Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

The agency that promulgates and enforces workplace safety and health standards.

Commentary

safety first

Report: Bush’s Voluntary Program Didn’t Help Job Safety and Health

June 19, 2009

by Mike Hall, AFL-CIO, Jun 19, 2009

An investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirms what union and other workplace safety advocates have charged for years—the Bush administration’s reliance on voluntary policing by employers of their safety and health actions did not improve worker safety.

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Cry Wolf Quotes

[Brown lung is] an allergy. If you are exposed to cotton dust and develop any kind of respiratory problem, it can be corrected providing you have not been exposed for a very very long period.

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Robert Small, President of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, America’s Textile Reporter Bulletin, August, 1978.
08/01/1978 | Full Details | Law(s): Occupational Safety and Health Act, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA's Cotton Dust Standard

This fight is as old civilization: the unending war of a free people with inalienable rights granted by God, against those tyrannical power-hungry politicians intent on the establishment of a totalitarian government.

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William Pitts owner of the 80 year old Hermitage Mills, located in Camden South Carolina.
02/03/1980 | Full Details | Law(s): Occupational Safety and Health Act, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA's Cotton Dust Standard

[The ergonomics standard is] the most expensive, intrusive regulations ever promulgated, certainly by the Department of Labor and maybe by any department in history.

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Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) assistant majority leader. The Los Angeles Times.
03/07/2001 | Full Details | Law(s): Ergonomics Standard (2000), Occupational Safety and Health Act, Occupational Safety and Health Administration

OSHA at best has been a major disappointment, at worst an abysmal failure…To date there has been no solid evidence that OSHA has yielded any gains in safety or health.

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Richard L. Lesher, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. March, 1980.
03/01/1980 | Full Details | Law(s): Occupational Safety and Health Administration
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Backgrounders & Briefs

2011 Death on the Job

The AFL-CIO's annual report about death, illness, and injury at work.

Gauging Control Technology and Regulatory Impacts in Occupational Safety and Health

Information on multiple OSHA regulations and their costs. In almost every case, the regulations were far cheaper than the agency estimated.

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