Holding Workers in Contempt
By David McCall
USW International President
Dave Harvey credits the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with helping him make it to a healthy retirement.
OSHA implemented a standard in 2016 dramatically reducing workers’ exposure to silica in many workplaces, including the Du-Co Ceramics Co. plant in Western Pennsylvania where Harvey spent decades making ceramic electrical components.
Harvey’s union, the United Steelworkers (USW), long pushed OSHA to enact the rule and protect workers across the country from airborne silica dust, generated during manufacturing processes and other kinds of work involving rock, sand, gravel and clay. The substance lodges deep in the lungs, contributing to cancer, silicosis and other life-threatening ailments.
It would be foolhardy now to return to dustier workplaces that put workers’ lives at risk. But Harvey knows this nightmare scenario is a real threat with a right-wing Supreme Court that’s already gutting labor rights and will almost certainly attempt to institutionalize the subjugation of workers if a Republican wins the White House in November.
“Just look at what’s happening,” warned Harvey, Pennsylvania coordinator for the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), referring to the court’s growing and alarming string of anti-worker decisions. “We’re going back in time, back to the way it was when unions were just getting started.”
In one particularly alarming case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the court’s six pro-corporate justices overturned longtime precedent and slashed the authority of federal agencies to interpret laws and make regulations.
This ruling sets the stage for a potential rollback of hard-won regulations safeguarding working people, such as a new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule mandating safer staffing levels at nursing homes, the OSHA silica standard that continues to protect Harvey’s former co-workers, and the similar silica standard for miners that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) enacted earlier this year at the urging of the USW and other unions.
Also at risk because of the decision are Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules and recently expanded Department of Labor (DOL) standards extending overtime to millions more workers when they work extra hours.
The greedy corporations that opposed these kinds of common-sense measures in the first place now circle like vultures, hoping to have them rescinded. In the four weeks since the Loper Bright ruling, for example, companies already filed at least five lawsuits challenging DOL regulations on minimum wages and other critical issues.
“They’re not exposed to it,” said Harvey, explaining why the justices would issue a ruling potentially increasing workers to silica or other hazards. “They don’t care.”
“They’re not in touch with the working people. There’s no doubt about that,” Harvey said of the justices, one of whom, Neil Gorsuch, once sided with a trucking company that fired a driver for leaving his disabled rig on the side of the interstate so he could seek warmth from freezing temperatures.
As much danger as the Loper Bright decision portends for working people, it’s only one reason why this court earned a reputation for corporate bootlicking.
In the past year alone, MAGA justices also wrote rulings attempting to limit workers’ right to strike and making it more difficult for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to reinstate workers illegally fired for asserting their labor rights.
“They don’t want us to strike,” observed Harvey, who once joined co-workers on a walkout to get a fair contract at Du-Co Ceramics. “They’re making it harder and harder to do that.”
Rulings like these fly in the face of Americans’ growing support for unions and helped to drive the court’s approval rating to a record low. What’s particularly galling is the justices’ cozy ties to the very CEOs and corporations potentially benefiting from their rulings.
Gorsuch and two associates sold a Colorado property for nearly $2 million to the head of a law firm with cases before the court. The trio had the property on the market for about two years and sold it shortly after Gorsuch took his seat on the court.
Right-wing Justice Samuel Alito accepted private jet transportation from a hedge fund billionaire who later had cases before the court. Alito neither reported the gift on ethics forms nor recused himself from the cases involving his benefactor.
And Alito’s fellow extremist, Justice Clarence Thomas, accepted numerous vacations and other gifts from a conservative megadonor and billionaire with ties to right-wing organizations.
“They need ethics,” Harvey said, noting that the justices right now “don’t answer to anybody.”
The Biden-Harris administration in coming months plans to pursue Supreme Court reforms aimed at holding the justices accountable and ensuring the court serves all Americans instead of just a wealthy few.
Right now, justices enjoy lifetime appointments, ostensibly to keep them out of politics. But it sure hasn’t worked out that way, observed Priscilla Marco, SOAR coordinator for Puerto Rico, New York and several other states, noting the spate of rulings stacking the deck in favor of corporations.
“They were appointed by Trump to do certain things, and they’re apparently doing them. They’re not being independent,” she said, welcoming the idea of term limits and an enforceable ethics code for justices.
“The only way to change this is at the ballot box in November,” she said, noting that electing a Democratic president and Congress will provide the impetus necessary to enact the reforms and ensure the appointment of fair-minded justices in the future. “Everything comes down to November.”
