Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The agency that promulgates and enforces workplace safety and health standards.
Commentary
Cry Wolf Quotes
If implemented, they would require employers to establish burdensome and costly new systems intended to track, prevent and provide compensation for an extremely broad class of injuries whose cause is subject to considerable dispute.
One month [after the law took effect] a special edition of the Federal Register was published containing close to 250 pages of safety and health standards. Businessmen were given three months to familiarize themselves with these standards before the majority of them were to be effective.
Nobody has proven cotton dust is a source of disease….In forty years, we’ve not had one single employee…disabled because of a respiratory problem.
Everyone is affected by its [OSHA’s] pervasive coverage, orientation toward imposing penalties and its incredibly complex regulations and standards.…However, OSHA standards are complex and often require expert interpretation. For smaller businesses, the cost of deciphering which regulations apply to them and then determining if they conform can be excessive.
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.
