Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Organized labor was nothing short of giddy when President Barack Obama decided to make Jordan Barab the temporary head, and permanent No. 2 official, at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Having spent his entire professional career dealing with workplace safety issues, Barab knows OSHA like the back of his hand, warts and all. The former labor union specialist worked at OSHA during the last years of the Clinton administration, and while George W. Bush was in the White House, Barab used his blog to publicly blast Republican efforts to weaken job safety regulations.
A native of Palos Verdes Estates, CA, Barab graduated from Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, CA, in 1975 and received his master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University in 1978.
From 1982 to 1998, Barab directed the safety and health program for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, one of the largest labor unions in the nation.
He left the union in 1998 to join the Clinton administration, serving as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA until 2001. During this time Barab helped spearhead the agency’s efforts to protect workers from musculoskeletal disorders, and he worked on a controversial set of new rules for ergonomics standards that the business lobby opposed. Although the rules were implemented in January 2001 during the closing days of President Clinton’s second term in office, Congress and President George W. Bush repealed them two months later.
After leaving OSHA, Barab went back to the ranks of organized labor, becoming a health and safety specialist for the AFL-CIO from 2001 to 2002. He then worked on workplace safety issues for the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board from 2002 to 2007, before joining the House Education and Labor Committee as a senior labor policy advisor for health and safety from 2007 to April 2009.
Barab was an outspoken critic of the Bush administration through his workplace safety blog, Confined Space, which he ceased updating in 2007.
Barab joined OSHA as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health as well as Acting Assistant Secretary on April 13, 2009.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
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