Word: cottons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Three years ago, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) imposed stringent limits on the amount of cotton dust that manufacturers could have in their plants. The industry objected that the ventilation equipment and other measures required by OSHA's order would run up a crippling tab of $2 billion (OSHA's estimate: $650 million). Turning to the courts in an attempt to get the standards modified, the industry argued that OSHA should have weighed the cost of compliance against the benefits...
...Court this year, the textile manufacturers acquired a potent ally in President Reagan. In February, as part of his drive to deregulate U.S. industry, Reagan ordered a cost-benefit analysis of major Government rules. A month later his Secretary of Labor asked the Supreme Court not to decide the cotton-dust case because OSHA planned to reconsider the disputed standards...
...decision was a four-word phrase that Congress used in the 1970 law that OSHA administers. The measure directed the agency to set standards assuring that "to the extent feasible," no worker would suffer material impairment of health from exposure to toxic substances, including cotton dust. By and large, OSHA read the word feasible to mean technologically possible, but the industry argued for a primarily economic definition. Wrote Justice William Brennan for the majority: "Congress itself defined the basic relationship between costs and benefits, by placing the 'benefit' of worker health above all other considerations save those making...
Some observers had expected the court to rule more favorably on cotton dust because of its decision last year striking down a limit on benzene vapors in factories. In that case, however, the court never reached the cost-benefit question, in part because four Justices concluded that OSHA had failed to show that the proposed standard was even necessary to assure worker health...
...cotton industry, Textile Analyst John Figh maintains that the decision "will not have one bit of effect on companies like Burlington, Milliken and Dan River," three major firms that are already well on their way to compliance with the new cotton-dust limits. In the four years allowed for complete compliance, the court's decision will probably weigh most heavily on small companies that lack the capital to clean up their mills. Meanwhile, it may create a competitive advantage for manufacturers of synthetics, since man-made fibers do not create a dust problem...