We got some very exciting news today! The Pump Handle has obtained an email sent to OSHA staff announcing that Jordan Barab will be Deputy Assistant Secretary for OSHA and Acting Assistant Secretary. Blog readers may be familiar with Jordan because his Confined Space blog was for several years the number-one online source of news and opinion about worker health and safety.
Of course, Jordan also lots of work experience not directly related to his blogging: He spent 16 years running AFSCME’s health and safety program; served as a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for OSHA; was a recommendations specialist for the Chemical Safety Board; and then became a senior policy advisor to the House of Representatives’ Education and Labor Committee. (He mothballed Confined Space upon starting the Committee job.)
Congratulations, Jordan! We look forward to having such a steadfast worker advocate getting things done at OSHA.
The OSHA email is below the fold:
We are pleased to announce that Secretary Solis has selected Jordan Barab to be Deputy Assistant Secretary for OSHA and Acting Assistant Secretary, effective Monday, April 13. Jordan comes to us from the House Education and Labor Committee where he is the Senior Labor Policy Advisor for Health and Safety to Chairman George Miller. Prior to that,
from 2002 through 2007, Jordan worked at the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.Many of us will remember Jordan from his first tour with OSHA, where he was Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary from 1998-2001. Please join me in welcoming Jordan to OSHA.
Donald G. Shalhoub
Deputy Assistant Secretary
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
I hope he gets to be OSHA’s head eventually.
This is a great move towards a new OSHA which actually has the ability to communicate with workers! Let’s hope he can start making the changes that need to be made(and the budget supports those changes)!
Let’s also hope this isn’t just a ploy by the Department of Labor to feed the hand of labor without actually putting a labor-friendly OSHA head in;)
What surprising, wonderful news. The conservative bloggers are choking already. Obviously some prefer to have a fox watching the hen house instead of a rooster (as one put it). O frabjous day.