Businesses Complain, Labor Rule's Implementation Bypassed Proper Channels

July 23, 2008 10:50 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - A proposed Department of Labor regulation monitoring workers on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins appears to have bypassed proper channels.

The Washington Post said the department did not publish the proposal, as mandated by law, in public notices it filed in December 2007 and May 2008. The only time the regulation was made public was when its title was posted July 7 on the White House Office of Management and Budget website.

Based on the draft of the new regulation, the Labor Department requested a restudy of the methods used to measure risks caused by exposure to toxic elements on the job. The new approach appears to be in response to business complaints that the government overestimated the perils posed by job exposure to chemicals.

Leon Sequeira, Assistant Secretary for policy of the department, explained that they did not disclose the planned change because of uncertainty if the department would push through at all with the regulation.

The apparent fast-tracking was criticized by labor experts. Adam Finkel, ex-director for Health Standards at the Labor Department, told the Washington Post, "It's an insult to America's workers for the Department of Labor to be spending its time in the last year of this administration allegedly fine-tuning the details of how to do these regulations when, other than the one ordered by a court, they have issued no major worker-health regulations."