Word: osha
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...move consumer activists say will raise insurance rates and accident costs. Despite a request by the Administration to delay its decision, the Supreme Court ruled last June that cost-benefit analyses cannot be required when setting federal health standards for the workplace. Nevertheless, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has had the number of its inspectors cut by 11%, and the Administration is determined to relax many of the OSHA regulations that businessmen feel are unduly costly...
...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...
...ruling, while a serious setback for the Reagan Administration's deregulation effort, is far from a death blow. James C. Miller III, who heads a White House deregulation task force, emphasized that the court's decision dealt only with the OSHA statute covering toxic substances. Indeed, Justice Brennan cited several regulatory laws, including ones on the environment, that specifically allow the Government to weigh costs against benefits. Now if the Administration wants to do the same thing with toxic substances in the workplace, it may have no choice but to ask Congress to amend the statute accordingly...
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...