OSHA

OSHA

Commentary

"What did we set up the government for?"

May 31, 2011

“I can’t see what all this talk is about. How is it wrong for the State to intervene with regard to the working conditions of people who work in the factories and mills? I don’t see what they mean. What did we set up the government for?”     (New York Senator Al Smith during debates regarding new health and safety legislation in the state, 1913)

The UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) co-publishes its eighth Research and Policy Brief, OSHA at 40: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, with the UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH). This brief reviews the accomplishments of OSHA over its 40-year history, highlighting the agency's important role in reducing workplace fatalities and protecting workers in a variety of industries from harm. In the current anti-government political climate, we make the case for robust government regulations backed by scientific evidence and effective enforcement.

 Read More
More Commentary >

Cry Wolf Quotes

It is the firm opinion of technical experts in our engineering and production departments that we could not continue to operate our plants and contemporaneously meet the proposed OSHA standard of ‘no detectable level’ of vinyl chloride.

-
Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation representative, Raymond J. Abramowitz.
07/10/1974 | Full Details | Law(s): Occupational Safety and Health Act, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA Vinyl Chloride Standard

You're creating an enormously expensive regulation without true evidence of what we will get out of it. You're creating an enormous cost that will only have the effect of pushing jobs offshore.

-
Rep. Anne M. Northup (KY-R), The New York Times.
03/08/2001 | Full Details | Law(s): Ergonomics Standard (2000), Occupational Safety and Health Act, Occupational Safety and Health Administration

[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.

-
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

[Anything beneath the level of 50 parts per million parts per million (ppm) is] uneconomic and all but impossible to meet...[it would be] simply a requirement for liquidation of a major industry.

-
The Manufacturing Chemists’ Association (MCA).
03/07/1974 | Full Details | Law(s): Occupational Safety and Health Act, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA Vinyl Chloride Standard
More Quotes >

Related Laws and Rules