[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 58 (Wednesday, May 1, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E690]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       COMMEMORATING A 25TH ANNIVERSARY--AND CREATING A NEW OSHA

                                 ______


                          HON. CASS BALLENGER

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                         Wednesday, May 1, 1996

  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, this week marks the 25th anniversary of 
the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Act [OSH Act] and the agency 
it helped to create, OSHA. Throughout the week events will commemorate 
not only the anniversary of OSHA, but highlight the importance of 
workplace safety. It is certainly appropriate and important for 
employers, employees, and public officials to be reminded of the 
importance of workplace safety--and of the cost to lives, families, and 
businesses when safety is not emphasized and accidents occur.
  The 25th anniversary of the OSH Act is being used by some people for 
something else as well: to criticize Republicans who have been critical 
of OSHA.
  Indeed, many of us in Congress have been critical of OSHA. We've 
claimed that it has too often been overreaching and lacking in common 
sense in its regulations, and adversarial and punitive in its 
enforcement. And we've said that it has not been cost effective in 
promoting worker safety and health.
  The Clinton administration has agreed with many of our criticisms of 
OSHA. For example, just 1 year ago, President Clinton, speaking at a 
small business in Washington, DC, called for creation of ``a new 
OSHA,'' an OSHA that puts emphasis on ``prevention, not punishment'' 
and uses ``commonsense and market incentives to save lives.'' Vice 
President Gore was even more direct when he spoke to the White House 
Conference on Small Business last year: ``I know that OSHA has been the 
subject of more small business complaints than any other agency. And I 
know that it is not because you don't care about keeping your workers 
safe. It is because the rules are too rigid and the inspections are 
often adversarial.''
  And in criticizing OSHA we've said nothing more than OSHA's record 
surely shows. Stories abound of OSHA's enforcement of rules that have 
little or nothing to do with workers' safety. We've sometimes been 
accused of fabricating stories about OSHA, but in each case not only 
has the example been true, but OSHA has then tried to quietly undo the 
fabricated regulation. Last year the owner of a small bakery near 
Chicago told the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections about her OSHA 
inspection, in which she was fined for not having the required 
documents on the health hazards associated with laundry detergent used 
to clean hands and aprons in the bakery. The head of OSHA publicly 
denied that there was any such requirement, and then quietly sent out 
new instructions to OSHA inspectors to ``go easy'' on issuing citations 
for such common household items. Similarly, Labor Secretary Reich 
assured at least two congressional committees that OSHA had no 
regulation banning gum chewing by workers doing roofing work: ``pure 
fiction'' he said. Then a few weeks later his own Department of Labor 
issued a report highlighting the same gum-chewing regulation as one 
that should be deleted from OSHA's books. I'll assume that when he 
testified before Congress the Secretary just did not know OSHA's 3,000 
pages of rules in sufficient detail. But if he were a roofing 
contractor, rather than the Secretary of Labor, his ignorance of 
OSHA's rules would be no excuse, and he could be cited and fined if one 
of his employees violated the gum chewing ban.

  Are such examples of silly and unproductive regulations and 
enforcement just aberrations? Hardly. Despite spending over $5 billion 
in taxpayer money over the past 25 years, there is little evidence that 
OSHA has made a significant difference to workers' health and safety. 
Example after example and study after study show that OSHA's focus on 
finding violations, no matter how minor and insignificant, has actually 
made OSHA ineffective in improving safety and health in the workplace. 
Why is that? One important reason appears to be that when the focus is 
on issuing penalties rather than fixing problems, there is much less 
attention paid to fixing problems. One study showed that the time 
required of OSHA to document citations increased an average inspection 
by at least 30 hours, thus greatly decreasing the number of workplaces 
OSHA could inspect. Penalties are sometimes necessary to compel 
irresponsible employers to address health and safety for their workers. 
But as the Clinton administration itself has said, inspections and 
penalties have not produced safety. OSHA must find new ways of 
operating.
  The apparent agreement between the Clinton administration and those 
of us in Congress who support reform of OSHA marked a significant 
convergence of views. The 25 year history of OSHA has been marked by 
sharp partisan and philosophical differences over the value and 
direction of OSHA. So the unusual agreement in analysis and 
prescription for improving OSHA between the Clinton administration and 
Congress presented an unusual opportunity to use the 25th anniversary 
of OSHA to make meaningful changes.
  Now the Clinton administration seems to be walking away from its own 
analysis and initiatives. Recently, with bipartisan cosponsorship, I 
introduced the Small Business OSHA Relief Act, which would enact 
several of the specific changes already proposed or endorsed by the 
Clinton administration for OSHA. We even borrowed the Clinton 
administration's language, so that there would be no dispute that these 
are initiatives to which they have already agreed.
  Organized labor, which has opposed the Clinton administration's 
``reinvention'' of OSHA all along, is also opposing the legislation, 
and their influence on the Clinton administration has never been 
stronger than it is in this election year. So the President must 
choose: did he really mean what he said about ``a new OSHA,'' or will 
be stop meaningful change to OSHA, change which he has already said is 
needed, to appease his union supporters?
  The 25th anniversary of OSHA is a timely opportunity to look back but 
also to look ahead. The President and Congress have an opportunity to 
enact needed reforms that will make OSHA more fair and more effective. 
Last May, speaking about OSHA, the President said, ``Let's change this 
thing. Let's make it work. Let's lift unnecessary burdens and keep 
making sure we're committed to the health and welfare of the American 
workers so that we can do right and do well.'' If the President stands 
by his own words, we can in fact begin to create a ``new OSHA'' for the 
next 25 years.

                          ____________________