New OSHA rules coming

[CPOPE]

The Bush legacy: Few policies aimed at protecting worker health were passed during the Bush administration, according to The Washington Post, potentially exposing blue and white-collar workers to dangerous workplace physical, chemical and radiation exposures.

Created during the Nixon Administration in 1970, the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is an agency of the United States Department of Labor with the mission to prevent work-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths by issuing and enforcing rules (called standards) for workplace safety and health.

OSHA continues to be widely criticized for confusing, burdensome regulations which cover most private sector workplaces. A good deal of conflict is due to the arbitrary and inconsistent enforcement. In addition, businesses are expected to retrofit and implement various hazard controls, often at considerable expense, to bring them in line with then-current best safety practices. Other requirements, such as mandated training, communication, and extensive documentation are seen as even more difficult and expensive.

Current and former career officials at OSHA report that Bush administration political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach of its warnings and rules in response to industry pressure.

The result is a history of deregulation common to several health-protection agencies under Bush. From 2001 to the end of 2007, OSHA issued 86 percent fewer rules or regulations termed economically significant by the Office of Management and Budget than their counterparts did during President Bill Clinton's tenure, according to White House lists.
The Bush administration has largely replaced the process of issuing mandatory regulations with voluntary guidelines and put additional resources into other previously existing voluntary programs, as well as new "Alliance" programs. It is sometimes believed that the Agency promotes "voluntary compliance" when in fact all employers are required by law to comply with all final published rules promulgated under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.

"The legacy of the Bush administration has been one of dismal inaction," Robert Harrison, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco and chairman of the occupational health section of the American Public Health Association told the Post. He went on to describe the lack of regulation at OSHA "like turning a ketchup bottle upside down, banging the bottom of the container, and nothing comes out. You shake and shake and nothing comes out," Harrison said.

OSHA was most recently headed by Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a South Carolina lawyer and former Bush fundraiser who spent years defending companies cited by OSHA for safety and health violations.
"Foulke quickly acquired a reputation inside the Labor Department as a man who literally fell asleep on the job: eyewitnesses said they saw him suddenly doze off at staff meetings, during teleconferences, in one-on-one briefings, at retreats involving senior deputies, on the dais at a conference in Europe, at an award ceremony for a corporation and during an interview with a candidate for deputy regional administrator."

Foulke resigned November 9, 2008, and the next day began work at an Atlanta law firm that represents companies accused of workplace safety violations.