OVERSIGHT HEARINGS ON THE OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ACT Part 1 SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1975 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON MANPOWER, COMPENSATION AND HEALTH AND SAFETY OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, The subcommittee met at 9 a.m., pursuant to call, in the Federal District Court Room, U.S. Court House, 135 Grant Street, Waterbury, Conn., Hon. Ronald A. Sarasin presiding. Member present: Representative Sarasin. Staff members present: Daniel H. Krivit, counsel; Denniese Medlin, subcommittee clerk; Edith C. Baum, minority counsel for labor; Kim Johnson, legislative assistant to Mr. Sarasin. Also present: Robert Ray Randlett, legislative liaison for the Department of Labor. Mr. SARASIN. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We will be starting the hearings at this time. The Subcommittee on Manpower, Compensation and Health and Safety is conducting oversight hearings on the Occupational Safety and Health Act. I would explain for the benefit of the people here and the record that we did expect other members of the Congress to be here. Bradley Airport is fogged in. I just talked to Congressman Beard from Rhode Island, who is sitting on a plane and had been for about an hour this morning, waiting for the fog in Bradley to lift so that he could leave Providence and land at Bradley. They told him the plane was going to go directly to Buffalo and he has no desire to go to Buffalo. So he got off the plane. I would like to introduce the people who are here this morning. On my right is Dan Krivit, who is the majority counsel for the committee, an attorney from Washington. On my left is Edith Baum, who is a minority counsel with the committee. To my far right is Ray Randlett from the Department of Labor. The testimony that is entered here this morning will, of course, be in the record. The transcripts will be provided to the other members of the committee. But as a practical matter it is the staff that you should be directing many of your comments to. So we will proceed in the order on the witness list. The first witness will be Mr. William Gatenby, vice president, Harvey Hubbell, Inc., Orange, Conn. Mr. Gatenby, you can proceed in any way you wish. Your writte testimony which you provided will be entered into the record in tl form in which you provided it. So you may summarize or read t statement, whatever you desire. [Prepared statement with attachments of Mr. Gatenby follows PREPARED STATEMENT OF WILLIAM H. GATENBY, VICE PRESIDENT, HARVEY HUBBELL, INC. Mr. Chairman and Members of the House Subcommittee on Manpower, Co pensation, Health and Safety: I am William H. Gatenby, a Vice President Harvey Hubbell, Incorporated, a Connecticut corporation which manufa tures a wide variety of industrial electrical products and communicatio equipment. In view of the possibility that technical questions may be stim lated by my statement, I have asked Mr. Vincent L. Carissimi, Vice Preside of Research and Engineering of the Wiring Device Division of Harvey Hubbe Incorporated to assist me. We deeply appreciate the opportunity to testify before the Members the Subcommittee who have so generously arranged to meet here in Waterbur Connecticut. Today we would like to bring to the attention of the Subcommittee & OSHA standards matter which involves electrocution hazards faced by er ployees in construction occupations. The 1971 National Electrical Code was adopted by OSHA under Section 6 (a procedures of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. It contained a r quirement in Section 210-7 that 15 and 20 ampere electrical outlets on sing phase 115 volt circuits on construction sites have ground fault protection. Th requirement in the 1971 National Electrical Code had a deferred effective dat of January 1, 1974. (A deferred effective date may appear in a standard i order for the newly required products or devices to be distributed and be in us among those subject to the standard). Ground fault protection refers to the use of ground fault circuit interrupter or devices designed to detect low level electrical faults to ground and interru the electrical circuit quickly in order to avoid the possibility that a perso might be electrocuted. Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. has recognized an listed a variety of types of ground fault circuit interrupter devices, such a circuit breakers, receptacle outlets, plug-in protectors and portable powe centers. All of these devices meet the UL standard which requires that the trip at a fault current below 6 milliamperes and within a time limit relate to the size of the fault current. In November, 1973, the OSHA Construction Safety and Health Advisor Committee recommended to Assistant Secretary Stender that the ground faul protection requirement be suspended pending further study. This recommendation was improper, under the circumstances, because th agenda for the Advisory Committee meeting did not indicate the groun fault protection item to be an action item. Shortly after the meeting of th Construction Advisory Committee, on November 19, 1973, Mr. Stender me privately with key executives of the National Constructors Association, wh urged suspension of the requirement for ground fault protection. It must be conceded that Mr. Stender had no obligation to give public notic of his meeting with members of the National Constructors Association o invite others to attend. However, it appears as if Mr. Stender acted with unseemly haste when, on December 4, 1973, he published in the Federal Reg ister a notice of suspension of the requirement, pending study. This action by Secretary Stender ignored the public notice requirements of Section 6(b) o the OSHA Act and this was vigorously protested by the electrical industry. Secretary Stender took notice of the objections to his actions which ignored the requirements of Section 6(b) of the Act and, in an apparent effort t correct his procedural error, published a 6(b) notice in the Federal Registe on December 10, 1973. A subsequent notice scheduled a hearing on the suspen sion of the ground fault protection requirement on February 26, 1974. Th hearing elicited a large number of comments by opponents and proponents of the ground fault protection requirement and no definitive action was taken by OSHA as a result of the hearing until April 7, 1975 when the Federal Register contained a 6(b) notice proposing to revoke the ground fault proLection requirement. Opponents of the requirement for ground fault protection have given several reasons for their position which we list below with our rebuttal. The issues are stated briefly in view of the short time available for this statement. 1. The device may trip without the presence of hazardous current leakage. We believe that in most cases such claims have not been supported by leakage measurements and they represent simple conjecture. 2. There have been complaints that the Underwriters Laboratories tolerance to assure devices tripping at 5 milliamperes was too low. U.L. has acknowledged this possibility and has changed its standard to effectively double the Lower trip limit and raise the upper limit of the tolerance. 3. It has been claimed that grounding provides adequate protection, making the ground fault protection requirement redundant. We believe that this claim might be true if employers could guarantee electrical ground continuity; however, experience has shown this to be extremely difficult, and its absence is hazardous. 4. There have been claims that there is insufficient data to support the requirement for ground fault protection. We believe there is even less data to support revocation of the requirement. We believe that ground protection can be supplied on construction sites. 5. The cost of providing the protection has been claimed to be excessive. for less than 2¢ per sq. ft. as compared with the average building cost per sq. ft. for 1973 of $21.81 per sq. ft. for non-residential buildings and $17.73 per sq. ft. for residential buildings, (both costs reported by F.W. Dodge Reports). For a more lengthy, but still abbreviated report on the arguments, we suggest a careful reading of the April 7, 1975 Federal Register notice, a copy of which is attached. We submit that the April 7 Federal Register notice does not show the preponderence of evidence in opposition to the ground fault protection requirement which should be present to support serious consideration by OSHA of revocation of a safety standard. We suggest that the repeated attempts to find a means to eliminate the ground fault protection requirement by Secretary Stender in December, 1973, or the final proposal in April, 1975, gives the appearance of lack of objectivity on the part of Mr. Stender, particularly in view of the intent of Congress that OSHA be established to insure employee health and safety on the job. The public record, including transcripts of hearings and Advisory Committee meetings, indicates support of the GFCI requirement by the OSHA Standards Development Staff. No technically based argument against the requirement has been made by OSHA, yet Mr. Stender persists. Our purpose in bringing these matters to your attention is to make you aware that in this case Assistant Secretary Stender appears to have displayed a bias in favor of construction employers in a manner not consistent with the intent of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. We are sure it will be of interest to your Subcommittee that in 1974, during that period of suspension, there were eight verified electrocutions of construction employees under circumstances for which the ground fault circuit interrupter protection was intended. You may question whether this is a serious hazard in view of the fact that we can cite only eight electrocutions; however we cannot emphasize too strongly the extreme difficulty of finding out about such electrocutions because the lack of any national statistical program providing detailed analytical data about employment deaths. There is among the background materials a list of the employees electrocuted in 1974 while performing their jobs on construction under circumstances where they should have been protected by ground fault circuit interrupters. We realize, of course, that it is impossible to assure absolute compliance with the requirements of any regulation, but at least some of the employers might 72-749 0-76-21 have complied and some of the electrocutions might not have occurred OSHA not suspended enforcement of the ground fault protection requirem For the future, if we read the April 7, 1975 Federal Register notice corred Mr. Stender intends to ignore the fact that employees will be electroc while he pursues his strange effort to appease employers by removing requirement for ground fault protection from the regulations. We are grateful for this opportunity to bring this matter to the attent of the Subcommittee. Mr. Carissimi and I will be happy to answer any q tions the Committee or its staff may wish to ask. STATEMENT TO MANPOWER, COMPENSATION, HEALTH AND SAFETY SUBCOMMIT OF HOUSE EDUCATION AND LABOR COMMITTEE, OVERSIGHT HEARING MAY 1975 ATTACHMENTS 1. List of Electrical Deaths on Construction Sites (1974). 2. Chronology. 3. Federal Register, October 26, 1973. 4. Federal Register Notice, December 4, 1973. 5. Federal Register Notice, December 10, 1973. 6. Federal Register Notice, December 26, 1973. 7. National Safety Council Data Sheet 636. 8. Correspondence-re New Brunswick Electric Power Commission. 9. Oak Ridge National Laboratory-"Electrical Interrupters". Safety-Ground Fa 10. Dept. of Army, Corps of Engineers-Technical Letter. 11. I.E.E.E. Paper-"GFCI-Design and Operational Characteristics". 12. I.E.E.E. Paper-"GFCI-Applications and Alternatives". 13. Article 210-7-1971 National Electrical Code. 14. Article 210-8 (b)-1975 National Electrical Code. 15. Federal Register Notice, April 7, 1975, ELECTRICAL DEATHS ON CONSTRUCTION SITES (1974) Date of death Name of deceased State Cause May 20, 1974... Daniel K. McNeill (21 yr). Illinois....... Using electric Source of information saw while standing in water. May 23, 1974... Michael J. Stufft (23 yr).. Florida....... Using screw gun to attach dry wall, short in gun. damp area. Coroner's certificate Physician's statement, Using electric drill with Autopsy protocol and @ CHRONOLOGY OF OSHA SUSPENSION OF REQUIREMENT FOR GFCI PROTECTION ON CONSTRUCTION SITES September, 1971-1971 National Electrical Code distributed containing tion 210-7 requirement for GFCI on construction sites with January 1, effective date. February 16, 1972-OSHA adopts 1971 NEC under Section 6a of the Act November 8, 1973-Meeting of OSHA Construction Advisory Commit Article 210-7 requirement was on Committee agenda for "program orientati Despite the fact that the agenda did not list subject as action item, the C mittee adopted a resolution recommending that January 1, 1974 effective date be held in abeyance pending further study. November 19, 1973-Representatives of the National Constructors Association met with Assistant Secretary Stender and asked him to postpone the effective date. The request was not made in writing and there was no notice or written record of the meeting. December 4, 1973-38FR33397 announcement that effective date of 210-7 requirement had been postponed pending reconsideration. The postponement was effective immediately to meet the "need to provide quick relief" for the employers. December 7, 1973-National Electrical Manufacturers Association representatives met with Assistant Secretary Stender to protest his action. December 10, 1973-38FR33981 announced hearing to be held February 26, 1974 on the 210-7 requirement. December 26, 1973-38FR35235 announced additional subjects for Febru ary 26, 1974 hearing. February 26, 1974-GFCI hearing. June 11, 1974-39FR20499 advanced notice of proposed rule making on restatement of and broadening of GFCI requirement with due date for comments August 9, 1974. October 30, 1974-Meeting of OSHA Construction Safety and Health Advisory Committee. Considered new GFCI proposal and recommended continued suspension pending results of study recommended to be undertaken by OSHA. September, 1974-1975 National Electrical Code distributed containing Section 210-8b requirements for GFCI on construction sites. April 7, 1975 40FR15390 announcement of proposed revocation of GFCI requirement. [From the Federal Register, vol. 38, No. 206-Friday, Oct. 26, 1973] DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Occupational Safety and Health Administration ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON CONSTRUCTION SAFETY AND HEALTH NOTICE OF MEETING Notice is given that the Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health, established under section 107 (e) of the Contract Work Hours & Safety Standards Act (40 U.S.C. 333) and section 7(b) of the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (20 U.S.C. 656) will meet on Wednesday, November 7, and Thursday, November 8, 1973, starting at 9 a.m. in Conference Room B, Departmental Auditorium, Constitution Avenue between 12th and 14th Streets NW., Washington, D.C. The meeting shall be open to the public. The Committee will consider the proposed Rope Guided Hoists Standard and Particular Rules Modifications. The agenda also provides for program orientation on Ground Fault Interrupters and Safety Training in the States. Written data, views, or arguments concerning the subject to be considered may be filed, together with 20 copies thereof, with the committee's Executive Secretary by November 2, 1973. Such submissions may also be filed with the Executive Secretary at the meeting. Any such submissions will be provided to the members of the committee and will be included in the record of the meeting. Persons wishing to orally address the committee at the meeting should submit a written request to be heard. together with 20 copies thereof, to the Executive Secretary no later than November 2, 1973. The request must contain a short summary of the intended presentation and an estimate of the amount of time that will be needed. |