OSHA has requested $212.7 million in funding for enforcement in fiscal year (FY) 2019, representing an increase of $6.1 million, or just under 3 percent, over the FY 2018 levels. However, the total requested budget for FY 2019 is identical to the 2018 level, meaning that the agency shifted requested money away from other areas to fund the increase in enforcement dollars.
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Overall, OSHA requested $549,033,000 and is seeking a change from 2018 funding levels in only five of its ten budget categories: enforcement, federal compliance assistance, training grants, technical support, and executive direction. The agency requested the same amount of money and staff for safety and health standards, whistleblower programs, state programs, state consultation, and safety and health statistics that those areas received in 2018.
Targeted Enforcement Efforts
The increase in enforcement funding will allow OSHA to hire an additional 42 staff members. The agency says it plans to conduct 30,840 inspections in 2018, concentrating on “the highest-impact and most complex inspections at the highest-risk workplaces.” In 2019, OSHA will launch a new weighting system to measure and prioritize its enforcement and other essential activities. A key focus for OSHA’s enforcement efforts is identifying and addressing trenching and excavation hazards in construction; the agency’s goal is to abate 1,270 of these hazards in FY 2018 and 1,400 in 2019.
The agency projects that responding to severe injury reports received from employers will continue to increase the proportion of unprogrammed (unplanned) inspections it conducts, noting that inspections in response to severe injuries typically take twice as long to complete as programmed (planned) inspections and therefore reduce the resources available for enforcement in programmed emphasis areas. OSHA states that the additional enforcement staff it plans to hire will help to mitigate this effect.
Compliance Assistance Prioritized
Also slated to receive more money in FY 2019 are OSHA’s federal compliance assistance efforts, for which OSHA requested a $5.1 million, or 7%, increase over the 2018 levels. Federal compliance assistance includes programs that seek to aid small businesses, information and materials provided through the agency’s website and other channels, the Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP), strategic partnerships and alliances, and training and outreach through the OSHA Training Institute.
In requesting the funding increase for 2019, OSHA pointed to the elimination of 33 compliance assistance positions due to budget constraints since 2013 and noted that it seeks to restore 24 of those positions in order to “broaden its reach, assistance, and support to small businesses and other employers working to comply with OSHA requirements and protect their workers.” The agency also plans to add eight positions to its VPP efforts, allowing it to dedicate one VPP staff person to each OSHA region.
OSHA states that it plans to focus its outreach and cooperative efforts in six key areas: construction, health care, oil and gas, communication tower erection and maintenance, grain handling, and temporary workers. In FY 2019, the agency also plans to work to enhance safety and health training in career and technical education programs, pursue a national cooperative effort on improving safety culture in health care, and increase outreach on highway workzone safety.
Training Grants Eliminated
In order to balance out the increases, OSHA has eliminated all funding for its Susan Harwood Training Grant program, which received around $10.5 million in both 2017 and 2018. The program, established in 1978, provided 1- to 5-year competitive grants to nonprofit organizations to develop and conduct occupational safety and health training programs.
In its budget justification, OSHA noted that it “has no evidence that the [Susan Harwood] program is effective . . . and it is not clear that the training funded by these grants would not happen absent the Federal subsidy,” while highlighting the other outreach programs and tools it offers and stating that “training and outreach programs delivered directly by the agency can provide information more efficiently.” The agency states that the increased funding it has requested for federal compliance assistance programs will allow it to conduct more training for employers and workers and fill in any gap left by the elimination of the Susan Harwood Training Grants.
Other Areas
Funding for technical support is reduced by $537,000 from the 2018 levels, while executive direction is slated to be cut by $266,000.
The full budget justification can be found at https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/budget/2019/CBJ-2019-V2-12.pdf.