THE OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY ACT
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is a federal law that requires all employers to provide employees with a work environment that is free from recognizable dangers likely to cause death or serious physical injury. If employers fail to comply with the mandate they are likely to be cited and fined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). If employers do nothing to prevent or ameliorate a recognizable hazard, they are in violation of the General Duty Clause which mandates employers have a general duty in this regard. OSHA is part of the U.S. Department of Labor and it has been a source of controversy from its inception. On the one hand, businesses complain that regulations mandated by the agency are too stringent and that the costs for complying with them are harmful to small companies. On the other hand, labor groups complain the agency has been ineffectual at reducing workplace hazards and uses enforcement procedures which have little bite. This analysis will discuss the reasons why the law establishing OSHA was passed, the main provisions of the law, who administers the law and enforcement procedures, and the impact of the law across a variety of groups.
The main reasons for the establishment of Occupational Safety and Health Act are over a century old because improving workplace safety legislation existed since President Chester A. Arthur signed the bill which created the Bureau of Labor in the Department of the Interior on June 27, 1884, “His signature culminated two decades of advocacy by labor organizations seeking government assistance in publicizing and improving the status of the growing industrial work force…Within a decade of the Bureau’s establishment, from the mid-1890s on, it published extensively on new developments in State and foreign social legislation and practices, including accident prevention and workers’ compensation.” T...