    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [May 16, 1995]
    [Pages 691-695]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the National Performance Review
    May 16, 1995

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President, Secretary Reich, Mr. Dear,
    to our friends from Maine, all of them, for the fine work they have
    done. Congresswoman Norton and members of the DC City Council and others
    who are here, we're glad to be in the District of Columbia and in one of
    the most interesting workplaces I've been in in a while. I want to thank
    the folks who work here for making us feel welcome and for taking a
    little time off from work to let us come in and interrupt the flow of
    events. I'm sure that's not a terrible burden. [Laughter] I want to
    thank Mr. Gawne for having us here. Mr. and Mrs. Gawne made us feel very
    welcome when we came in, and they didn't waste much time in establishing
    the productivity of their leadership by pointing out that they have 6
    children and 14 grandchildren, and most of them are here today.
    [Laughter] I'd also like to say a special word of appreciation to the
    Vice President's reinventing Government team who worked so hard on this.
    Elaine Kamarck is here and many others who worked so hard on it; I thank
    all of them.
        We have taken this business of trying to make the Government work
    and make sense very seri-

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    ously. We have worked at it steadily now for a good long while. We think
    it's one of the most important things we can do to make the American
    people believe, first of all, that their tax dollars are not being
    squandered but instead are being well spent and, secondly, to fulfill
    some important public objectives.
        Protecting the health and safety of our country's workers is an
    important national value. It's something we should all share. From the
    Triangle Shirtwaist fire back in 1911, which galvanized the conscience
    of our Nation, to the fire in Hamlet, North Carolina, in 1991--which I
    remember so very well because 25 poultry workers were killed there and
    thousands and thousands of people work in the poultry industry in my
    home State--we have recognized that we have a special responsibility as
    a people to ensure that workers are not put in undue jeopardy. We don't
    believe that anyone should have to endanger their personal health or
    their very lives to make a living for their families, to live a life of
    dignity.
        But still, in spite of all the progress that has been made, over
    6,000 Americans every year die at work. That's 17 a day. And about
    50,000 more people die each year from exposure to chemicals and other
    hazards in the workplace. Six million Americans are injured, and the
    injuries alone cost our economy over $100 billion a year. So it is
    obvious that we still have work to do and that to whatever extent we can
    reduce death and injuries in the workplace, we will not only improve the
    quality of life in this country, we will also reduce the cost of these
    terrible tragedies in ways that strengthen our economy.
        The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been at work
    in this cause since it was created with bipartisan support in 1970.
    Since that time, workplace deaths have been cut in half. Cotton dust
    standard has virtually eliminated brown lung disease. Deaths of
    construction workers from collapsing trenches has been cut by a third.
    There have been many achievements that all Americans can be proud of.
    And today, we should reaffirm that commitment.
        But we also have to recognize that like other Government regulatory
    agencies, OSHA can and must change to keep up with the changes and the
    times. We also recognize that any organization that is established and
    gets going in a certain direction, if it's not careful, whether it's in
    the public or the private sector, can wind up pursuing prerogatives that
    strengthen its organization rather than fulfill its fundamental mission.
        That was the brilliance of the story that the Vice President told
    about what the Maine OSHA people did and how they changed, not only
    replacing yesterday's Government with a new Government that fits the
    needs of an information age that is less bureaucratic and that
    recognizes that the way we protected workers' safety in the last 25
    years may not be the best way to do it in the next 25 years but also
    recognizing that, frankly, sometimes the rules have simply become too
    complex, too specific for even the most diligent employer to follow and
    that if the Government rewards inspections for writing citations and
    levying fines more than ensuring safety, there's a chance you could get
    more citations, more fines, more hassle, and no more safety.
        So we believe that in this, as in every other area, we have to
    constantly innovate. And we're announcing these initiatives today.
        Let me say to you that of all the things we've done in reinventing
    Government, this one has a particular personal meaning to me because of
    the experience I had for so many years as the Governor of my State. We
    were one of 29 States, first of all, that had a partnership with OSHA.
    And we worked hard to help implement the worker standards that the
    National Government set with State people who worked in partnership with
    manufacturers, because in the 1980's, when manufacturing was going
    downhill in America, we were increasing manufacturing employment in my
    State, partly because we had that kind of partnership.
        I was interested in it from a human perspective because I spent so
    many hours, countless hours, in literally hundreds of factories in my
    State talking to the people who worked in the factories, watching what
    they did. And finally, I became personally acquainted with it because
    for several months in one year I was Governor, I took a day off a month
    to work in manufacturing operations. That will give you a clear
    perspective about wanting to be safe in the workplace. I worked in a
    food processing plant. I worked in a joist manufacturing operation. I
    helped to make refrigerators from 3 p.m. to midnight one night on a
    Friday night. And I even worked in an oil refinery. And it gave me a
    keen appreciation, first of all, for the need of people who are
    operating these things to be

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    treated in a fair and sensible way by the Government so people could
    make a living and they could make a profit; and, second, for the
    absolute imperative for people to be able to work in a safe and secure
    environment.
        Unless you've ever seen one of those huge metal stamping machines
    come down on a piece of sheet metal, you can't imagine what it was like
    to think about the days when people had to put their hands under those
    machines with no guards, knowing one mistake would be the hand would be
    gone forever. Unless you've actually seen things like that, it is hard
    to visualize what is at stake here.
        We believe in this country that you can do the right thing and do
    well. We believe that is a general principle that we have to have
    throughout the economy. Mr. Correll, here from Georgia Pacific--I've
    been in every single one of his operations in our home State. And they
    have done some remarkable things. I believe you can do the right thing
    and do well. And we have to see day-in and day-out that we have a
    Government that makes sure we're all trying to do the right thing and
    that we can do well at the same time.
        That is what we are trying to do today, saying to businesses, you
    have choice. You can put in place a health and safety program that
    involves your workers and that tries to find and fix hazards before an
    accident happens, and OSHA will be a partner. There will be reduced
    penalties or, in some cases, no penalties at all. You will be inspected
    rarely, if ever. You will get help when you want to comply. But if a
    business chooses not to act responsibly and puts its workers at risk,
    then there must be vigorous enforcement and consequences that are
    serious when violations are serious.
        This new approach is not an abstract one. We have seen it. It works
    in Maine. If it worked in Maine, it will work everywhere else. To borrow
    a phrase from politics: I hope when it comes to worker safety, as Maine
    goes, so goes the Nation.
        Secondly, we need to make sure that worker safety rules are as
    simple and sensible and flexible as they can be. You've already heard
    the Vice President say that OSHA will now allow plastic gas cans on
    construction sites. That may not sound like a big deal, but it's
    absolutely maddening if you're on the other side of a dumb regulation
    like that. Until now, OSHA required that work site first aid kits be
    approved by a doctor. That doesn't make a lot of sense, So, from now on,
    you can buy one at the drugstore.
        This is just a downpayment on the things that we intend to do. As
    part of the page-by-page regulatory review I ordered earlier this year,
    on June 1st, I expect to see dozens and dozens more rules on my desk
    ready to be discarded or fixed, including hundreds of pages of detailed
    standards that have literally been on the books unchanged since the
    early 1970's.
        The third thing we intend to do is to extend our reinvention to the
    way men and women on the frontlines work with employees and businesses
    to promote safety. I'm interested in results, not redtape. The Vice
    President says that all the time. We're determined to make that the rule
    of the land in worker safety, in the environment, in every other area
    that we can possibly extend it to.
        We're interested in prevention, not punishment. It would suit me if
    we had a year in this country where OSHA did not levy a single fine,
    because if that happened, we'd have safer workplaces, more productive
    businesses, we'd be making more money with happier people going to work
    every day.
        We are going to redesign OSHA's offices, five of them every quarter,
    to produce safety, not just citations. We're cutting the time between
    the complaint by a worker and the resolution of a problem in half. We're
    focusing inspections on the gravest hazards. Already if a construction
    site has a strong health and safety program, inspectors are limited to
    the biggest hazards, lasting a few hours, not a few days. Now we'll
    expand that to other industries as well.
        We want to use common sense and market incentives to save lives.
    Last year, the OSHA office in Parsippany, New Jersey, had an idea:
    Rather than finding a hazard, writing a citation, fighting for months
    about it, why not give the employer a financial incentive to simply fix
    it on the spot? That leads to more safety and much less hassle. Lives
    are already being saved there, too. And today, we are determined to
    expand this so-called quick fix program nationwide. There really are
    some quick fixes when you're dealing with stale bureaucracy, and we
    intend to find them all and put them into effect. Giving employers a
    choice, commonsense regulation, commonsense enforcement: that will be
    the new OSHA, the right way to protect the safety of people in the
    American workplace.

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        But even as we take these steps, we have to recognize that there is
    a very different approach at work here in Washington. The leadership of
    the new Congress is mounting an assault on our ability to protect people
    in the workplace at all. Responding to the entreaties of powerful
    interests, they are ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater and,
    in so doing, to put at risk the health and safety of millions of
    ordinary American workers. They're not trying to reform the system of
    worker protection as we are but instead to dismantle it and, therefore,
    to destroy our ability to pursue its fundamental purpose.
        The budget proposed in the Senate would cut in half the funding for
    worker health and safety, decimating enforcement, research, and even
    compliance assistance, something that I've found in my own personal
    experience to be the most important thing of all with employers of good
    will. The House budget would even eliminate outright the National
    Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. They say they don't want
    redtape, but this is an agency with no inspectors, the National
    Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. They say we should be
    guided by better scientific evidence in our work, and I agree. This
    agency exists solely to give us better evidence to guide our work. The
    Safety and Health Institute does important work, it doesn't cost a lot
    of money, and we ought to preserve it.
        The regulatory legislation moving through Congress, which was
    literally written by lobbyists who then wrote speeches for the Members
    to explain what it is they were introducing and supporting, would tie
    worker protection efforts up in knots. It would override every health
    and safety standard on the books and let special interests dictate the
    regulatory process. They have proposed freezing all Federal regulations
    and have gone after the worker protection standards with a little bit of
    extra gusto. They don't want rigorous reform. It looks to me like they
    want rigor mortis. [Laughter]
        Now, I am the last person in the world to stand up here and defend
    some dumb rule, regulation, or practice or people who say that people
    who are elected come and go; we'll be here in this agency forever; you
    do it our way or not at all. But we have proved, we have proved that
    most Federal employees want to do the right thing, that they want the
    American people to do right and to do well. We have proved that we can
    change the culture of bureaucracy. And we're going to do more of it.
        So we should reform. We absolutely should. But we should not roll
    back our commitment to worker safety. Remember, there's still a lot of
    folks out there working in situations that are dangerous. And not every
    workplace can be made 100 percent safe. I know that. And workers have a
    responsibility to take care of their own safety and to be careful and to
    be diligent. I know that. But we have a public responsibility that all
    of us share as Americans to work for safer workplaces.
        If we take that seriously and we apply ourselves to the task in the
    way the Vice President and the Secretary of Labor have outlined today,
    if we follow the example of the fine OSHA leaders, business leaders,
    union leaders like those we recognized in Maine today, we can do what we
    need to do. We can do what we need to do and still pursue the public
    interest.
        We do not have to grow the American economy by going back to the
    time when we acted as if worker safety doesn't matter. It does matter.
    It matters a lot to people. And just because the Government has been
    slow on the uptake in the past, and every now and then somebody makes a
    mistake and overreaches, doesn't mean we can walk away from our
    fundamental public duty.
        So let's continue on this path. 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 we can do
    right and do well.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:48 p.m. at the Stromberg Sheet Metal
    Works, Inc. In his remarks, he referred to Joseph Dear, Assistant
    Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health; Robert Gawne,
    CEO, Stromberg Sheet Metal Works, Inc., and his wife, Patricia; Elaine
    Kamarck, Senior Policy Adviser for the Vice President; and A.D. (Pete)
    Correll, chairman and CEO, Georgia-Pacific Corp.

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