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Bargaining for job safety and health
Accid. Anal & Pret.. Vol. 13, pp. 269-278. Iqgl Prinled in Grcal Britain.
0001--45741811030269-10502.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS Accident Analysis and Prevention invites authors and publishers to submit material for presentation in Recent Publications. Books, conference proceedings, research reports and other full-length studies are welcome. Persons wishing to review publications for the journal are encouraged to submit their name, address and areas of interest. All reviews, publications and inquiries should be directed to: Jane C. Stutts, Book Review Editor Highway Safety Research Center University of North Carolina, CTP 197A Chapel Hill NC 27514, U.S.A.
Bargaining for Job Safety and Health. Lawrence S. Bacow. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1980. 159 pp. $15.95. This book is a newly introduced title published by the MIT Press dealing with occupational safety and health; specifically with how labor and management bargain over hazards in the workplace. The major premise of the book is that most accidents are caused by hazards that are unique to individual firms. According to the author, Lawrence S. Bacow, Assistant Professor of Law and Environmental Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a single authority like OSHA cannot be everywhere at once; it lacks the resources needed to ferret out firm-specific hazards and to ensure day-to-day compliance with safety and health regulations. The author analyzes how government might capitalize on the potential capacity of labor and management to abate job hazards on their own through collective bargaining processes, and offers ideas on how this approach might be put into effect. Bargaining for Job Safety and Health is subdivided into three parts. Part I "The Problems of Regulation" provides an overview of the technical, economic, political and administrative problems that must be overcome if job hazards are to be controlled effectively. It includes a discourse on the four characteristics of the occupational safety and health problem which make regulation especially vexing. Among these characteristics addressed are: (1) ignorance about occupational risks which include the uncertainties of (a) the number of workers disabled and killed by job hazards, (b) what causes many accidents on the job, (c) lack of knowledge of what substances ~ire hazardous and their dose-response relationship, and (d) lack of knowledge on how to measure benefits from hazard abatement as well as inability to predict with accuracy the costs of various strategies for'eliminating hazards; (2) lack of a clear consensus on the appropriate normative criteria to be used in setting policy including lack of agreement on (a) how to value the benefits from hazard abatement, (b) the role of cost considerations in workplace safety, (c) what constitutes acceptable risk, and (d) how to allocate responsibility for decision making in eliminating workplace hazards among management, labor and government; (3) changing the behavior of an extremely large number of people and institutions; and finally (4) the diversity of workplaces including such factors as size, products produced, unionized or non-unionized, capital intensive or labor intensive, etc. The central theme addressed is that regulatory problems are invariably complex and multidimensional due to the heterogeneity or diversity of hazards, regulatees and environments. This leads to the conclusion that there is not just one occupational safety and health problem but that each of the nation's multitude of workplaces has a different problem. The author AAP Vol. 13. No 3--H
269
270
Recent Public~ttions
expresses the view that due to the diversity of the problem and the limited knowledge of the regulatory agency it is unable to specify the most effective means for achieving the objective in each regulated institution. The agency has the choice of promulgating uniform rules which may work poorly in some situations or creating incentives for regulatees to develop the means for hazard abatement on their own. Using the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as an example, Bacow illustrates how "command and control" is the dominant regulatory strategy which mandates solutions to complex problems rather than creating incentives for regulatees to alter their behavior, by stimulating market mechanisms or by other economic means. The author points out that if the occupational safety and health problem consisted of a few major hazards in a small number of homogeneous workplaces, then the regulatory program enacted by Congress would work well. However, this not being the case, Congress has assigned OSHA an impossible job, and furthermore OSHA has regarded it as possible. The author also shows that "'command and control" strategy is not unique to the OSH Act but also to the Consumers Product Safety Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, as well as to other regulatory issues on the federal, state and local levels. The major emphasis of all these regulatory programs is the promulgation of standards that define acceptable conduct as a particular solution to very complex and diverse problems rather than creating incentives for regulatees to alter their behavior on their own. Finally, Bacow indicates that government regulates by fiat because of strong political preference for standards. The author details the various reasons why politicians prefer standards as the means for regulating hazards, and why labor and the public prefer standards as well as the regulatees and interest groups who know how to participate in and manipulate a regulatory process based on standards. Part II "Evaluating Policy" evaluates the performance of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in addressing these problems, and reviews suggestions for reform. Bacow indicates that evaluating the impact of the OSH Act is difficult for the following reasons: (1) poor data as well as a change in the manner of reporting accident and illness data which makes difficult pre and post OSHA comparisons, (2) relatively small numbers which make it difficult to ascertain small changes in accident rates with any degree of confidence, (3) factors other than OSHA which influence accident and illness rates, and (4) the short period of OSHA's existence as compared to the latency period of some toxicants thus making a reduction in exposure due to a program like OSHA unlikely to have a measurable effect on disability from occupational disease for years to come. Bacow notes that the above considerations suggest a more likely impact on the accident than on the illness rate. The author, using the evaluations of OSHA safety programs by a number of analysts, illustrates the likely magnitude of OSHA's impact on injuries from job-related accidents. Keeping in mind the reasons for the difficulty in evaluating the impact of the OSH Act, the indications are that OSHA has had no large measureahle impact on the rate of accidents in the workplace. However, Bacow using three sources of data on cost compliance with OSHA regulations, presents some evidence that compliance with OSHA is very costly and may be more so with future emphasis on health compliance. The conclusions drawn by the author from the evidence presented is that OSHA has yet to demonstrate significant impact on the reduction of accident rates while at the same time imposing high costs in light of the agency's intense concentration on the abatement of safety hazards. In order to explain why OSHA has not been more successful in controlling the rate of occupational accidents the author uses a model of hazard abatement whose components are: Identification of Hazards, Definition of Solutions, and Implementation of Solutions. Having defined his model and described the component parts, Bacow proceeds to evaluate OSHA regulation in terms of the hazard-abatement model. In summary his evaluations are: Identification of Hazards--OSHA is incapable of defining regulations that identify workplace-specific hazards, hazards created by workers themselves, and momentary unsafe conditions: such hazards cannot be detected by infrequent outside inspection. Definition of Solutions--The current method of defining hazard-abatement solutions through standard setting does not perform well by any criterion. The process does not efficiently indicate the resources to be committed to hazard abatement, nor does it allocate them optimally. The process is slow and cumbersome. Implementation of Solutions--Incentives created by voluntary compliance are small. OSHA inspectors observe the workplace at a single
Recent Publications
271
point in time. Conscientious and well-trained inspectors can only observe a small proportion of hazards. Fines do not create the necessary incentives to ensure that both workers and managers will properly implement procedures designed to guarantee the safety of the workplace. The author presents criteria for effectiveness of any policy which has as its goal the elimination of hazards from the workplace. Having specified these criteria, Bacow proceeds to review the following approaches for how policy might be improved: (1) Abolition of OSHA, (2) Regulation through Injury Taxes, (3) Regulation through Worker's Compensation, (4) Improving Standard Setting and Inspection, and (5) Regulation through Collective Bargaining. The author concludes that of the alternatives discussed, only collective bargaining appears capable of addressing the structural deficiencies that have plagued OSHA to date. This strategy has limited potential due to the fact that only 28% of American workers belong to unions. Part III "Bargaining as a Regulatory Strategy" explores one suggested approach--collective bargaining--in depth, through a series of case studies, and offers some ideas on how this approach might be pursued in practice. From the case studies the author develops a theory to explain why some unions are more aggressive than others in pursuing health and safety objectives. No substantive weakness in writing style or content was observed. "Accident Prevention and Government Control" written by Paul E. Sands, ASSE Journal, March 1970 and "Why Only A Fool Relies On Safety Standards" written by George A. Peters, Professional Safety, May 1978 should have been incorporated in the body of the text in Part II. Similarly, "Collective Bargaining: Another Approach to Job Safety and Health" written by George Perkel and Eric Frumin appearing in Protecting People at Work edited by Judson MacLaury, U.S. Department of Labor, 1980 would have been a helpful addition to Part III. The inclusion of chapter conclusions has been very helpful. Notwithstanding the above suggestions, Bacow did a masterful job of addressing the topic of Bargaining for Job Safety and Health. It is unequivocally recommended, therefore, that all labor and management officials, health and safety professionals, policymakers, labor relations scholars, and others interested in regulatory reform and program design incorporate its content in their endeavors and to include this work in their professional libraries. LAWRENCESLOTE,
Department of Occupational Safety and Health New York University
Truck Drivers: Licensing and Monitoring. An Analysis with Recommendations. Summary Report. Patricia F. Waller and Livia K. Li. University of North Carolina, Highway Safety Research Center, Chapel Hill, N. C., 1979. 222 pp. $6.50. Fatal accidents involving heavy duty vehicles (HDV) are increasing annually. One factor that may be contributory to this trend is the nation's lack of adequate control by the states of the driver behind the wheel. Waller and Li state that until present licensing, records, and enforcement systems are vastly improved and coordinated, it is not possible even to provide an accurate description of safe heavy duty vehicle driver performance. At the present time, many states issue only a chauffeur's license to drivers of commercial vehicles. The driver may be a taxi driver or a driver of an 80,000 pound rig. One feasible method of obtaining uniform licensing and testing of HDV drivers is by the use of a federal driver's license. This was the major focus of the Waller-Li study. To approach the subject it was necessary to determine the deficiencies that exist in the present system and try to correlate these deficiencies with the accidents that are occurring on our highways. The New York Crash File, Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety Crash File, North Carolina Crash File, and the FARS~ files were the main sources of information. Some of the files included small vehicles such as pickups, and none of the files contained information on exposure or exposure rates for either the drivers or the equipment. Relating licensing and monitoring deficiencies to accidents with the inadequate data bases that exist is a major undertaking that the authors handled extremely -Fatal AccidentReportingSystem.National HighwayTrafficSafetyAdministration,WashingtonD.C.
0001--45741811030269-10502.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS Accident Analysis and Prevention invites authors and publishers to submit material for presentation in Recent Publications. Books, conference proceedings, research reports and other full-length studies are welcome. Persons wishing to review publications for the journal are encouraged to submit their name, address and areas of interest. All reviews, publications and inquiries should be directed to: Jane C. Stutts, Book Review Editor Highway Safety Research Center University of North Carolina, CTP 197A Chapel Hill NC 27514, U.S.A.
Bargaining for Job Safety and Health. Lawrence S. Bacow. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1980. 159 pp. $15.95. This book is a newly introduced title published by the MIT Press dealing with occupational safety and health; specifically with how labor and management bargain over hazards in the workplace. The major premise of the book is that most accidents are caused by hazards that are unique to individual firms. According to the author, Lawrence S. Bacow, Assistant Professor of Law and Environmental Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a single authority like OSHA cannot be everywhere at once; it lacks the resources needed to ferret out firm-specific hazards and to ensure day-to-day compliance with safety and health regulations. The author analyzes how government might capitalize on the potential capacity of labor and management to abate job hazards on their own through collective bargaining processes, and offers ideas on how this approach might be put into effect. Bargaining for Job Safety and Health is subdivided into three parts. Part I "The Problems of Regulation" provides an overview of the technical, economic, political and administrative problems that must be overcome if job hazards are to be controlled effectively. It includes a discourse on the four characteristics of the occupational safety and health problem which make regulation especially vexing. Among these characteristics addressed are: (1) ignorance about occupational risks which include the uncertainties of (a) the number of workers disabled and killed by job hazards, (b) what causes many accidents on the job, (c) lack of knowledge of what substances ~ire hazardous and their dose-response relationship, and (d) lack of knowledge on how to measure benefits from hazard abatement as well as inability to predict with accuracy the costs of various strategies for'eliminating hazards; (2) lack of a clear consensus on the appropriate normative criteria to be used in setting policy including lack of agreement on (a) how to value the benefits from hazard abatement, (b) the role of cost considerations in workplace safety, (c) what constitutes acceptable risk, and (d) how to allocate responsibility for decision making in eliminating workplace hazards among management, labor and government; (3) changing the behavior of an extremely large number of people and institutions; and finally (4) the diversity of workplaces including such factors as size, products produced, unionized or non-unionized, capital intensive or labor intensive, etc. The central theme addressed is that regulatory problems are invariably complex and multidimensional due to the heterogeneity or diversity of hazards, regulatees and environments. This leads to the conclusion that there is not just one occupational safety and health problem but that each of the nation's multitude of workplaces has a different problem. The author AAP Vol. 13. No 3--H
269
270
Recent Public~ttions
expresses the view that due to the diversity of the problem and the limited knowledge of the regulatory agency it is unable to specify the most effective means for achieving the objective in each regulated institution. The agency has the choice of promulgating uniform rules which may work poorly in some situations or creating incentives for regulatees to develop the means for hazard abatement on their own. Using the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as an example, Bacow illustrates how "command and control" is the dominant regulatory strategy which mandates solutions to complex problems rather than creating incentives for regulatees to alter their behavior, by stimulating market mechanisms or by other economic means. The author points out that if the occupational safety and health problem consisted of a few major hazards in a small number of homogeneous workplaces, then the regulatory program enacted by Congress would work well. However, this not being the case, Congress has assigned OSHA an impossible job, and furthermore OSHA has regarded it as possible. The author also shows that "'command and control" strategy is not unique to the OSH Act but also to the Consumers Product Safety Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, as well as to other regulatory issues on the federal, state and local levels. The major emphasis of all these regulatory programs is the promulgation of standards that define acceptable conduct as a particular solution to very complex and diverse problems rather than creating incentives for regulatees to alter their behavior on their own. Finally, Bacow indicates that government regulates by fiat because of strong political preference for standards. The author details the various reasons why politicians prefer standards as the means for regulating hazards, and why labor and the public prefer standards as well as the regulatees and interest groups who know how to participate in and manipulate a regulatory process based on standards. Part II "Evaluating Policy" evaluates the performance of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in addressing these problems, and reviews suggestions for reform. Bacow indicates that evaluating the impact of the OSH Act is difficult for the following reasons: (1) poor data as well as a change in the manner of reporting accident and illness data which makes difficult pre and post OSHA comparisons, (2) relatively small numbers which make it difficult to ascertain small changes in accident rates with any degree of confidence, (3) factors other than OSHA which influence accident and illness rates, and (4) the short period of OSHA's existence as compared to the latency period of some toxicants thus making a reduction in exposure due to a program like OSHA unlikely to have a measurable effect on disability from occupational disease for years to come. Bacow notes that the above considerations suggest a more likely impact on the accident than on the illness rate. The author, using the evaluations of OSHA safety programs by a number of analysts, illustrates the likely magnitude of OSHA's impact on injuries from job-related accidents. Keeping in mind the reasons for the difficulty in evaluating the impact of the OSH Act, the indications are that OSHA has had no large measureahle impact on the rate of accidents in the workplace. However, Bacow using three sources of data on cost compliance with OSHA regulations, presents some evidence that compliance with OSHA is very costly and may be more so with future emphasis on health compliance. The conclusions drawn by the author from the evidence presented is that OSHA has yet to demonstrate significant impact on the reduction of accident rates while at the same time imposing high costs in light of the agency's intense concentration on the abatement of safety hazards. In order to explain why OSHA has not been more successful in controlling the rate of occupational accidents the author uses a model of hazard abatement whose components are: Identification of Hazards, Definition of Solutions, and Implementation of Solutions. Having defined his model and described the component parts, Bacow proceeds to evaluate OSHA regulation in terms of the hazard-abatement model. In summary his evaluations are: Identification of Hazards--OSHA is incapable of defining regulations that identify workplace-specific hazards, hazards created by workers themselves, and momentary unsafe conditions: such hazards cannot be detected by infrequent outside inspection. Definition of Solutions--The current method of defining hazard-abatement solutions through standard setting does not perform well by any criterion. The process does not efficiently indicate the resources to be committed to hazard abatement, nor does it allocate them optimally. The process is slow and cumbersome. Implementation of Solutions--Incentives created by voluntary compliance are small. OSHA inspectors observe the workplace at a single
Recent Publications
271
point in time. Conscientious and well-trained inspectors can only observe a small proportion of hazards. Fines do not create the necessary incentives to ensure that both workers and managers will properly implement procedures designed to guarantee the safety of the workplace. The author presents criteria for effectiveness of any policy which has as its goal the elimination of hazards from the workplace. Having specified these criteria, Bacow proceeds to review the following approaches for how policy might be improved: (1) Abolition of OSHA, (2) Regulation through Injury Taxes, (3) Regulation through Worker's Compensation, (4) Improving Standard Setting and Inspection, and (5) Regulation through Collective Bargaining. The author concludes that of the alternatives discussed, only collective bargaining appears capable of addressing the structural deficiencies that have plagued OSHA to date. This strategy has limited potential due to the fact that only 28% of American workers belong to unions. Part III "Bargaining as a Regulatory Strategy" explores one suggested approach--collective bargaining--in depth, through a series of case studies, and offers some ideas on how this approach might be pursued in practice. From the case studies the author develops a theory to explain why some unions are more aggressive than others in pursuing health and safety objectives. No substantive weakness in writing style or content was observed. "Accident Prevention and Government Control" written by Paul E. Sands, ASSE Journal, March 1970 and "Why Only A Fool Relies On Safety Standards" written by George A. Peters, Professional Safety, May 1978 should have been incorporated in the body of the text in Part II. Similarly, "Collective Bargaining: Another Approach to Job Safety and Health" written by George Perkel and Eric Frumin appearing in Protecting People at Work edited by Judson MacLaury, U.S. Department of Labor, 1980 would have been a helpful addition to Part III. The inclusion of chapter conclusions has been very helpful. Notwithstanding the above suggestions, Bacow did a masterful job of addressing the topic of Bargaining for Job Safety and Health. It is unequivocally recommended, therefore, that all labor and management officials, health and safety professionals, policymakers, labor relations scholars, and others interested in regulatory reform and program design incorporate its content in their endeavors and to include this work in their professional libraries. LAWRENCESLOTE,
Department of Occupational Safety and Health New York University
Truck Drivers: Licensing and Monitoring. An Analysis with Recommendations. Summary Report. Patricia F. Waller and Livia K. Li. University of North Carolina, Highway Safety Research Center, Chapel Hill, N. C., 1979. 222 pp. $6.50. Fatal accidents involving heavy duty vehicles (HDV) are increasing annually. One factor that may be contributory to this trend is the nation's lack of adequate control by the states of the driver behind the wheel. Waller and Li state that until present licensing, records, and enforcement systems are vastly improved and coordinated, it is not possible even to provide an accurate description of safe heavy duty vehicle driver performance. At the present time, many states issue only a chauffeur's license to drivers of commercial vehicles. The driver may be a taxi driver or a driver of an 80,000 pound rig. One feasible method of obtaining uniform licensing and testing of HDV drivers is by the use of a federal driver's license. This was the major focus of the Waller-Li study. To approach the subject it was necessary to determine the deficiencies that exist in the present system and try to correlate these deficiencies with the accidents that are occurring on our highways. The New York Crash File, Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety Crash File, North Carolina Crash File, and the FARS~ files were the main sources of information. Some of the files included small vehicles such as pickups, and none of the files contained information on exposure or exposure rates for either the drivers or the equipment. Relating licensing and monitoring deficiencies to accidents with the inadequate data bases that exist is a major undertaking that the authors handled extremely -Fatal AccidentReportingSystem.National HighwayTrafficSafetyAdministration,WashingtonD.C.