GOP Proposal to Roll Back Protections will Put Workers in Unnecessary Danger
WASHINGTON – A Republican proposal to block some workplace safety protections drafted by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration would put workers in unnecessary danger, members of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee learned today.
“Today, we heard about the human cost that occurs when OSHA isn’t able to do its job,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, the senior Democrat on the subcommittee. “The Republican riders added to the House appropriations draft bill will make this worse by delaying OSHA’s current efforts to protect workers. And make no mistake; there will be human consequences if these riders ever find their way into law.”
Among other provisions, the Republican draft would handcuff OSHA’s ability to prevent deaths and disabling injuries from residential roof falls; obstruct OSHA’s progress on a rule to require employers to identify and correct hazards in the workplace on an ongoing basis; and block an OSHA rule that would ensure employers record cumulative trauma disorders so workers and employers will know if there is a problem. The bill also eliminates a successful OSHA training program used by industry, unions and community colleges to improve workplace safety.
Despite rhetoric about “burdensome regulations” from some special interest groups, worker health and safety protections over the last four decades have improved the lives of Americans without harming job creation.
“OSHA has proven over the past 40 years that we can have both jobs and job safety,” said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health David Michaels. “In 1971, the National Safety Council estimated that 38 workers died on the job every day of the year.
Today, the number is 12 per day, with a workforce that is almost twice as large. Injuries and illnesses also are down dramatically – from 10.9 per 100 workers per year in 1972 to less than 4 per 100 workers in 2009.”
Witnesses also highlighted studies that showed that the protecting workers from preventable injury, illness and death far outweighed the costs.
“Clearly regulations may have costs. But experience has shown repeatedly that the costs of regulations are often overstated by business groups who oppose these regulations,” said Peg Seminario, director of safety and health for the AFL-CIO. “Moreover, studies have found that the actual cost of many government regulations when implemented is much less than the costs estimated by the government at the time the regulations were promulgated.”
For instance, some protections have led to significant technological innovations and have made businesses in some industries more productive, such as OSHA’s cotton dust standard and vinyl chloride standard, and were the less costly than predicted.
Polls and studies of the jobs crisis by many groups and government agencies have concluded that the lack of demand – not regulation – is consistently at the top of the list of barriers to hiring. In light of the urgency to address job creation, the full committee’s senior Democrat, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), requested that the committee take immediate action on President Obama’s American Jobs Act. The Republican majority has yet to schedule hearings.
“What we really need to do is to focus on the core issue of our economy, which is clearly the lack of demand,” said Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY). “We can solve every regulatory problem we have today, but if we don’t increase demand tomorrow, we’re going to have a serious jobs problem.”
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