Washington, D.C., is full of new faces and new initiatives. What are the implications for occupational safety and health of all these changes? Who stands to gain and whose agenda will be shoved to the back burner for the next 3½ years?
There is no shortage of opinion about what the Obama administration will ultimately mean for job safety and health. The naming of Hilda Solis as secretary of labor and the nomination of Dr. David Michaels to head OSHA already signal a very different approach to workplace safety standard setting and enforcement. Both Michaels and Solis have been vocal critics of Bush-era policies.
Most important for employers is what these changes will mean on a daily basis. How will changes in legislation and enforcement affect business and the bottom line? Will employer actions or inactions be in OSHA’s crosshairs more than in the past? What will protection and compliance cost, and who will foot the bill?
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The Business Perspective
When asked to anticipate how the pursuit of worker safety and health will change under President Obama, Marc Freedman, director of labor law policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says: “Our sense is that the OSHA agenda is going to come back to ergonomics.” He is, of course, referring to the Clinton-era federal ergonomics standard scuttled by ex-President Bush and the Congress. Freedman says that ergonomics is the single issue with the broadest impact on the employer community.
Freedman also believes that the new administration will “put a priority on enforcement as a driver of compliance.” What is less clear is whether the Bush administration emphasis on compliance assistance will remain in place. “We think it clearly has paid dividends and is an appropriate and necessary strategy,” Freedman asserts. And that’s especially important, he believes, in light of the agency’s need to leverage limited resources to achieve maximum compliance. “But,” says Freedman, “we’re not sure the new administration will see that the same way.”
What’s Your Next Move?
With the prospect of significant changes in OSHA personnel, initiatives, and enforcement practices, your next move is to stay on top of the latest developments so that you can keep your organization abreast of changes that affect your workplace—and adjust your compliance strategy to meet these new challenges.
And that’s where BLR’s OSHA Compliance Advisor comes into play. Safety professionals have depended on this twice-monthly newsletter for nearly 2 decades, taking advantage of such features as:
— The latest OSHA and NIOSH news, court rulings, and proposed rules
— Compliance Report, with case studies of how promising ideas have been put to work
— Trainer’s Corner, providing practical, actionable tips to clue your workers in on safety
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— Washington Watch, offering an advance look at what’s coming down the compliance pike so that you can be ready when it comes
— From the States summary, presenting little-publicized state regs that often trump the federal
— SafetyWorks monthly, reproducible handouts for employees, ready to copy and distribute
— EHS & Your Business insert—a brand-new quarterly insert that provides a ready-to-use “selling package” to bring senior management on board with your safety plans, using language they can relate to
You can see many of these features with this Product Sample, and also view a full year’s worth of subject coverage with the Subject Index.
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