[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 125 (Monday, July 31, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H8004-H8005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      PROTECTING AMERICAN WORKERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, later this week the House will 
be considering the Labor and Health and Human Services appropriations 
bill, and this bill will have provisions in it that really punish 
working Americans and working families in this country.
  We now believe that when we send a member of our family out into the 
workplace in this country, that they have a reasonable expectation, and 
we have a reasonable expectation, that our children or our spouse will 
go to work in a relatively safe workplace, and that that workplace will 
meet certain standards as to its obligations to members of our family 
as they go to work.
  Mr. Speaker, that is because of OSHA and the laws of general duty and 
obligations that says, an employer has an obligation to provide a safe 
workplace, but also because of the many standards that OSHA has 
developed to make the construction trades safer; that make the mining 
industry, in the case of MSHA, safer; that make the chemical industry 
safer, and it has made the petroleum industry safer, throughout the 
American economy. We have done this all at the same time that 
productivity has increased dramatically in this country.
  So it is not to suggest that OSHA, as others have, that somehow they 
have to be curtailed because they curtail productivity, because there 
is just no evidence that that is in fact the case. 

[[Page H 8005]]
In fact, American corporations are experiencing some of the greatest 
increased in productivity at the same time that they have continued to 
work under workplace safety standards as promulgated by OSHA.
  Mr. Speaker, what is interesting is that in the same bill, while most 
of the other agencies are subjected to budget cuts of around 7.5 
percent, we see that OSHA, that agency which protects our families when 
they go to work, to make sure that when they leave the house they will 
come back to the House in the same condition when they left, we see 
that the enforcement for OSHA is cut by almost 33 percent. A third of 
its budget is taken away from this agency that is given the obligation 
to protect American workers.
  Mr. Speaker, this is simply unacceptable. We
   cannot go back to the days when American workers were chewed up in 
the mines in this country, in the factories in this country, in the 
places of manufacturing in this country. We still, even with the 
tremendous successes that OSHA has had in bringing down the injury rate 
and the loss of life in the American workplace, we still see that each 
day, some 6,000 Americans are injured on the job, and this costs 
American businesses billions of dollars a year, and that is 
unacceptable. But to now take off, to take off the ability of OSHA to 
enforce the laws, is to suggest that industries and businesses and 
manufacturers can engage in a race to the bottom where they can decide 
that they can cut the cost of doing business by having an unsafe 
workplace. That is not acceptable to America's workers, and it is not 
acceptable to America's families.

  Mr. Speaker, the bill also goes on to say that OSHA cannot even 
promulgate regulations to try and protect workers who suffer from 
repetitive motion disorders because of the increased use in computers 
and some jobs in the assembly segment of American manufacturing. All of 
us are aware, we see people in the supermarket, we see people standing 
in line to go to the show, members of our own families, as they wear 
harnesses on their hands, they wear harnesses on their elbow, they go 
to therapy because they are trying to stay on the job.
  At the same time that this Congress is asking for more erogonomic-
sensitive furniture, components, machinery to protect their workers in 
the U.S. Congress, we are suggesting that we cannot promulgate the 
regulations to provide that same kind of protection to American workers 
in the American workplace. Yet we find that millions of Americans 
suffer from these kinds of disabilities that limit their ability to 
earn a living, to provide for their families. That is what OSHA is 
about. It is about Americans being able to go to work in a safe 
workplace, to earn a wage, to provide for their families. To the extent 
that they are disabled, to the extent that they are injured, to the 
extent that they suffer these kinds of accidents, their capabilities of 
providing for their families are reduced. This budget cut in this bill 
is simply an attack on working families in this country and it should 
not be allowed to stand. The Republicans are wrongheaded in this effort 
and they should not be allowed to take this measure.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.
  Mr. RAHALL. I thank the gentleman from California for yielding. I 
would just like to refer to earlier points you made in your statement 
that I think deserves a great deal of emphasis. You referred to the 
fact that our American workers cannot afford to be eaten up, and the 
fact that productivity has increased today. That is especially true in 
the coal mining industry.


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