Press release: Congressional Committee Stages Spurious Hearing on OSHA’s Impact on Job Creation

 
National Council for
Occupational Safety and Health
Leading the fight for safe and healthy workplaces
 
 
For Immediate Release: February 15, 2011
 
For more information, contact:
Frank Gallagher
Tel: (207) 671-1768
effjaygallagher@gmail.com
                                                                                   
 
Congressional Committee Stages Spurious Hearing on OSHA’s Impact on Job Creation
 
 As House Republican Leadership Targets OSHA for Deep Budget Cuts, Today’s Hearing Does Nothing More than Provide Political Cover
 
February 15, 2011 (WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Today’s Congressional hearing on the impact of workplace safety regulations on job creation is a meaningless at best, given that the House of Representatives’ leadership has already announced that it will seek to cut nearly $100 million from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s budget, workplace safety advocates said this morning.
 
“This is nothing more than a dog-and-pony show so that Congressional Republicans can perpetuate the mythology that they haven’t already targeted OSHA for deep budgetary reductions,” Tom O’Connor, the Executive Director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, said today. “The fact is, they’ve already made their decision and they’ve sided with Wall Street at the expense of Main Street – again.”
 
O’Connor made his remarks after a hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections titled, “Investigating OSHA”s Regulatory Agenda and Its Impact on Job Creation.”
 
The hearing comes just days after House Republican leadership revealed a package of budget cuts that they hope to attach to a spending bill that would fund government operations for the rest of the fiscal year. The Republican package includes a cut to OSHA of nearly $100 million, approximately 20 percent of the agency’s total budget.
 
O’Connor said a cut of that magnitude to OSHA’s budget would be devastating to workers. The agency, he said, is already overmatched, trying to police a workplace that comprises millions of employers with only a few thousand inspectors.
 
“What the Republican leadership doesn’t seem to get is that job safety and job creation must go hand in hand. They can’t be separated,” O’Connor said. “After all, what good is a job created to the family of the worker who was killed after taking it? Good jobs are safe jobs, and right now, America needs to create good jobs.”
 
The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health is a federation of local and statewide organizations; a private, non-profit coalition of labor unions, health and technical professionals, and others interested in promoting and advocating for worker health and safety. 
 
To learn more about the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, go to: http://www.coshnetwork.org/.
 
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