The American workplace has changed dramatically over the last two decades, and so have the inherent hazards for workers. New, bigger, more powerful equipment has come online. New chemicals and other toxic substances have come into routine use. New production and construction methods have been introduced.
Created in 1971, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, is charged with protecting workers in the workplace, empowered to adopt regulations on a range of worker-safety topics, and to enforce those regulations to the point of pursuing criminal violations of the law. In its early years, OSHA aggressively attacked the myriad safety problems in American workplaces, to great effect – fewer injuries and fewer deaths. But the war on regulation launched during the Reagan years began a steady decline in OSHA’s ambition and effectiveness, and progress preventing workplace injuries has stopped.
Today, OSHA casts an exceedingly small shadow on the American workplace. It has been starved of the resources it needs to keep up with regulatory challenges and burdened with analytical requirements by adverse court decisions and congressional action. The result is that new safety standards can take a decade or more to implement, and enforcement of existing standards is sporadic at best.
In February 2010, CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity, Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro, together with Policy Analyst Matthew Shudtz released, “Workers at Risk: Regulatory Dysfunction at OSHA,” CPR White Paper 1003. The white paper explored the reasons for OSHA’s systemic failures, and offered a series of recommendations for regulatory reform of OSHA – administrative actions OSHA could implement in the absence of congressional action that would help set it again on the path toward protecting American workers from harm on the job.
'OSHA Listens' Presentation. On March 4, 2010, CPR Policy Analyst Matt Shudtz made a presentation from Member Scholar Rena Steinzor and himself to an "OSHA Listens" session, chaired by OSHA Administrator David Michaels. The presentation drew on “Workers at Risk: Regulatory Dysfunction at OSHA,” CPR White Paper 1003, that they co-authored with CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and Sidney Shapiro. Read the presentation.
White Paper on OSHA Dysfunction. Read “Workers at Risk: Regulatory Dysfunction at OSHA,” CPR White Paper 1003, by CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity, Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro, together with Policy Analyst Matthew Shudtz. Read the news release.
CPRBlog. Read CPRBlog entries on OSHA by CPR Member Scholars Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro, and others.
