The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“OSHA REFORM IN THE 105TH CONGRESS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E2303-E2304 on Oct. 21, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
OSHA REFORM IN THE 105TH CONGRESS
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HON. CASS BALLENGER
of north carolina
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, October 21, 1998
Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, over the past three years, Republicans in Congress have worked to reform the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). For too long OSHA has been marked by burdensome and over-reaching regulations and unfair enforcement. It has employers as foes rather than as partners in improving worker safety and health. Not only has OSHA's approach made it one of the most disliked agencies in the whole federal government, but also study after study has shown that OSHA's approach has been generally ineffective in improving safety and health in the workplace.
I am pleased to report that we have been able to make some progress in reforming OSHA, though much more needs to be done. Three bills amending the Occupational Safety and Health Act were signed into law during the 105th Congress. What makes this more remarkable is that in the 28 years since OSHA came into existence, there has been only one other change made to the law, and that was the penalty increase enacted as part of a tax and revenue increase bill by the Democrat Congress in 1990.
The first change we made requires OSHA to provide consultative services to small businesses. A small business that requests a consultation and then corrects the violations would not receive any citations or fines, and would not be inspected for at least one year, unless there was a serious accident or a complaint was made to OSHA. These consultations would be provided through state agencies, not by OSHA directly. My own company has participated in the consultation program run by North Carolina OSHA, and I am pleased that we were able to authorize consultation services as the first ``program'' amendment to OSHA. With increased funding and availability, this consultation program--in which the government works with employers and their employees to improve safety and health in the workplace--can be an excellent model for further changes in OSHA.
The second change we enacted this year addresses a fundamental problem with OSHA enforcement. During most of the years of OSHA, under Democrat Congresses, OSHA was measured in terms of enforcement: how many citations were issued? How many and how large were the penalties against employers? Individual inspectors and their supervisors were evaluated by the same criteria; raises and promotions were based on how many citations and penalties they issued. So it is no surprise that inspectors focused more on finding nitpicky and paperwork violations to cite than the overall safety and health conditions of the workplace. The change enacted into law this year prohibits that practice. OSHA may not use enforcement measures, such as penalties and citations, to evaluate the performance of their compliance officers or their supervisors. The goal of OSHA should be safe and healthy jobs, not achieving a certain level of citations and fines.
The third change enacted this year was a bill sponsored by Senator Enzi to apply to OSH Act, including enforcement and penalties, to the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Service has, in terms of the OSH Act, been considered a federal agency, even though it is now largely independent and directly competes with private companies. Furthermore, worker health and safety has been a continuing concern at the Postal Service. Putting the Postal Service under OSHA enforcement helps to
``level the playing field'' as it competes with private companies.
In addition to these three amendments to the OSH Act, I am pleased that the omnibus appropriations bill authorizes and funds a comprehensive and independent study of ergonomics, to be conducted by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). In past years, Congress has explicitly prohibited OSHA from promulgating an ergonomics standard. This year's appropriation bill does not include such a prohibition. However, OSHA is required by its statute to base an ergonomics standard on ``the best available evidence,'' and the purpose of the NAS study is to assess and report on what the best evidence is with regard to the nature, causes, and prevention of so-called ergonomics injuries. It would therefore, in my view, be inconsistent with the statute for OSHA to promulgate an ergonomics standard before the NAS study is completed.
We also made progress on several other items, but we were unable to enact those changes into law this year. I am disappointed that we were unable to enact legislation to help small businesses handle the paperwork burden imposed by OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard. This was bipartisan legislation in both the House and the Senate. It simply made clear that employers could comply with the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard's requirement for Material Safety Data Sheets on hazardous substances through the use of electronic means, rather than paper copies. It also provided that certain basic information on the substance be attached and written in terms understandable to non-
chemistry majors. The bill passed the House on voice vote, but opposition to the bill from the Department of Labor prevented this bill from being considered in the Senate in the final days of the session. This is most unfortunate, as it would have benefited both small business and workers.
I am also disappointed that we were unable to make more progress in reforming OSHA's standards-setting process. Charles Jeffress, the current Assistant Secretary for OSHA, has complained that OSHA's standards-setting process is broken and needs to be fixed. He is not the first Assistant Secretary to acknowledge that, and I agree that there are serious problems with the current standards-setting process. The Committee on Education and the Workforce attempted to address that problem this year with two bills that would have required OSHA to use outside, independent experts to ``peer review'' the technical scientific and economic data used as the basis for standards, and to write standards that are specific to identified industries and operations. Together these reforms would make OSHA's standards more credible and more efficient in protecting health and safety without imposing undue costs. Ironically, Mr. Jeffress' own Department of Labor opposed both of these common sense reforms. Rep. Wicker also worked very hard to include a provision in the appropriations bill, similar to the bill that passed our Committee, that would have required OSHA to conduct peer review of the technical scientific and economic data and assumptions used as the basis for standards. As my colleagues know, credible scientific enterprise includes peer review. Study after study and report after report--all have urged federal agencies, including OSHA, to use peer review. The blame for the state of OSHA's standards-
setting process falls squarely on the Department of Labor, which has consistently opposed even the mildest and most common sense reforms in that process.
There are other issues that still need to be addressed as well. OSHA does little to encourage voluntary workplace efforts by employers and employees to improve safety and health, and some of OSHA's policies actually discourage those efforts. During this Congress, I proposed changes that would have limited OSHA's access of an employer's own safety and health audits and assessments. OSHA's use of those for enforcement discourages companies' voluntary, thorough, and honest evaluations. I also proposed that we improve the legal protections for employees who raise health and safety concerns, to ensure that they have a fair and adequate means of redress if they are discriminated against for raising these concerns. Unfortunately the Clinton Administration was unwilling to go along with these changes to improve the legal protections for employers and employees who make efforts to improve safety and health in the workplace. Opposition from the Clinton Administration also continues to stalemate efforts to allow greater employer-employee cooperation on safety and health and other issues in their workplaces. My colleague, and Chairman of the Small Business Committee, Representative Jim Talent, together with Senator Mike Enzi, have proposed a forward-looking plan to allow companies to self-certify OSHA compliance, encouraging the pro-active use of private experts instead of waiting for a relatively rare OSHA inspection. All of these are issues and proposals which we should continue to work on next Congress.
In response to our efforts, OSHA has also made administrative changes which have helped to focus more of its resources on serious health and safety concerns. I applaud those changes. Other changes, however, such as the misnamed ``cooperative compliance program,'' have shown how difficult it is to change OSHA's traditional ``command and control'' approach. The slow pace and inconsistent direction of OSHA's own
``reinvention'' changes points to the needs for continued legislative reform as well as continued oversight to ensure that OSHA effectively promotes the goal of safe and healthful jobs for our nation's workers.
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