Former AFCSME Director Calls for Safety Oversight on Public Sector Employers

As the Director of the American Federation of State and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District 83, Mickey Sgro provided the voice for the workers when negotiating with their employers. And although Sgro recently retired from AFSCME, he has continued to be that voice, shifting his attention to providing safer working conditions for state and municipal employees.

Sgro, along with State Rep. Jim Gregory (R-80), is working to bring public employees under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) umbrella, which would improve safety, and reduce accidents and job-related deaths according to Sgro.

“Currently, public employees, such as municipal and PennDOT employees, are not covered by OSHA regulations,” Sgro said. “Those entities police themselves and public employees don’t have the ability to fall under OSHA’s protection.”

What that means, according to Sgro, is the possibility of lax safety protocols as well as little change in policy when an accident does occur on the job. Sgro cited the death of Bryan “Chipper” Chamberlain as an example of the importance of having OSHA oversee the safety of public employees.

Chamberlain of Imler was killed while working on the job for PennDOT in 2018. Chamberlain was riding on a piece of heavy equipment machinery when it popped out of gear and rolled backwards down a steep embankment. Chamberlain was thrown from the machine and crushed between the machine and a tree.

“In the case of Chipper, he was on equipment that maybe shouldn’t have been in service and without OSHA regulations it’s very difficult to police that,” Sgro said.

According to its website, OSHA was created by the U.S. Congress in 1970 to “ensure safe and healthful working conditions for workers by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance.”

Sgro said the safety standards set by OSHA is what public sector employees are missing out on and without that protection, the safety of their work environment is left solely up to their employers. What’s more, when an accident or fatality does occur on a public sector job site, the employer conducts its own investigation.

Sgro said without OSHA, public sector employers are sometimes hesitant to make changes.

“Public sector safety standards are often not as strict as OSHA’s and they can fall into a trap of complicity, and that’s when accidents happen,” Sgro said.

Sgro emphasized that most public sector employers take safety seriously and have protocols in place, it sometimes comes down to money and manpower for how well the protocols work or are enforced.

“I will say this, most are doing the best they can to make sure everything is as safe as possible,” Sgro said. “I know with the commonwealth; they are trying to do the best they can with what they got.”

If OSHA regulated safety in public sector jobs, Sgro said it would take the pressure off the entities and keep important things from being overlooked. It would also eliminate the possibility of employers failing to report some things or missing key pieces of evidence that could help prevent future accidents.

“When an outside entity like OSHA comes in and looks at things, they come in with impartial eyes,” Sgro said. “The problem with policing your own safety, sometimes when you are there every day you are not seeing what a third party sees.”

Sgro said it sometimes takes a fatality to spur change, citing the 2018 death of a PennDOT worker on Interstate 99 while setting up flairs for the more stringent enforcement of Pennsylvania Move Over Law. The Move Over Law requires motorists who are approaching an emergency response area and are unable to safely merge away from the accident area to go no more than 20 mph through the accident scene.

“The Move Over Law was already there, but now its being enforced more stringently,” Sgro said.

Sgro said waiting for an accident or fatality to happen to make changes has become typical because of costs associated with implementing strict safety protocols.

“I think it’s the world we live in,” Sgro said. “We live in a what’s happening right now mode. There probably would be a cost to bringing everything up to OSHA standards but these are lives we are talking about. How do you put a price on that?”