The Cry Wolf Quote Bank chronicles the false predictions and hyperbole by opponents of these laws and protections. While the issues and specific policies change over time, the rhetoric and themes remained the same. You can search the Quote Bank for what opponents said to prevent these laws from passing. Using the drop down menus on the right their statements by issue, by specific law, by who said it and by the core themes they evoke. Elsewhere on the site, you can find articles, studies, and other material that debunks their claims.
There is no evidence, in our opinion, which requires or justifies the imposition of a Federal police system for safety upon industry at this time...This program will be economically wasteful. There will be duplicate Federal and insurance programs. The program offered...is essentially a policing program, it is designed to force compliance with federally imposed standards.
The Act broadly authorizes the Secretary to grab any police powers in the occupational health and safety fields that are now held by states. State safety officials could be forced to report directly to the federal Secretary when he says so.
The Labor Secretary would wield power over every aspect of these businesses….The act also opens the doors for the labor Secretary to: Rewrite local building codes, Revise local fire regulations, Cancel any professional football game should he decide, say, that tag football would be safer and healthier than tackle.
The vast majority of accidents result from human failings. No amount of legislation against employers is going to stop an employee who decides to take a short cut in his job or to shed his steel-toed shoes or safety helmet.
The new regulations would crown the Secretary as a virtual safety czar. He would have power to decree what is safe and healthy in any private business. He could shut down a machine or an entire plant if he detects ‘imminent harm.’
Exercising such authority, of course, would require an enormous federal policing force, perhaps in the thousands. Already, employers, in their long-standing voluntary programs to make their plants safer, scratch hard for qualified safety experts. Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz blandly explained to Congressmen that getting people would be no drawback. He said he could staff his safety policing team with the hard-core unemployed. These presumably would then show up as federal ‘inspectors’ armed with power of life or death over your business.
The human factor is the most important cause of accidents and injuries. It has been estimated that 75 to 85 percent of all such occurrences have been caused by a negligent or unsafe act on the part of an individual...This cannot be [fixed] through legislation.
We find that 80 to 90 percent of the injuries which are occurring in our company [Du Pont] are due to a human failure rather than a piece of equipment, a machine, or so on.
There is no evidence that [leaded gasoline] has introduced a danger in the field of public health…lead is an inevitable element in the surface of the earth, in its vegetation, in its animal life, and that there is no way in which man has ever been able to escape the absorption of lead while living in this planet.
Many of the temporary standards are unreasonable, arbitrary and technically unfeasible . . . If we can’t meet them when they are published we’ll have to close down.
