Regulations Protect Workers, Citizens
Abolishing regulations, as the Trump administration has promised to do, can cost citizens their lives, health and mobility.
Even before he took office, President Donald Trump pledged to reduce costs to corporations by cutting two rules for every new one. Too often, however, that results in injury to citizens.
The Paralyzed Veterans of America, for example, sued the administration yesterday over the Department of Transportation’s delay of a rule that would have required airlines to report damaged or lost wheelchairs as they already do with mishandled bags and late flights.
The veterans’ group said the information is crucial because “Having your only means of leaving the plane get lost or damaged is demoralizing.”
Just as important are regulations preventing unnecessary illness and death, and the administration has proposed revoking parts of a new rule limiting occupational exposure to deadly beryllium.
The administration’s intention to absolve shipyard and construction employers of the responsibility to measure beryllium levels and provide medical testing to workers at risk of fatal lung diseases would result each year in six additional workers developing Chronic Beryllium Disease and four of them dying.
The beryllium rule, proposed in the waning days of the Obama administration after decades of study, would reduce occupational exposure in industrial, shipyard and construction jobs. The administration wants to rescind the protections for workers in construction and shipyards. About 62,000 workers are exposed to beryllium, including approximately 11,500 in construction and shipyards.
Reducing the protection for those workers would save corporations approximately $11.9 million a year.
It would, however, cost workers their lives. Chronic Beryllium Disease, for which there is no cure, occurs when beryllium dust or fumes are inhaled.
“The lives of working people in construction sites and in shipyards are on the line,” said Economic Policy Institute Director of Policy Heidi Shierholz. “$11 million dollars sounds like a lot of money until you think about the lives of four human beings and the effects of those illnesses and premature deaths on the people who love them.”
In considering which regulations to eliminate, the profits of corporations should not trump the lives, health or mobility of citizens.
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