Word: osha
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Employers, in turn, could appeal OSHA rulings to an independent, three-member Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), appeal for exemptions from specific health and safety standards (upon demonstration of equally effective systems or procedures), and, if they qualified as small businessmen, apply to the Small Business Administration for longterm loans to offset financial problems resulting from efforts to comply with the OSHA standards. Finally, the legislation established the National Institute of Occupational Safety (NIOSH) within the department of Health, Education, and Welfare, to perform the research necessary to develop adequate OSHA standards...
Unfortunately, OSHA soon found itself hamstrung due to a lack of vigorous political and financial support on the part of both Congress and the Nixon Administration. In the period prior to August, 1974, over one hundred bills amending the original OSHA act were introduced in the House and the Senate. Most would have curbed the agency's enforcement authority; some would have gutted it entirely. Furthermore, in line with the Nixon Administration's attempts to reduce the size and cost of HEW and other federal social welfare programs, OSHA and NIOSH received only small increases in their original, inadequate funding...
Most of the opposition to OSHA reflected business's dissatisfaction with the results of the original bill. Spokesmen for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce accused OSHA of promulgating many irrational, unnecessary standards which were related only peripherally, if at all, to occupational health and safety. Compliance with the standards, business representatives claimed, would result in increased unemployment as small firms were driven out of business by the high costs of conforming to OSHA guidelines...
...standards OSHA promulgated were probably unnecessary--there was one provision which regulated the height of toilet seats--but the business community overstated its case. As of July 8, 1974, no company had been forced out of business as a result of OSHA regulations. Furthermore, the average actual per violation fine incurred by employers has been less than $26. Most importantly, both National Safety Council and OSHA statistics show that small and medium-sized firms have the highest accident rates of all business, implying that such firms are perhaps those most in need of regulation...
There is also some evidence that at least one OSHA administrator saw the political advantages in lax enforcement of legislation. In a June 14, 1972 memo to then Labor Undersecretary Laurence H. Silberman (released by the Senate Watergate Committee in July, 1974), OSHA administrator George C. Guenther said that during the 1972 campaign period "no highly controversial standards....will be proposed by OSHA or NIOSH...