Tales from the Front: House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections Hearing on OSHA Reg Agenda

On Tuesday, February 15, 2011 Heidi Hansen of the law Office of Adele Abrams attended the House Education and the Workforce (formerly “Labor”) Committee’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections hearing entitled “Investigating OSHA’s Regulatory Agenda and Its Impact on Job Creation.”  Members present were: Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-R, Chair), Rep. Kristi Noem (SD-R), Rep. Dennis Ross (FL-R), Rep. John Kline (MN-R), Rep. Lynn Woolsey (CA-D, Ranking Member), Rep. George Miller (CA-D), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH-D), and Rep. Donald Payne (NJ-D).  Witnesses were: Thomas Sullivan (Nelson Mullins; former head of SBA Office of Advocacy), Stuart Sessions (Envionomics, Inc.; Coalition for Workplace Safety), Tammy Miser (United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities), and Jacqueline Holmes (Jones Day, for the Chamber of Commerce).

Rep. Walberg gave a brief opening statement noting that both sides of the committee have worker safety as a shared goal.  The reason for the hearing was to question OSHA policy changes over the past two years that have circumnavigated the SBREFA process.  Rep. Walberg said that OSHA was focused on punishing and shaming employers rather than working with them to focus on prevention.  He stated that the current bad policy was destroying job creation.

Rep. Woolsey’s opening statement focused on how the Republican proposed Continuing Resolution will eliminate 415 OSHA positions and making for 8,000 less inspections as well as 750 less whistleblower claims.  The CR “zeroes out” statistics keeping as well as eliminating OSHA’s website.  Rep. Woolsey said that the CR will not only make OSHA’s job of protecting workers more difficult, it will effectively cripple the agency, making it near impossible for it to do its job properly.  She stressed that without regulations, workers will die in even greater numbers than they do now.

Thomas Sullivan was the first witness to testify.  He stated that regulations could not be “one size fits all” and the purpose for the SBREFA panel was to inform OSHA of the cost to small businesses and ways to mitigate that economic impact.  Mr. Sullivan noted that OSHA had recently withdrawn two proposed regulations, one pertaining to noise/hearing loss and the other to reporting MSD’s.  Mr. Sullivan said that OSHA made the regulating process more difficult and time consuming by ignoring the SBREFA process.

Stuart Sessions gave a rather complex statement regarding the cost to small businesses for any kind of regulation, citing the noise regulation as his example.  His four major points were: 1) the proposed OSHA noise interpretation would affect a large number and very broad range of businesses and employees; 2) the costs for businesses to comply with OSHA’s proposed policy would be very high (he estimated $2,000 to $10,000 per worker); 3) OSHA’s interpretation would have substantial negative impacts on U.S. jobs and competitiveness (he predicted a loss of 10,000 to 220,000 jobs); and 4) all this would be for relatively little benefit in terms of improved hearing protection for workers.  Mr. Sessions stated that hearing loss has been declining in the past 8 years and a new regulation that would cost employers money was not relevant.

Tammy Miser gave a very moving statement, beginning with a description of her brother’s death after a combustible dust explosion at Hayes Lemmerz in Huntington, IN.  She stressed emphatically that workplaces need safety regulations, citing the death of a worker in 2009 after getting pulled into the cables of a 100-ton crane.  Ms. Miser noted that had the new Crane and Derricks rule been in effect this worker’s death would never have happened.  She stated that while some are saying OSHA regulations are bad for business and kill jobs, OSHA has only passed two new regulations in the past ten years, cranes and derricks and hexavalent chromium, and that both only affect a small fraction of US workplaces. 

Jacqueline Holmes also relied on the recently pulled noise/hearing loss standard, stating that OSHA must find the most cost effective way to implement a new regulation so that it is not damaging to small businesses.  She concurred with Mr. Sessions that there has been a decline in hearing loss so therefore concluded that more regulation was not necessary.