Each employee must be motivated through training, education, by supervision to understand and to want to perform work safely. This desire must come from within—it cannot be imposed through the threat of civil or criminal sanctions against the employer. NAM believes that…the Secretary of Labor should not be given such unprecedented powers as proposed in this bill.
The prevention of job injuries requires an intimate knowledge of conditions and a close working relationship between management, labor and Government. The states, because of their familiarity with local programs, can plan safety programs for local areas more effectively than can be done through a national program administered from Washington D.C.
Centralized control could not take into account the wildly divergent conditions, hazards, processes, and environmental problems which may be peculiar to a given industry or given geographic area.
Under the proposed bill, industry is held guilty until proven innocent.
[I]n striving to improve safety and healthful conditions in the workplace it is prudent—and it will be productive—to build upon the foundations of successful experiences of American industry working in partnership with State and private agencies. We seriously question whether certain of the measures embodied in the proposed legislation will not encumber rather than enhance progress in occupational safety and health.
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.
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 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.
