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Home / Legislative Action Center / Issues - Regulatory Reform / AWB Applauds U.S. House Of Representatives Passage Of OSHA Fairness Bills For Small Business |
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AWB Applauds U.S. House Of Representatives Passage Of OSHA Fairness Bills For Small Business |
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Written On: May 20, 2004 |
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Written By: Richard Davis |
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Commends Washington House Members Doc Hastings, George Nethercutt and Jennifer Dunn for Supporting Reforms
OLYMPIA – The Association of Washington Business (AWB) joined its federal affiliate, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), today in applauding the U.S. House of Representatives for passing four bills designed to protect small businesses from overzealous regulators while creating a worker safety regime in which the scales of justice “are more evenly balanced.”
AWB, Washington’s oldest and largest statewide association, particularly singled out praise for Washington’s Jennifer Dunn (R-8), Doc Hastings (R-4) and George Nethercutt (R-5) for supporting the four bills. Democrats Jay Inslee (D-1), Rick Larsen (D-2), Brian Baird (D-3), Norm Dicks (D-6), Jim McDermott (D-7) and Adam Smith (D-9) all voted against the reforms—reforms which are particularly helpful for small businesses.
“Since more than 80 percent of the Association’s 4,100 members are small businesses employing fewer than 100, the support of Dunn, Hastings and Nethercutt was particularly helpful,” Brunell said. “They have helped small employers escape the mountains of bureaucratic red tape they face each and every day.”
AWB and NAM are now concentrating on lobbying Washington’s Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to support the bills when they are considered by the Senate later this year.
“Manufacturers value their employees as the most important element of their operations,” said NAM Employment Policy Director Chris Tampio. “For obvious reasons, managers understand that exposing workers to unnecessary risks or dangers is very bad for business.
“But employers -- particularly small manufacturers - face a daunting task in attempting to navigate the ambiguous provisions of the 30-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). The system’s ‘due process’ standards are woefully inadequate, and this new legislation is a good first step toward modernizing and improving fairness, along with worker safety.”
One of the bills contains a provision which is very similar to a Washington state law which AWB successfully lobbied several years ago. “We called it the Equal Access to Justice Law which was passed because of an overzealous WISHA (Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act),” Brunell said. WISHA is the state level OSHA.
In that Washington case, a WISHA inspector fined an Olympia auto dealer for a paperwork violation during a voluntary inspection. The dealer didn’t know about the minor violation, but the regulator threw the book at him. He had no choice but to sue to retain his good standing and reputation.
The judge agreed with the dealer and told the Dept. of Labor and Industries (L&I) to cancel the fine, but the business owner had no way to recover his legal fees—fees that exceeded the amount of the fine itself. The Washington Legislature agreed with AWB that the dealer should not have to foot the legal bills as well, so it told the agency to pay the lawyers fees.
Tampio said that dealing with burdens created by regulatory paperwork and nit-picking inspectors drain resources away from companies’ ability to modernize and adopt the latest safety technology. “All four bills which were passed yesterday are straightforward, common-sense fixes that will help OSHA work better for small business owners, most of whom want to do the right thing but are often stymied by bureaucracy and red tape,” he said.
Those resources, Tampio noted, also could be used by companies to expand and create jobs. “Much has been made of the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States over the past few years, and rightly so,” continued Tampio. “Global competition is ferocious, and it’s not going away.
“Reducing injury and illness rates should be the only measures of worker safety that count,” Tampio said, noting that studies by the U.S. General Accounting Office have made clear that cooperation between government and employers has created positive results and proved successful.
“Some provisions of current law stack the cards so high against employers that they are frequently forced to settle even the most ridiculous legal claims rather than risk huge jury awards,” Tampio said. “None of this makes workers any safer. It just makes doing business more expensive, and that means companies can hire fewer workers. The lawyers win, but our economy loses,” he concluded.
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