A tragic byproduct of the Industrial Revolution was an alarming rate of death, serious injury, and illness among the generally young, poorly trained, and often immigrant workers. By the 1960s, 14,000 workers were dying on the job each year. Individual states and the U.S. government were making disjointed efforts to provide safer and healthier workplaces, but labor, politicians, and the general public all recognized that a federal agency was needed to coordinate efforts. A bill was promoted in President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration but it died in Congress. The legislature quickly introduced a new bill, and in December 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which established OSHA, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, and two other supportive agencies.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 that established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was signed into law on 29 December 1970 by President Richard M. Nixon. To some it is known as the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act in honor of Congressman Harrison A. Williams Jr. of New Jersey and Senator William A. Steiger of Wisconsin, who led the fight to get the act passed from the time a similar bill was defeated in President Johnson's administration in 1968. The act has also been called the Safety Bill of Rights.
In the Introduction to Public Law 91-596, 91st Congress, S.2193, 29 December 1970—as the document is titled—under the simple heading, "An Act," it states the purpose of the bill is "to assure safe and healthful working conditions for working men and women; by authorizing enforcement of standards developed under the Act; by assisting the States in their efforts to assure safe and healthful working conditions; by providing for research, information, education, and training in the field of occupational safety and health; and for other purposes."
The law required the formation of three different permanent agencies to carry out the mandates of the bill. The first and key agency is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the official OSHA. This agency comes under the Labor Department with an assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health as the head. OSHA sets and enforces workplace safety and health standards. When it was formed, OSHA was given two years to set up federal and consensus standards. Many standards were first adopted from respected organizations such as the American National Standards Institute, the National Fire Protection Association (popularly known as NFPA), and the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. OSHA is also involved in education and outreach programs aimed at accident prevention.
The second agency is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which was initially part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), a cabinet-level department created by President Eisenhower in 1953. In 1980, HEW was renamed the Department of Health and Human Services. NIOSH is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Department of Health and Human Services where it is responsible for research on occupational safety and health matters.
The third agency created is the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC). This independent federal agency handles disputes between the Department of Labor and employers regarding OSHA enforcement actions. OSHRC is not part of any other federal department. The purpose of this approach was to enable OSHRC to provide impartial judgments. There are two levels of adjudication. If the first level judge does not resolve the case, it is reviewed by the agency's Commissioners for final settlement.
The industrial revolution in the nineteenth century brought more than mass production of material goods. It produced misery for common workers in the form of industrial accidents. After the Civil War in the United States factories proliferated and with them chemicals, dusts, and unguarded machinery and a workforce that was generally young and inadequately trained; many were new immigrants. As the number of grisly accidents and deaths grew, so did a labor movement devoted to convincing states to pass safety and health laws. Massachusetts passed the first factory inspection law in 1877. By 1890 eight more states had factory inspections, 13 required machine guarding, and 21 had some regulations for health hazards.
The start of the twentieth century is sometimes called the Progressive Era for the group in American society who worked for a better and safer lifestyle. Newspapers and national magazines were widely circulated. In 1907 a coal mine disaster in West Virginia killed 362 miners. The tragic news was carried across the country. The public outcry led to the formation of the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1910 to promote mine safety. News of the working hazards in the steel industry, where about 1200 out of every 10,000 workers were killed or seriously injured, led to the formation of the National Safety Council in 1915. Two years earlier the U.S. Congress created a Department of Labor with the secretary of labor specifically commissioned to report on industrial disease and accidents.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins secretary of labor. She was the first woman cabinet member in the U.S. Perkins brought experience in occupational safety and health from her earlier work in New York. The U.S. Public Health Service began funding programs that were run by state health departments. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 included provisions to bar workers under 18 from hazardous occupations. Perkins led the Department of Labor until 1945.
Unfortunately by the 1950s the federal-state partnerships were inadequate to protect workers. The secretary of labor was given power to prosecute willful violators for the workers covered under an amendment to the 1958 Workers' Compensation Act. In 1960, the Department of Labor acquired more authority and began applying occupational safety and health regulations to a wide range of industrial settings, but those efforts were not well received. Business protested that the rules were too restrictive, and there was growing resentment that the federal regulations were replacing state efforts.
By 1965 pollution in the environment had become an added public concern. The Public Health Service produced a report, "Protecting the Health of Eighty Million Americans," that cited dangers from the rapidly growing use of technology and new chemicals. The AFL-CIO labor unions called on President Johnson to support the major national occupational health and safety efforts suggested in the report. A mining tragedy again brought action. This was not as dramatic as the coal mine disaster, but it was a major public concern as it revealed the high death rate in the uranium industry. Conflicting opinions regarding safe levels of exposure and who had responsibility precipitated Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz's announcement of standards.
At the start of 1968 President Johnson asked Congress to develop an occupational safety and health program that was essentially the same as the one that the Department of Labor had put in place. Wirtz led the first hearings and pointed out that there were two casualty lists in America: one from the Vietnam War and one from industrial accidents. The Labor Department pushed hard for legislation. The booklet "On the Job Slaughter," published by the Labor Department, featured horrendous pictures of accident victims, but unfortunately the pictures were old and the publicity backfired. The Johnson-supported legislation never came to a vote.
In 1969, in spite of considerable disagreement on who should be leading occupational safety and health measures, the legislature introduced new bills similar to the Johnson general health and safety bill. In that year it was estimated that every month while the debates of who is responsible continued, 1,100 U.S. workers would die.
Labor leader George Meany, president of AFL-CIO, supported the bill. Also, activist groups such as those led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader kept fighting for a number of causes including occupational safety. Their work is credited with contributing to the formation of OSHA. Nader's efforts also are credited as influential in the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
OSHA was conceived and began operation in a period of political turmoil. The hopelessness of the Vietnam War drove President Johnson to not seek another term in 1969. Fortunately, the Occupational Safety and Health Act survived and became law in President Nixon's first year in office. Nixon had a goal he called New Federalism to establish new working partnerships between the federal government and the states. However, that policy was not pushed with OSHA. The spotty history of occupational health and safety in the hands of states had prompted the creation of the federal agency. The law does provide for state programs that offer workers protection "as effective as" what is provided in the federal program. Among OSHA's responsibilities is oversight of the state programs.
The first head of OSHA was George Guenther. He had been the head of a family hosiery manufacturing firm and also brought to the position experience in the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Guenther described his philosophy for the agency as one of striving to be "responsive and reasonable." An early decision to seek voluntary compliance by companies was well received by business. Limited resources required OSHA to target investigation of catastrophic accidents and employer compliance in the most dangerous and unhealthy work environments. The first standard that was set by OSHA was for asbestos fiber exposure. In 1969, an asbestos-related illness expert, Dr. Irving J. Selikoff of Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital, predicted that 40 percent of the nation's 36,000 insulation installers could die of asbestos-related cancer.
In spite of Guenther's goal to be reasonable, OSHA rushed to enforce rules immediately in 1971 rather than take the two years allowed in the law, a policy that was very poorly received. Counting on states to be far more active in OSHA's goals than they were, Guenther had underestimated the need for enforcement staff. Adding to these troubles, a very damaging internal memo surfaced during the 1974 Watergate investigations. The memo indicated that Nixon was looking for ways to tailor OSHA's programs to increase business support for his reelection campaign in 1972. There is no evidence that Guenther acted on the memo, but the revelation tarnished the agency's reputation at the time.
Meany and Nader both began speaking out for the full implementation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Nader prepared a condemning report titled Occupational Epidemic. Business leaders gave mixed reviews. Small businesses opposed OSHA; large organizations mostly tolerated it, but some challenged the competence of OSHA inspectors. Bills were entered in Congress in 1972 to limit OSHA's powers, principally to exempt small employers. Several bills made their way to Nixon's desk but were stopped with a presidential veto.
Nixon replaced most of his political appointees in 1972, including Guenther. With the political problems in Washington, D.C., it is not surprising that OSHA continued to be an agency in crisis. Nixon had just appointed a new secretary of the Department of Labor when there were two serious workplace accidents: first, an explosion of a large liquefied natural gas tank in New York that killed 40, and three weeks later, a high-rise building under construction near Washington collapsed killing more than a dozen, just as John H. Stender, an official on the Boilermakers Union, was appointed the new head of OSHA.
As a labor leader, Stender seemed an ideal choice for the job, but he had little administrative experience. Under his leadership a number of new standards were put into place, including one for vinyl chloride in 1974 when an epidemic of liver cancer was discovered among workers. That same year, Senator Williams' labor subcommittee charged the agency with being "shackled by administrative ineptitude." Stender is not blamed for the crises, but the agency was being seriously criticized by labor and big business, as well as Congress, by the time he left in 1975.
When President Nixon resigned in August 1974 and President Gerald R. Ford came into office, OSHA was a distressed agency. Ford appointed a new secretary of labor, John Dunlop, who recognized that getting OSHA on the right track should be a priority. At about this time, Nicholas Ashford of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a Ford Foundation study on the politics and economics of job safety. The study concluded that occupational safety and health was too big a task for any government agency to handle alone. It required the cooperation of all involved. The study was a blueprint for reform.
An interim team of OSHA leaders directed OSHA to concentrate on the most dangerous and unhealthy workplaces, the 30 percent which reported workplace casualties. They started with focusing on foundries, metal casting, and stamping operations. The program included special training for inspectors and assistance to state governments, industry, unions, and others to get voluntary compliance.
The appointment in 1975 of Morton Corn, a professor of occupational health and chemical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, to lead OSHA was a major step in the right direction. Corn brought professionalism to the job. He was appreciated by business because he stressed cooperation among the groups involved in occupational safety and health. He was also soon tested on the job. On 1 January 1976 the news broke that 29 workers at a small chemical plant in Virginia had been exposed to a pesticide that sent them to the hospital with nerve damage. One worker had tried earlier to contact OSHA, but there had been no follow-up.
Corn quickly reformed the agency, hiring qualified inspectors and improving the competence of those on the job. He established a data center to provide quick technical information. He proposed a number of important standards including one for coke ovens and an improved standard for cotton dust. He worked to improve relations with NIOSH.
AFL-CIO president George Meany at one point challenged the OSHA for being slow to issue new standards on asbestos, ammonia, lead, arsenic, cotton dust, and other substances, but he was appeased with some voluntary guidelines for lead, mercury, and silica until permanent standards could be issued.
There was considerable political wrangling between President Ford and the secretary of labor, who resigned in January 1976. Corn stayed on and a new secretary was appointed. When President Carter was elected at the end of 1976, Corn was not retained, although overall OSHA was more respected for all the reform and professionalism that Corn brought to the agency during his brief tenure.
Thirty years after OSHA was created, in the spring of 2001, the agency published a review of its three decades of progress in their newsletter JSHQ (Job Safety and Health Quarterly). The responsibilities of OSHA have increased tremendously over the years. When the agency was set up in 1971 it was responsible for 56 million workers in 3.5 million workplaces. Thirty years later OSHA had responsibility to provide guidance for the occupational safety and health of 105 million workers at 6.9 million workplaces. During those 30 years, workplace fatalities have been reduced by half, and injury and illness rates decreased by 40 percent of the 1971 rate. Particularly in light of the increases in workers and workplaces, these are significant achievements.
OSHA still considers its size as a government agency small. There were 2,370 OSHA employees in 2001 but OSHA also had 2, 948 partners in state agencies. That is an outstanding statement of cooperation that developed in spite of the agency being founded at a very troubled time in America's political history. OSHA's strategy for success has evolved through the years. In 2001 OSHA concentrated its attention on highly hazardous industries and sites with high injury rates. However, if a death occurs in a workplace anywhere, the employer must report it to OSHA within eight hours.
Education and outreach programs to promote health and safety have become an integral part of OSHA. In Des Plains, Illinois, OSHA operates its Training Institute, which was established in 1972. OSHA also encourages companies with exemplary safety and health records through the Voluntary Protection Programs. Free consultations were begun in 1975.
Most of OSHA's early standards for the safe handling of hazardous materials were adopted from respected agencies that were already involved in safety. Some standards that OSHA sites as particular milestones include: a 1978 cotton dust standard intended to prevent as many cases of "brown lung" as possible; lead standards (also in 1978); grain handling (in 1987) to protect workers at nearly 24,000 grain elevators from the dangers of explosion and fire; and in 1991, standards for occupational exposure to blood-borne pathogens to protect 5.6 million workers against AIDS, hepatitis B, and other diseases.
Guenther, George Carpenter (1931-): Guenther was the first assistant secretary of labor to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Prior to that position, he had been the director of the Bureau of Labor Standards in the Department of Labor.
Meany, George (1894-1980): Meany served as the first president of the combined unions, AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations). He was influential in the establishment of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. He also played a major role in the AFL-CIO's international activities.
Nader, Ralph (1934-): Nader, a lawyer, has made a career of consumer advocacy. Among the groups he founded are the Center for Responsive Law and the Public Interest Research Group. Nader was influential in the establishment of both OSHA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Wirtz, William Willard (1912-): Wirtz was secretary of the Labor Department from 1962-1969. He strongly supported the first bill to establish an agency to coordinate occupational safety and health that was introduced in the Johnson administration.
Fleming, Susan Hall. "OSHA at 30: Three Decades of Progress in Occupational Health and Safety." In JSHQ 12, no. 3 (spring 2001): 23-32.
"Industrial Safety: The Toll of Neglect." Time (7 February1969): 76-77.
MacLaury, Judson. "The Job Safety Law of 1970: Its Passage Was Perilous." DOL History In-Depth. 2002 [cited 18 July 2002]. .
U.S. Department of Labor. "Dunlop/Corn Administration, 1975-1977: Reform and professionalism." DOL History In-Depth Research 3. 2002 [cited 18 July 2002]. http:// www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/osha13corn.htm .
——. "John Stender Administration, 1973-1975: OSHABecomes an Agency in Crisis." DOL History In-Depth Research 2. 2002 [cited 18 July 2002] http:// www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/osha13stender.htm .
——. "Overview of the Nixon-Ford Administration at the Department of Labor, 1969-1977." DOL History In-Depth Research. 1977 [cited 18 July 2002]. http:// www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/webidnixonford.htm.
MacLaury, Judson. "A Brief History: The U.S. Department of Labor." DOL History Annals of the Department. 2001 [cited 18 July 2002]. .
U.S. Department of Labor. "Eula Bingham Administration, 1977-1981: Of Minnows, Whales and 'Common Sense'." DOL History In-Depth Research 4. 2002 [cited 18 July 2002]. .
——. "Thorne Auchter Administration, 1981-1984: 'Oh, What a (Regulatory) Relief'." DOL History In-Depth Research 5. 2002 [cited 18 July 2002]. http:// www.dol.gov/asp/programs/history/osha13auchter.htm .
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John P. Forren
With the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) (84 Stat. 1690), Congress triggered a rapid and unprecedented expansion of the federal government's role in protecting worker health and well-being. For most Americans, the concerns that had prompted passage of this landmark law were hardly unfamiliar or new. Journalists and progressive reformers for nearly a century had highlighted — often with grisly tales of disfigurement and death — how accidents in America's factories and mines had ruined thousands of workers' lives. Federal statistics compiled since 1911 had also documented a growing epidemic of work-related illness and disease. Still, Congress throughout the industrial period had done little to stem this tide. The broadest early federal reform measures — legislation establishing the U.S. Department of Labor in 1913 and banning exploitative child labor in 1938 — intentionally left most regulatory power over industrial working conditions with the states. Stronger federal laws, such as the Esch Act of 1912 (which effectively outlawed the production of white phosphorus matches) and the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act of 1936 (which barred federal contracts for companies operating hazardous worksites), applied only to targeted industries or small segments of the private sector.
By the late 1960s, however, prospects for a broader federal regulatory role had improved in several respects. For one thing, Americans in the wake of the New Deal and the civil rights movement had largely grown accustomed to federal oversight of activities — like industrial production — once controlled primarily by the states. For another thing, the federal judiciary had substantially adjusted the Constitution's balance of state and federal powers since the late 1930s so as to accommodate more aggressive national regulation. Most significantly, decades of regulatory failure had made clear to most observers that the nation's faith in state laws to protect workers' health and safety had long been tragically misplaced. On-the-job accident rates had continued to rise unabated; as the Secretary of Labor reported in 1969, disabling work-related injuries had increased by 20 percent — up to 2.2. million per year — just since 1958. State governments struggled constantly to pay for vigorous enforcement of their health and safety laws. And states, competing with each other to attract and retain manufacturing jobs, faced ever-stronger incentives to water down their safety standards in order to reduce the costs of businesses operating within their borders.
Citing a national crisis, President Lyndon B. Johnson submitted a comprehensive occupational safety and health bill to Congress in January 1968. Under Johnson's proposal, the U.S. Department of Labor would have been charged with establishing mandatory safety standards for most worksites throughout the nation. Employers also would have been assigned a new "general duty" to prevent on-the-job accidents and illnesses. What is more, to ensure compliance — long a problem under existing state laws — Johnson proposed a new corps of federal inspectors, to be armed with broad authority to investigate worksites and penalize violators. Labor groups immediately applauded Johnson's initiative and promised political support; yet in the end, the Johnson bill failed to come to a vote in either house of Congress in 1968. Industry groups lobbied vigorously against it from the outset, joined by pro-business legislators and "states' rights" activists fearing an expansion of federal regulatory authority. President Johnson, distracted by the Vietnam War, domestic upheaval, and election-year politics, never mounted an aggressive legislative campaign in response.
Despite this initial setback, workplace safety legislation emerged again in Congress the following year. Newly elected Republican President Richard M. Nixon, seeing an opportunity to siphon blue-collar voters away from opposition Democrats, announced his support for a modified occupational safety and health bill early in August 1969. Under Nixon's plan, the Labor Department would have carried out the task of workplace inspections in much the same way that President Johnson had envisioned; yet in a key change, Nixon sought to assign the power of establishing national safety and health standards to a new five-person board to be appointed by the president. Nixon also called for lighter penalties against violators and exemptions from the law for small employers. Business groups, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, this time came out solidly in support of Nixon's division-of-power approach. Organized labor, however, rejected any watering down of Labor Department authority and rallied behind an alternative Senate Democratic bill instead.
Amidst this labor-management conflict, both legislative proposals bogged down in Congress for more than a year. But congressional Republicans broke the logjam in November 1970 when they agreed to lodge standards-making authority in a new agency — the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — within the Department of Labor. Democrats, in turn, agreed to dilute Occupational Safety and Health Administration's enforcement power by creating a separate appointed body, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, to judge cases involving possible industry violations. With this compromise in hand, both houses of Congress quickly agreed to a final version of the bill in a lame-duck December session. President Nixon dropped his remaining objections, and in a Labor Department ceremony attended by labor union and business leaders alike, Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act into law on December 29, 1970.
In its final form OSHA established a multifaceted federal approach toward improving workplace conditions. One set of provisions in the act established procedures aimed at promoting cooperation between OSHA regulators and state public health agencies. Another set of provisions created the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health — now part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — to carry out research into job-related accidents and diseases. Additional sections of the act required the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to collect and distribute up-to-date health and safety information to employers in high-risk industries. Extensive funding and outreach mechanisms were also established to assist small businesses and industries with outmoded technologies in their efforts to meet OSHA-promulgate workplace standards.
Beyond those measures, the act most notably granted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration the direct authority to promulgate and enforce specific safety and health rules for almost every place of employment in the United States. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's primary mission, the act declares, is "to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions." To that end, the agency must ensure that employers take any measures "reasonably necessary and appropriate" to protect workers' long-term health and safety. Mandatory OSHA standards may thus include extensive requirements of protective equipment, employee training, and monitoring of dangerous job sites. Agency compliance efforts may entail unscheduled worksite inspections and extensive record-keeping requirements. OSHA inspectors may impose sanctions and remedial measures on employers found in violation of promulgated standards. And in the event of "imminent" threats to worker safety or health, the agency may bypass its ordinary rule-making process and seek immediate injunctive relief in a federal district court.
By arming the agency with such broad regulatory and enforcement authority, OSHA's main architects in Congress clearly hoped for dramatic and lasting improvements in the health and well-being of American workers. Indeed, as one leading senator predicted during final floor debate, the Occupational Safety and Health Act would stand as "one of the truly great landmark pieces of social legislation in the history of [the] country." Yet over three decades later, reviews of the act and the administrative apparatus it created continue to be mixed at best. OSHA supporters point to compelling evidence of success: since 1970, workplace fatalities in the United States have decreased sharply, debilitating occupational diseases such as "brown lung" and asbestosis have virtually disappeared, and workers in American factories and mills now experience greatly reduced levels of exposure to such dangerous substances as cotton dust, lead, arsenic, beryllium metal and vinyl chloride. Yet critics of the agency question whether OSHA should be assigned significant credit for these achievements; technological advances and global economic changes, they say, have been the primary forces behind improvements in American worker safety and health. Further, critics from across the ideological spectrum attack the agency for failing to execute its mission with what they see as appropriate zeal. Naysayers on the political right complain that OSHA regulators too often ignore market remedies and impose workplace rules without adequate consideration of cost. Those on the left, meanwhile, sometimes fault the agency for watering down standards in the face of industry pressure and for failing to exercise sufficient independence during periods of pro-business Washington leadership.
Despite such criticisms, attempts to enact major revisions of OSHA since 1970 have consistently failed. Moreover, given the current bipartisan consensus about the need for active federal leadership in occupational safety and health, significant alterations of the act in the near future seem unlikely.
Berman, Daniel M. Death on the Job: Occupational Health and Safety Struggles in the United States. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978.
Lofgren, Don J. Dangerous Premises: An Insider's View of OSHA Enforcement. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1989.
McGarity, Thomas O., and Sidney A. Shapiro. Workers At Risk: The Failed Promise of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993.
Rosner, David, and Gerald Markowitz, eds. Dying for Work: Workers' Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
United States Department of Labor. All about OSHA. Washington, DC: OSHA Publications Office, 2000.
United States Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Legislative History of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1971.
Viscusi, W. Kip. Risk by Choice: Regulating Health and Safety in the Workplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
White, Lawrence. Human Debris: The Injured Worker in America. New York: Seaview/Putnam, 1983.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration Home Page. .
OSHA quickly became one of the federal government's most disliked agencies. Small-business owners complained that they were subject to voluminous and petty rules, as well as to arbitrary inspections. The problem resided in the fact that OSHA adopted a range of "consensus standards" previously defined by federal agencies, trade associations, and safety organizations. Some of these standards were ancient and deemed irrelevant, making OSHA the object of much scorn.