NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy

The recent deaths of three hardwood floor finishers in the Boston area have highlighted the urgency of addressing hazards in this industry. Among other dangers to health and safety, fire is a constant threat in a work setting that combines highly flammable solvents, large quantities of airborne wood dust, electrical equipment, heat, and friction inside old homes. Immigrant workers, who perform a large proportion of this work, are at special risk. An Environmental Justice partnership of community-based organizations, community health centers, and environmental health researchers funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (the “Dorchester Occupational Health Initiative”) had been studying the occupational health of hardwood floor finishing when these workers died. This preparation enabled community, health, labor, business, and political leaders to mobilize a response and release recommendations within weeks of the second fatal fire. Their report, adapted below, contains important information for health and labor activists in all areas where wood flooring is common. Most notably, the use of less flammable (higher flash point) products can help reduce the risk of more fatal fires. For further information, please contact the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, masscosh.org.

In March 2002, the European Commission adopted a Communication on the Community health-at-work strategy for 2002–2006. What is the score sheet as the period draws to a close and discussions start up on a new strategy through 2012? What has it achieved? Where are the roadblocks? And most of all, what does it tell us for the future? Here is a brief report card and some more general thoughts on the Community health-at-work strategy.

The recent joining of ten new member states to the European Union, eight of which are former communist countries, has reopened inherent tensions in current European Union (EU) policy-making on safety and health in the workplace. These spring from seemingly incompatible objectives; the need to ensure broad EU member state compliance with regulation, around agreed minimum standards through active regulatory enforcement, and the promotion of “softer” voluntary initiatives in the management of workplace risks and hazards in order to create “a culture of prevention.” The present EU strategy which ends in 2006, seeks to secure a balance between both sets of objectives. However, with respect to the post-communist new member states of Central and Eastern Europe, the appropriateness of the current strategy is doubtful. This article therefore focuses on the implications of the expansion of the European Union in May 2004 in the context of the elaboration of the new “soft law” modes of regulatory governance at the EU level. In turn, this provokes the question: will the “new” European policy for occupational health and safety from 2007 onwards, be “new,” or simply more of the same? If the latter, it is suggested that the future for working environment standards in Europe as a whole may be significantly compromised.

In October 2003 the European Commission adopted a proposal for a regulation aimed at radically recasting the Community policy on chemical substances. This proposed reform, known as REACH, sets up an overall system for the registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals. The objectives of REACH are to ensure a high level of protection for human health and the environment while strengthening the competitive position of the European chemical industry. How to strike that delicate balance remains riven with controversy. While intense lobbying by industry has substantially reduced the REACH requirements on the producers of chemicals, big changes in the management of chemical risks in Europe are still in the making. The reform which has yet to be approved by the Council and Parliament in a co-decision procedure represents a real opportunity to reduce the number of chemical-related occupational diseases.

Since 1978, France's Ministry of Labour and the National Statistical Institute (INSEE) have carried out four large-scale sample surveys on working conditions among approximately 20,000 workers, questioned by survey-takers at home, that provide invaluable descriptive information on how work is changing [1]. The last survey published was from 1998, and the 2005 survey is being processed at the time of writing. Taking a lead from this example among others, the European Commission tasked the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions to carry out similar surveys in EU countries in 1990, 1995, 2000, and now 2005. Between them, these surveys portray an alarming situation where workers are seeing their working conditions getting worse [2]. Another survey using a different methodology, carried out by occupational doctors during health checks on 50,000 workers—the Sumer survey, from the French acronym for the health risk screening program—done for the Ministry of Labour in 1994 and 2003, points to the same general trends. In both France and the broader European Union (EU), physical demands and risks are not lessening, mental workload is growing, working hours are more diverse and less regular, work paces more demanding, compressed deadlines reduce job predictability and task discretion.… But at the same time, workers report having more leeway in discharging responsibilities that have expanded due to the rise in skill levels and new forms of work organization.

This article seeks to examine the impact of technology importation on occupational health and safety in both Saudi Arabian and U.S. oil refining industries. Technologies imported to the Saudi oil industry take two forms: hardware (sophisticated equipment to run oil facilities) and software (policies and regulations pertaining to workers' health and safety, and employment rights installed by Aramco's founding multinational companies).

This study utilizes qualitative, historically oriented, cross-national case studies to compare and assess workers' health, safety, and rights in Saudi Aramco with its U.S. counterpart, Motiva Enterprises. Two facilities were chosen to conduct field research: the Saudi Aramco oil refinery at Jeddah and Motiva's refinery at Port Arthur, Texas. The Jeddah refinery is fully owned by Saudi Aramco, thus, representing Aramco's health and safety policies and regulations. The Port Arthur refinery serves as a reference case study for U.S. oil refining facilities. The aspects of occupational health and safety in Saudi Aramco—ExxonMobil's joint ventures SAMREF and LUBREF—also are discussed to examine workers' health policies in both companies.

The American oil industry made a significant contribution in establishing the Saudi oil industry, with the cooperation of the Saudi government. Despite having outstanding employment benefits schemes in Saudi Aramco, the presence of an organized work force better serves employee participation in Motiva than in Aramco. Safety systems such as Process Safety Management (PSM)—applied in Motiva—partially exist in Aramco to operate hardware technologies safely. Motiva training systems are better through PACE's Triangle of Prevention (TOP). Both companies follow the same pattern of handling occupational injuries and diseases; however, Saudi government agencies (GOSI) are responsible for compensating and treating injured workers. Saudi workers expressed conditional support for the worker committee program proposed by the Ministry of Labor. American and Saudi workers are concerned about the quality and sufficiency of health and safety training, employment promotion, work pressure, and job uncertainty due to continuous downsizing.

This article recommends that Saudi social actors increase safety and health awareness in the work environment by providing intensive occupational safety training to the employees (as demanded by Saudi and American workers), improve labor-management relations through establishing strong cooperative contacts with regional and international trade unions, and establish uniform and standard occupational health and safety regulations for Saudi Aramco and its subsidiaries in order to provide an equal level of protection for Saudi workers.