Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2011 -- Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, on this day, almost exactly at this hour, 25 years ago in Bridgeport, CT, the L'Ambiance Plaza became a scene of devastation and destruction and death. Almost every year in these 25 years we have commemorated that destruction and tragedy with a ceremony. We did the same this morning in Bridgeport. We went first to the site and then to city hall and then to lay a wreath at the memorial for the 28 workers who were killed on this day 25 years ago. L'Ambiance is ground zero for worker safety.
I rise today to talk about all who have been injured or lost their lives because of unsafe work conditions.
L'Ambiance Plaza was a tragedy, but it was not the result of human error, it was the result of an employer cutting corners to put profits above safety. It was an avoidable and preventable catastrophe.
One of the tasks we have as public officials is to ensure basic safety for our citizens, particularly for workers who leave their homes in the morning hoping for nothing more than to come home at night to their families, put food on the table and a roof over the heads of their children. Those 28 workers who perished on this day 25 years ago wanted nothing more than those simple opportunities that should be guaranteed in the United States of America, the greatest Nation in the history of the world.
In protecting workplace safety, we have an agency called the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, known as OSHA. It is charged by this Congress and every Congress since its creation with setting standards and providing for enforcement of those standards so as to ensure basic safety for workers when they leave home every day and go to their jobs.
In Bridgeport, at L'Ambiance, a technique of construction known as lift slab was in use. It was under review by OSHA. It had been under review for 5 years before the L'Ambiance collapse. In 1994, years after L'Ambiance, it was prohibited unless certain conditions were met. If that standard had been in effect on this day 25 years ago, 28 lives would have been saved.
This morning I was in Bridgeport for that ceremony with many of the families who must live with the tragedies of their loved ones having perished needlessly and tragically on this date. There were speeches. There was a bell-ringing ceremony. There were tributes not only to the workers and their families but also to their brothers and sisters who searched with a ferocity and determination in the hours and days for their remains after it became clear they could not be rescued. But none of today's ceremonies or any of the other ceremonies in the past 25 years can bring back those workers who perished because lift-slab construction was used on that site. And when the upper story fell first, all of the bottom stories collapsed as well, meaning that those who worked under that top story could not be saved.
Eventually, when OSHA adopted the standard to be applied to lift-slab construction, it said no one could work under that top story when it was put in place. OSHA, in short, recognized the hazards of lift-slab construction well before L'Ambiance collapsed, and its inaction over the process of adopting those regulations--the 8.7 years it took to adopt the standard--contributed significantly to the collapse that occurred 25 years ago to this day.
I wish I could say OSHA has learned from this horrific incident at L'Ambiance. I wish I could say the standard setting that is so necessary to be achieved promptly and effectively now is done routinely. Unfortunately, the contrary seems to be true.
I wish to thank Senator Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, for a hearing last week that illuminated so dramatically how much work there is still to be done.
The GAO has done a study showing that average length of time to complete these standards is more than 7 years. That figure takes into account the standards set since 1981 to the year 2000. The final number of regulations published by OSHA has declined every decade since the 1980s. While 24 final standards were published in the 1980s, only 10 final standards were published between 2000 and 2010.
Workers are still at risk because regulations are delayed for years. One example is that the dangerous health effects resulting from the inhalation of silica dust, found in common sand, have been widely known for many years. Silica dust has been classified as a carcinogen to humans by the U.S. National Toxicology Program. It is a known cause of lung cancer and silicosis, an often fatal disease. Yet, despite the scientific evidence and the hazards associated with silica dust, its use on worksites across the country is ineffectively regulated by inadequate OSHA standards, and those standards have been on the books since 1972.
Preventing the dangers of silica is simple and easy. Employers simply must ensure that when cutting materials, the blade must be wet to ensure the silica dust is not airborne--simple and easy solutions that can be achieved by standards OSHA has a responsibility to set.
According to OSHA agency officials, they began work on updating the effective silica standards back in 1997, more than 14 years ago. The most recent proposal for a new silica standard was submitted to OMB in February 2011. OMB has been processing that draft for over a year. In the meantime, workers are put in danger, workers contract disease, and workers are put at risk of fatal disease. These lengthy delays are simply unacceptable. As the L'Ambiance tragedy demonstrates, standards delayed is safety denied. Workers and their families suffer real-life consequences when the Federal Government fails to implement effective standards to protect people in their workplaces. OSHA itself estimates that up to 60 worker deaths per year could be prevented by strengthening the silica regulation and other regulations from 1972. Yet the new rule continues to be delayed by procedural and political roadblocks.
There is still work to be done, and I hope we will make progress, under Senator Harkin's leadership, on an OSHA rule making standards more effective and more easily adopted.
There are a number of simple and easy steps that can be adopted. Expediting approval of safety standards is one of them. Despite a general consensus within industries on permissible exposure limits--that is, PELs--to dangerous chemicals, OSHA rules for hundreds of those chemicals haven't been updated for nearly four decades. OSHA should direct and Congress should direct OSHA to update obsolete PELs to reflect consensus among industries, experts, and reputable national and international organizations.
Easier court approval also must be enabled. The current standards for judicial review are a major factor in effecting the timeline of OSHA's standard-setting process. The existing ``substantial evidence'' standard requiring that OSHA research all industrial processes associated with the issue being regulated is disproportionately burdensome when compared to the requirements placed upon other Federal agencies, and the standards should be reevaluated.
Finally, deadlines for timelines for standard setting should be adopted, directed by the Congress, to minimize the time it takes OSHA to issue occupational safety and health standards. Experts and agency officials agree that statutory timelines for issuing standards should be imposed by Congress and enforced by the courts.
I look forward to working with my colleagues on these measures and others, and I hope the memory of those 28 workers who were killed 25 years ago on this day will inspire and move us to take action as quickly and effectively as possible. But each year others are added to that list in other sites in Connecticut--49 last year alone--and around the country, hundreds in the States of my colleagues in this body. Let their memories also inspire us to redouble our efforts to protect people in the workplaces around Connecticut and the country.
Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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