrical hazards. In fact, the call from unions and safety activists for health and safety protections for public employees escalated after the death in 2004 of Roger LeBlanc, a Logan Airport electrician whose electrocution may have been prevented had OSHA safety measures been implemented.
Each year, Commonwealth residents spend more than $50 million in workers' compensation costs for injuries and illnesses incurred by state employees alone. According to data provided by New Hampshsire's Department of Labor, after implementing OSHA protections to state employees in 1998, the state of New Hampshire reduced their workers comp claims by an average of 51% - and between the years 2001 and 2004 they saved $3.3 million.
"Today, professional state employees can feel gratified to know that the hard work they do and risks they take for all of us who live in Massachusetts is held in the high regard it deserves," said Joe Durant, president of the Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers and Scientists (MOSES). "Ensuring the protection of every worker's health and safety should be a basic and fundamental right."