House Dems want answers on info scrubbed from OSHA’s website, reported document destruction

Washington — Two House Democrats are raising strong concerns about OSHA’s removal of information from its website and the reported destruction of physical copies of agency documents.

In a Feb. 13 letter addressed to acting Labor Secretary Vince Micone, Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA), ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), ranking member of the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee, write that they’ve compared the current Department of Labor website with archived versions of it. They say documents have been removed, and “the only common thread seems to be that they use words such as ‘diverse,’ ‘diversity’ and ‘gender.’”

Among their examples of missing information:

• Ergonomics guidelines advising employers that gender can be a factor, along with age and length of service, in a worker’s risk of musculoskeletal injury.
• Guidance for emergency medical services responders treating and transporting victims of toxic emergencies that refers to “diverse conditions under which EMS responders would work,” the “numerous and diverse local programs” regulating EMS responders, and the “diversity of roles and risks” in EMS work that “must be taken into consideration when identifying best practices.”
• Workplace violence guidance describing one health care facility’s creative approaches as including an effort by managers to assemble “a diverse group of trainers – bedside nurses, team leaders, nursing supervisors, human resources staff, critical care personnel, medical/surgical staff and security workers – with the aim of providing mentors, coaches and ‘champions’ throughout the hospital.”

Scott and Omar add: “If erasing these documents relates to President Trump’s Executive Orders on so-called ‘gender ideology’ and ‘diversity, equity and inclusion,’ DOL appears to be implementing the orders as though there is a list of banned words, without any regard for the context in which words are used.”

They’re asking for the following information by Feb. 28:

• A chart of all documents that have been pulled from DOL’s websites, including the title, the original URL of the document and a detailed explanation of the reason for its deletion from the website. 
• All documents and communications from between Jan. 21 and Feb. 13 regarding implementation of Executive Orders 14151 and 14168, review of documents for any keywords, elimination of documents from the DOL website, physical destruction or recycling of documents, and whether to continue or end distribution of documents.

“OSHA’s staff should be focused on making workplaces safer, not erasing valuable information for arbitrary reasons,” the lawmakers write. “If you are destroying documents, we demand that you cease doing so and refocus on DOL’s mission to protect workers’ lives and livelihoods.”