This is probably the single most anti-business bill to become law in New Jersey in recent years. The governor’s decision to sign it will cause serious doubts among people in business about the state’s commitment to encouraging growth and jobs.
No jobs have left the city because of the toxic-disclosure law…. But whatever the figures for a statewide right-to-know law, it is hard conceive of them outstripping the astronomical costs—in tarnished corporate images, in legal expenses and in compensating and caring for sick employees—that await businesses without formal, accepted mechanism to warn workers about the health risks they face on the job.
We think this bill is definitely going to cost jobs in New Jersey. Why come into New Jersey and why expand when you have that much additional cost?
We cannot go on adding regulations on the backs of industries in this state.
[The bill would be] detrimental to business and the citizens of the state in that it will curtail expansion of existing industry and jobs and it will discourage the attraction of new industry.
I can imagine the mounds of paperwork with little to do with providing information about hazards. We can see very little if any benefits to the worker….very marginal costs often make the difference between whether you get the business or not.
[The] procedures required are too costly and non-productive to industry, making New Jersey a less competitive location for manufacturing.
We don’t think it adequately protects proprietary information. Competing companies will be looking with a careful eye to acquire that information. Chemists and analysts could pick up one of those sheets and say ‘Aha! So that’s what they’re using!”
[The proposed OSHA right-to-know regulation will be] an enormously expensive and unnecessarily burdensome regulation.
We’ll do everything in our power to have it defeated. All these attorneys have to do is grab these records, and they can play all kinds of games with them. Just about anything that happens to a person can be connected to his work.