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OSHA Adds Insult to the Ultimate Injury by Rick Gee When the National Football League’s (NFL) Minnesota Vikings began morning practice on July 31st at their training camp site in Mankato, Minnesota, temperatures in the low 90s combined with stifling humidity to push the heat index near 110. Such is the reality of life in the NFL, as it is in college and high school football. The season begins in early September, so summer practices are unavoidable. Korey Stringer, the Vikings’ 6’4”, 335 lb. starting right offensive tackle, vomited three times during morning conditioning drills. He didn’t alert a trainer until after the drills had ended. Shortly after making his way to an air-conditioned trailer, Stringer lost consciousness. Paramedics were summoned and the popular player was rushed to Immanuel St. Joseph’s-Mayo Health Center. His body temperature surpassed 108 degrees and he never regained consciousness before dying early the next morning. It was the first such tragedy in the NFL, though 18 players in high school and college have died from heat-related stress since 1995. While other players have died while active in the NFL, the last player to die during action was J.V. McCain of the St. Louis Cardinals, who expired of a heart attack during training camp in 1979. Stringer left behind a wife and a three-year old child. His extended family – Vikings’ teammates, coaches and staff, and his friends around the league – had no sooner begun to mourn his tragic death when vultures from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) descended upon Mankato just hours after Stringer’s death to “investigate.” When OSHA concludes the investigation, fines and citations may be levied against the Vikings if they are found to have violated OSHA standards for workplace safety. Why was OSHA hovering over Mankato after Stringer’s death? It’s standard procedure for them to investigate anytime a work-related fatality occurs. “We want to make sure folks know why this happened, because that will help us prevent it in the future. Not just at this worksite but for any worksite,” said Minnesota OSHA spokesman James Honerman. Here come the Feds to the rescue, to save the unwashed from future tragedy. You can’t take care of yourself, so we’ll take care of you. OSHA, via its Website, explains the pressing need for itself thusly: “The late '60s was a turbulent time in America. The nation faced serious concerns both abroad and at home. Civil rights, women's rights, Vietnam, and the environment all demanded the country's attention. At the same time, occupational injuries and illnesses were increasing in both number and severity. Disabling injuries increased 20 percent during the decade, and 14,000 workers were dying on the job each year.” The site also proudly proclaims, “(s)ince OSHA's establishment in 1971, workplace fatalities have been cut by 60 percent, and occupational injury and illness rates, by 40 percent.” Setting aside for the moment what civil rights, women's rights, Vietnam, and the environment have to do with occupational casualties, the obvious implication is that had Richard Nixon not signed OSHA into law, workplace illnesses, injuries and deaths would have continued to spiral out of control indefinitely, presumably until every American worker would either die on the job or face serious risk of incapacitation and death. But is it true? As many writers before me have explained, correlation does not equal causation. According to a recent Associated Press report, workplace deaths in the United States have dropped by nearly half over the past two decades. Should the federal government take credit? Perhaps Suzanne Marsh, a statistician at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a branch of the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), should expect a stern memo from her superiors rebuking her for not taking full credit for the government. Said Marsh: “The hazards workers face are considerably different. We're moving from an industrial country to a more of a service-oriented country.” In other words, the welcome decrease in worksite injuries and deaths is more a function of the market economy than it is the magic spun by yet another overstuffed federal bureaucracy. Just as the environment was improving when we were saddled (Nixon again) with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the handicapped were making advances in occupational opportunity and access to “public” places when Bush I burdened us with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), natural market forces have worked to lower the incidences of injuries and fatalities on the job. OSHA's budget for Fiscal Year 2001 is $426 million. The agency has a staff of 2,370 including 1,170 inspectors. Twenty-six states run their own OSHA State Programs with 2,948 state employees, including 1,275 inspectors. Yet, despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars annually and the diligent work of some 5000 employees, almost half of them inspectors, 6,023 workers lost their lives on the job in 1999. If, as Mr. Honerman asserts, investigating “will help us prevent it in the future,” why are so many still dying on the job? The answer would seem simple enough: some jobs are risky and not every accident or contingency can be prevented. But leave it to civil servants in Washington D.C. to arrogantly believe that they can preclude such calamities from occurring. Besides, without some workplace fatalities, how would OSHA justify its ever-increasing budget? Bureaucrats possess, if nothing else, an undying self-interest in perpetuating the gravy train of confiscated tax dollars. If they ever really could eradicate death in the workplace, they would be out of business and forced to seek real jobs in the (gasp!) private sector. Do the Minnesota Vikings, or any employer for that matter, need OSHA breathing down their necks so their employees don’t die in the line of duty? In a free market, men and women are free to choose the employment that suits them best. Some will choose professions that are inherently dangerous, but typically these types of positions pay a premium to those willing to assume the greater risks. Life itself is fraught with hazards, from driving a car to being struck by lightening to being mugged on the street. Employers have a compelling interest in keeping their employees safe, healthy and alive, a far greater incentive than any OSHA pen pusher. And should we actually believe that a government that routinely kills its own people in the insidious Drug War, causes unnecessary deaths on our highways with compulsory fuel-economy standards, allows citizens to suffer needless pain and premature death by socializing medical care and colluding with the AMA to suppress the supply of physicians, really gives a damn if a few thousand people per year die while executing their chosen professions? The true purpose of OSHA is much the same as the purpose of myriad other government agencies: to control the populace, to antagonize those in the business community who are trying their level best to serve their fellow man, and to reward their friends and punish their enemies. As for the Korey Stringer case, an autopsy has confirmed the obvious: he died of multiple organ failure caused by heatstroke. Those associated with the Minnesota Vikings will have to live with this tragedy for the rest of their lives. Is it too much to ask for the scavengers at OSHA to leave them to mourn in peace? Rick
Gee [send him mail] resides in
paradise, also known as Santa Fe, New Mexico. He writes about liberty, sports,
film and other topics for The Valley
News. In addition to being a Root
Striker, he is a columnist at anti-state.com
and a commentator at LewRockwell.com. |