Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The agency that promulgates and enforces workplace safety and health standards.
Commentary
Cry Wolf Quotes
[The ergonomics standard is] the most expensive, intrusive regulations ever promulgated, certainly by the Department of Labor and maybe by any department in history.
Employers do not deliberately allow work conditions to exist which cause injury or illness. Safety is good business… The goal is to have meaningless standards eliminated and achieve a law which recognizes business efforts to provide safe work places and provides fair treatment for all.
LPA is pleased to submit testimony in strong opposition to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA's) proposed ergonomics standard, and in particular, the work restriction protection provisions, which would effectively replace state workers' compensation laws for injured employees. As estimated by the Employment Policy Foundation, at $100 billion, the standard is likely the most costly in OSHA's history…
Our concern is that too many regulatory bodies are reacting to this need and that divergent or contradictory rules would be established which would in effect create chaos for the designers, builders and operators.
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.
