STATE BUDGET MATTERS
OKLAHOMA CITY – The state Labor Department has requested a “stable” budget for Fiscal Year 2022, Commissioner Leslie Osborn told members of the Oklahoma House and Senate appropriations committees.
The Legislature allocated $3,758,213 to the department for the current FY 2021, which constituted a 4% budget cut from FY 2020, House of Representatives fiscal records indicate.
The Labor Department has several statutory areas of responsibility, Osborn informed the state budget writers:
- boiler/pressure vessel inspections (There are 69,500 registered pressure vessels across the state, the commissioner said. This area was brought under state regulation after the Star Spencer Elementary School disaster in January 1982, when an 80-gallon water heater exploded, killing six children and one teacher and injuring 35 other people.)
- licensing alarms, locksmiths and fire sprinklers
- licensing alternative fuels companies and alternative fuels equipment technicians, compression technicians and electric vehicle technicians. (Oklahoma has approximately 100 alternative fuels stations, Osborn said.)
- amusement park rides (The Labor Department inspects all amusement rides at permanent amusement parks annually, and all mobile amusement rides are inspected every time they are moved. Labor Department personnel inspected 1,884 amusement rides at local and state events last year, Osborn said.)
- enforcing child labor laws
- licensing welders (A welder is required to renew the license each year.)
One legislator complained that Latimer County has no plumbers. “We have to go to Pittsburg County to get one,” he said. “We don’t license plumbers,” Osborn replied. Plumbers are certified by the Oklahoma Construction Industries Board.
Only two Career Technology centers in Oklahoma offer plumbing courses, she said. “We need to get high school counselors to push kids into areas where there are job opportunities,” such as plumbing, she suggested.
- wage and hour division (Payments on claims the agency settled last year averaged $992, Osborn said. “That’s a good chunk of money to an unpaid employee who may be struggling.”)
The Labor Department collected a little over $467,000 in wages and damages last year, ledgers reflect.
The “most significant factor” in the agency’s “2020 numbers” was “the disappearance of many oil and gas companies,” said Sandra LaVenue, assistant general counsel and director of the department’s Employment Standards Division. “Countless companies filed for bankruptcy after wages and liquidated damages were ordered, and others just disappeared,” she wrote.
“We also saw a carryover from 2019 of uncollected wage claims in rural healthcare facilities, hospice and home care agencies,” LaVenue continued. “The onset of COVID-19 also brought an onslaught of wage claims from closed medical/dental offices, hotels and car dealerships as their business dried up and employees were laid off.”
SAFETY, HEALTH CONSULTATIONS
- The state Labor Department provides Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) consultation services. The department’s Safety and Health Consultation programs are a free and confidential service designed to help small, private-sector Oklahoma employers understand and comply with federal OSHA standards, the agency reports.
The Labor Department made 546 consultation visits to private businesses between October 1, 2019, and September 30, 2020, Osborn said.
“All companies can reach out to us for safety and health consultation services,” she said. “That could include program review, training documentation review, work practice evaluation, jobsite analysis, recordkeeping examination, exposure sampling, or some type of compliance assistance where we may suggest general approaches or options for solving a safety or health problem.”
The commissioner said her department provided on-site training for 8,558 employees. “While onsite we may identify a hazard associated with an OSHA standard and then discuss it in-person with affected employees.”
The department also corrected 1,302 hazards, Osborn said. “Examples would be fall protection not provided above 6 feet for construction workers, safety guards missing at the point of operation on a machine, no safety glasses at a location or on an operation where metal shavings or chemicals have the potential to enter a person’s eyes, an emergency action program not documented or fire extinguisher training not completed.”
The state Labor Department also removed more than 46,000 employees from “dangerous situations until those were rectified,” Osborn said.
“Once we identify a hazard, we also determine the number of employees in the area of the hazard or who could be affected,” she said. “For example, if we go to a company with 1,000 employees and they don’t have a written emergency action plan, that’s a hazard that affects 1,000 employees. OSHA requires an emergency action plan to be written if you have more than 10 employees.”
Another example would be “if we find that an employer has 500 people not wearing hearing protection and they are exposed to a noise level above 96 decibels. OSHA standard says at 90db hearing protection is required, so we have 500 exposures. This would most often occur at manufacturing sites where large machines or equipment process metal.”
ELEVATORS/ESCALATORS, ASBESTOS PRESENCE
- The state Labor Department inspects elevators and escalators, and licenses elevator inspectors, contractors and mechanics.
There are 6,200 public-access elevators throughout the state, Osborn said. The Labor Department is responsible for inspecting all elevators and escalators in the state except for those in Oklahoma City, which is the responsibility of City Hall, she said.
The Labor Department’s elevator master list includes residential stairway chair lifts, airport moving sidewalks, platform lifts at wholesale and retail businesses, escalators and freight/passenger elevators at city halls and county courthouses, state office buildings, public libraries, hospitals and medical office buildings, churches, hotels/ motels, banks, schools, parking garages, private businesses, casinos, shopping malls, museums, etc.
- The Labor Department enforces compliance with asbestos regulations.
Thirty million tons of asbestos buildings materials were used in the U.S. between 1900 and 1975. Based on population, it is estimated that 300,000 to 600,000 tons of asbestos were used in Oklahoma – and 80% to 90% of it is believed to be still in place.
Because asbestos is a lung hazard and affects humans adversely when inhaled, asbestos removal is closely regulated by Oklahoma and most other states, and by the federal government through OSHA and Environmental Protection Agency regulations. The state Labor Department is the principal agency for asbestos regulation in Oklahoma.
DEPT. HAS ALMOST 75 EMPLOYEES
The Labor Department has nearly 75 employees, the agency’s website shows.
Those include four elevator inspectors, four boiler/pressure vessel inspectors, four amusement ride inspectors, two alternative fuels inspectors, three asbestos compliance officers, three labor compliance officers in the Wage & Hour Division and one in the Child Labor Division, three industrial hygienists, four safety and health consultants in the OSHA Consultation Services division, three safety consultants in the Public Employees Occupational Safety and Health division, and three compliance officers in the Alarm, Locksmith and Fire Sprinkler division.
One legislator asked why the department’s requested budget doesn’t reflect a decrease in the number of amusement ride inspectors, even though participation in carnival rides at county and state fairs declined last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Labor Department employees are cross-training, Osborn said. As a result, if work requirements fall off in one area, employees can be shifted to another area where assistance is needed. Thus, an employee’s job title is not always indicative of what that person actually does on any given day.
Osborn said that since she was elected State Labor Commissioner two years ago, “We have eliminated or streamlined or combined the number of occupational licenses: from 500 to about 200 now.” All of them are reviewed once every four years, she said, “ensuring public safety and integrity of the trade.”