Imagine the following: One type of jet airliner explodes 281 times over a 12-year period, leading to 119 passenger deaths and 718 injuries. Further imagine that the National Transportation Safety Board recommends new mandatory safety standards to halt these explosions, but that the airline industry and Federal Aviation Administration stall the process, and rely instead on voluntary measures. And finally imagine that a year later, another explosion demolishes that exact type of airplane, killing another eight passengers and injuring at least 118 additional passengers and crew.

Of course this is a ludicrous scenario. The FAA and the airline industry would never allow that plane to fly — no one would be willing to fly it, or fly in it.

(ENLARGE)

Les Leopold is director of the Labor Institute, founded in 1975 to help trade unions design and implement educational programs.

But, back on terra firma, these devastating statistics actually tell the tale of workers who confront combustible-dust explosions in factories all across the nation. A wide variety of dusts can ignite and explode if the conditions are right. This was the probable cause of the explosion that tore apart the Imperial Sugar Co. facility in Port Wentworth on Feb. 7.

A year earlier, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (an independent federal agency modeled after the NTSB) issued a report calling for mandatory regulations to prevent such explosions. At the time of the Port Wentworth catastrophe, the board had not even received a written response from the Bush administration's Occupational Safety and Health Administration about what actions will be taken. No government rules were enacted. Instead, the industry relied on voluntary controls.

Why this double standard?

Follow the money. In the airline industry, profits depend on safety. But in industrial facilities, the drive for profit often trumps safety. While we would like to believe that safety and profits must proceed hand in hand, very few corporate safety managers have the budgetary discretion or the power to trump financial investment and operational decisions.

That's why we have OSHA. Starved for funds, limited by court rulings, pressed by corporate lobbyists and crippled by the ideology of deregulation, OSHA is failing to adequately protect workers. More than 15 workers each day are killed on the job — 5,703 in 2006. And most experts agree that the vast majority of these deaths were preventable.

It's not like OSHA didn't know about the dangers of dust explosions. Its bulletin, "Combustible Dust in Industry: Preventing and Mitigating the Effects of Fire and Explosions," is filled with graphic descriptions of deadly explosions in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Kentucky and Indiana, and what is needed to prevent future incidents.

But the bulletin states clearly that "This safety and health information bulletin is not a standard or regulation, and it creates no new legal obligations. The bulletin is advisory in nature, informational in content, and is intended to assist employers in providing a safe and healthful workplace."

It didn't work. And it can't work, because there just are far too few OSHA inspectors to go around. It is estimated, for example, that it would take 70 years to inspect all the job sites in South Carolina. An employer doesn't have to be an Einstein to realize that an inspector may never come around.

Now that we've tried deregulation and it has failed catastrophically, it's time to try a more radical approach: Train and deputize at least one worker in every facility to serve as an inspector, legally empowered to order corrective action.

Such a scheme would be certain to draw the ire of corporate leaders and politicians still clinging to deregulation and voluntarism. But it is highly likely that idea of deputized workers would ring true to the families of the Port Wentworth victims.