Mayor Balks At State Plan For Job-Site Safety; Questions Regulations To Curb Violence As Costly, Broad

By REUVEN BLAU

The Bloomberg administration is threatening to block the state Labor Department's proposed regulations that would redefine workplace safety rules by requiring all public-employee managers to evaluate work-site risks and develop appropriate safety plans to address any potential hazards.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: Doesn't see need.

The comprehensive workplace violence prevention plan is the result of legislation signed into law by former Governor Pataki last year. The bill was backed by the two largest state public-employee unions, as part of a more than 10-year lobbying effort designed to better protect staff after several fatal incidents involving union members at work.

City's Objections

The Mayor's Office opposed the measure and now contends that the proposed changes are vague and overly broad, duplicative of present rules, needlessly expansive of the union role in the workplace, and would be too difficult and costly to implement.

The Department of Citywide Administrative Services reiterated the city's position at a Nov. 20 public hearing in Albany before the State Labor Department.

JOEL SHUFRO: 'City being shortsighted.'

"We believe that the proposed regulations, if adopted as currently written, would impair the effectiveness of public-employer workplace violence prevention programs by altering, adding to, and contradicting the language of the law, and by creating a regulatory environment which is inconsistent with the intent of the law," said Sylvia Pryce, Director of the New York City Citywide Office of Occupational Safety and Health, which oversees the city's occupational safety and health programs.

She urged the Department of Labor to heed the city's suggestions and revise the drafted regulations "without the need for long and costly litigation."

State Not Budging

The issue appears to be heading towards a standoff, as the state Labor Department does not seem to be considering drastically revising the planned rules, despite the threat of legal action. "It looks like it will be more of a clarification made than an actual change to the regulations," said department spokesman Leo Rosales during a Nov. 27 phone interview.

DANNY DONOHUE: Workers' input essential.

The state law gives the Labor Department 180 days, or until March 17, before it must issue the final rules. "We are looking at the comments and seeing what kind of clarifications we can make," Mr. Rosales said.

The city's continued strident opposition surprised the unions supporting the changes, which they contend will eventually save money and lives.

"Frankly, that's a sad commentary that's their approach," said Stephen Madarasz, the chief spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, during a Nov. 27 phone interview. "You would think that they would want to be more aggressive addressing workplace security."

Ignoring the Targets?

A Public Employees Federation official and the other unions said that it seemed like the city just didn't want to listen to its workers. "If you exclude the very people at risk to workplace violence, then how are you going to fix it?" asked PEF spokeswoman Darcy Wells. "It only makes sense to have those exposed to the violence be part of the solution."

Based on the new rules, workers would routinely fill out questionnaires detailing any possible concerns. Employees would also be allowed to file complaints about problems in an employer's program, go with Labor Department representatives on inspections, to request copies of an employer's written program, and be protected against retaliation.

"I think what's at stake here is the opposition of the city to worker involvement," said Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH).

Ms. Wells noted that many state agencies are already working with the unions to address safety concerns. "We are seeing a lot of success," she remarked. "And we think the city should follow those productive models. There is progress on the state level and there's no reason why there shouldn't be the same progress on the city level."

The state Department of Labor is working on promulgating the exact regulations, which would clarify the responsibilities managers have to develop effective workplace-violence-prevention programs.

'Leading Cause of Stress'

"Workplace violence is a leading cause of injury, stress, and disruption to operations in public-sector workplaces around the country," testified Jonathan Rosen, the PEF director of the Health and Safety Department.

The Worksite Security Act requires state agencies to assess the risks in their buildings and work areas and develop appropriate, cost-effective measures to protect employees and the public.

According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, homicide has become the second-leading cause of occupational death, surpassed only by vehicle-related deaths. Government workers make up 18 percent of the U.S. workforce but 31 percent of the victims of workplace violence, NIOSH data revealed.

At the hearing discussing the regulations, CSEA President Danny Donohue said that the fact that the proposed rules would save lives should outweigh employer complaints that they may be burdensome to enforce.

He also stressed that supervisors would benefit from worker input when developing their workplace-violence-prevention programs.

'Can Find, Fix Problems'

"Workers know what the problems are, they know where the problems are and, for the most part, they know how to fix them," he asserted. "Workers are the ones in the trenches when it comes to workplace violence. Who could be better suited or more motivated to help develop an effective and comprehensive workplace-violence-prevention program than the people whose necks are on the line?"

The Bloomberg administration, however, contended the rules would unnecessarily burden agencies that already have safety plans in place and upset the balance of employee and employer interest.

"While employee and union input is always valuable in gathering information and suggestions, risk analysis, security review, and selection of control measures are activities which fall within the purview of security professions, especially in New York City, where the need to protect the confidentiality of security operations is especially vital," Ms. Price testified.

The new rules would allow the safety data to potentially fall into the wrong hands, she added. "One can only imagine the consequences if members of criminal or terrorist organizations were to learn that information concerning the security plans for New York City's public buildings was available to persons other than those having strict security clearances," she said.

Most of the new rules, however, were hailed by the city's largest public-employee union. "This is long overdue," said Lee Clarke, the director of District Council 37's Safety and Health Department, during a phone interview. "We are supportive of the proposed standards, but we've asked for some changes."

'Glaring Oversight'

The planned rules, she noted, do not include Department of Education employees. "We think that's a glaring oversight when you look at the amount of violence that occurs on a daily basis in the city's school system," she remarked.

DC 37 represents school aides, cafeteria workers and other education employees who have long contended that they lack protection from combative students under the current guidelines.

"Unfortunately, the reality of some city schools is that they can be violent places," she testified. "My staff and I have reviewed numerous school safety plans. None of them provide for the kinds of protections that this standard requires. It is an outrage that these workers are left unprotected from a recognized hazard."

Ms. Clarke also urged the state Labor Department to change the rule that mandates that workers file their complaints in writing with their boss. "No other regulations require that before they can file a complaint with the state," she remarked.

Stress and Fear

The regulations also include threatening verbal behavior in the definition of violence, she said, noting that the union supported that addition. "Threats and verbal abuse add to an environment of stress and fear," she testified. "It is also an indicator of possible future physical violence and must be taken more seriously than it has in the past."

But the city argued that attempting to address a wider scope of conduct beyond assaults and homicides would be "unrealistic and create an unmanageable and unenforceable regulatory environment," Ms. Price said.

While the majority of the changes were welcomed by the unions, Ms. Clarke said that DC 37 is also concerned that the rules do not specifically include domestic violence, which is a significant factor in injury and death on the job, particularly for female workers.

Cites Elmhurst Rape

She pointed out that last year the estranged boyfriend of an Elmhurst Hospital employee slipped into the emergency room through a back entrance that was unlocked. He shot an ER worker, kidnapped his ex-girlfriend and raped her before he was apprehended by the police.

"This hazard must be included in all workplace-violence assessments and specific steps may be needed to control it," Ms. Clarke said.

But Ms. Price argued that the added regulations weren't needed because the city "has a long history of addressing the risks of workplace violence to which its employees may be subject."

She claimed the law "adopts a middle-ground approach" to the issue, and instead encouraged the state to take another path such as creating a fact-finding commission. "This type of approach was used in recent legislation regarding track safety and school cafeteria kitchens," she noted.

The issue surfaced for the CSEA in 1992 after a Watkins Glen, N.Y. truck driver upset by child support payments killed four union members working in a county welfare office.

"If it could happen there it could happen anywhere," Mr. Madarasz said, referring to the upstate town. "There were some very simple things that could have been done. They had four open doors from four different directions into the county building. Just having a limited means of entry into a building - you can monitor who's coming in."

Significant Expense

He stressed that the proposed rules do not require metal detectors in front of every building. "It's not always about hardware, it's just about common sense," he remarked.

The issue of workplace violence is a serious and costly matter, PEF has repeatedly said. On a daily basis PEF members are assaulted by clients in psychiatric centers, prisons, and other state institutions, Mr. Rosen testified.

According to PEF, at the state's Office of Mental Health alone, the direct Workers' Compensation cost due to assault-related injuries was $46 million dollars for the three-year period from 2004 to 2006. In one year alone OMH experienced 2,698 assault and restraint-related injuries to staff, Mr. Rosen said.

"But statistics are human beings with the tears wiped away," he added. "These statistics represent significant pain and suffering to the staff, their families, and clients."

'Misguided' Stance

Mr. Shufro, who heads NYCOSH, slammed the city's stance, calling it "shortsighted and misguided."

In 2004, the City Council passed a bill mandating the city to compile a yearly list of civilian Workers' Compensation claims, which was designed to be the foundation for creating a data-based health and safety program.

But the more-than 500-page document released last December didn't include an executive summary and index or list job titles.

In October, NYCOSH sued the Bloomberg administration for an alleged failure to comply with the law and a subsequent Freedom of Information Law request concerning public-employee work-related injury and illness data.

Says Data Withheld

NYCOSH is a non-profit coalition of 250 local unions and 400 public health-care professionals.

Supporters of that bill maintain that tracking the injury figures would enable the city to reduce its burgeoning Workers' Compensation costs as well as redefine its effort to prevent employee injuries in the future.

"The city's position is consistent in opposing workers from getting data that they need in participating in the process of looking at their workplace, so that we can eliminate the unnecessary hazard of workers getting sick and injured," Mr. Shufro said during a Nov. 28 phone interview. "We think that the city is not acting in an enlightened fashion to reduce human suffering and incidentally reaping cost benefits that would come with injury reductions."

According to Mr. Shufro, the city is paying at least $140 million yearly in direct costs for Workers' Compensation.

'Head in the Sand'

He has repeatedly noted that several private-sector companies have minimized accidents and injuries and saved millions of dollars by introducing programs designed to reduce Workers' Comp claims. The city's risk management officer position, however, was eliminated under Mayor Giuliani.

"We think that the city's attitude, rather than working to seriously reduce injuries and illnesses, is to put their head in the sand," he asserted.

He rejected the city's contention that the state legislation was superfluous because there are already safety plans in place. "They have no coherent overall strategy for reducing illnesses and injuries on the job, because they don't have the data to target the most unsafe jobs," he contended. "This is a Mayor who has demanded productivity increases from workers when negotiating their contracts - there is no better way to get productivity increases than to reduce accidents and injuries. Why the city doesn't develop a proactive program is the question on the table."