MEMO FROM THE EDITOR
MEMO from the Editor An Inspector Calls You can imagine my consternation when I learned one recent morning that an inspector from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had...
...I'm not sure how we qualify as a "manufacturing industry establishment...
...have calculated your workplace's lost workday injury rate to be 0. Since this is below the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] national rate currently used by OSHA as a cutoff rate, no comprehensive safety inspection will be conducted here at this time...
...The article purported to convey the substance of a breakfast conversation between the author and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North on November 14, 1986...
...And we thought about the wondrous ways of the bureaucracy...
...the hedge is Livingstone's...
...arms shipments to Iran holds up...
...What made the story so strange, aside from its highly dubious premise, were disclaimers issued by both the author and the editor of National Review, William F. Buckley Jr...
...people keep sinking through the seats, though so far only pride and decorum have been hurt...
...In articles and editorials, we have pointed to OSHA's pitifully inadequate budgets, its chronic understaffing, its inexcusably inadequate enforcement of workplace health and safety standards...
...In the final analysis," Livingstone wrote, "if Ollie North's description of the events precipitating the secret U.S...
...Had someone found asbestos in our subscription renewal forms...
...I would have added the cheap cane-bottom chairs we bought a few years back...
...And we might even trip over a Pulitzer Prize...
...Surely it would take an emergency to bring one of the agency's overburdened compliance officers to our shop...
...Just think of all the "very hot stuff' The Progressive could bring you if we'd only free ourselves of the bothersome business of trying to stick to the truth...
...The author, Neil C. Livingstone, was identified as "an international consultant on terrorism and national security affairs...
...Nationwide, the number of inspections in response to complaints has been cut in half since 1980, citations have dwindled, a cap has been placed on all fines for violations, and OSHA now routinely takes the employers' word that they have corrected the problem...
...As part of the program," the inspector's form letter continued, "I...
...Had some cruel jester put mercury into the ink with which we printed our article on mercury poisoning...
...In New York City," they wrote, "there are now only four industrial hygienists inspecting thousands of factories...
...Our administrative secretary, Helen Capellaro, told the man from OSHA that as far as she knew, the only serious hazards in our workplace were the coifee we brew for ourselves and the occasional forgotten sandwich in the refrigerator...
...Again the emphasis is mine, and so is the astonishment at Buckley's chutzpa...
...It was headed "What Ollie North Told Me Before He Took the Fifth...
...Still, we cleaned out the refrigerator, just to be on the safe side...
...But we needn't have worried...
...The emphasis is mine...
...One of the strangest stories I have seen so far about the Iran/contra arms scandal appeared in a recent issue of the conservative National Review...
...Only a month ago, Kathy Dobie and Amy Goodman reported in our cover story, "Playing with Poison," on how OSHA's dilatory and feeble efforts have allowed a scandalous situation to be perpetuated at a Brooklyn thermometer factory...
...we don't print The Progressive on these premises, and about the only product we turn out in any quantity is righteous indignation...
...Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had made an official call, without warning, at The Progressive's office...
...Because of OSHA's laxness, we have said, working people have succumbed to injury, illness, and sometimes death...
...We've been complaining about OSHA for years...
...In the same issue, Buckley described Livingstone's article as "very hot stuff, if its revelations are correct...
...Against that background, an OSHA inspection of The Progressive's office had to mean we were in serious trouble...
...in which case the least implication of this story will be a Pulitzer Prize for Livingstone and NR...
...What a relief...
...The Progressive, we were advised in one of the forms the OSHA inspector left behind, had been "randomly chosen for inspection from among manufacturing industry establishments which have relatively low lost-workday injury rates...
...But OSHA has us on its list...
...In this limited space, I can't begin to convey all of the subtle detail in Livingstone's account, which centered on a Soviet plot to "seize" Iran...
Vol. 51 • March 1987 • No. 3
