{"id":1322,"date":"2017-06-13T10:33:55","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T14:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2017-06-13T10:33:55","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T14:33:55","slug":"slow-osha-standards-trump-making-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2017\/06\/13\/slow-osha-standards-trump-making-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Workers Wait So Long For OSHA Standards (And How Trump Is Making It Worse)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Photo by Earl Dotter. www.earldotter.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Attached here is an article I wrote for Law 360<\/em><\/a> about OSHA’s painfully slow process for issuing standards that protect workers, and how the Trump administration is trying to make it even slower. OSHA’s law, court decisions and OMB Executive Orders have already slowed the process to a crawl, but Trump’s Executive Order requiring one worker protection to be taken away for every one added threatens to grind the process to a complete halt.<\/p>\n

And as usual, in cases where corporate American gets what it wants, workers will suffer.<\/p>\n

What we call \u201cregulations\u201d are actually protections for workers. Trump\u2019s executive order is basically imposing a regulatory version of Sophie\u2019s Choice: Which workers will OSHA choose to condemn to injury, illness or death in order to protect another group of workers?<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s unlikely that even without Trump’s “Sophie’s Choice” Executive Order OSHA would be issuing lots of standards to protect workers. \u00a0But what we’re seeing here is not \u00a0a rebalancing, but a dangerous assumption that all worker or environmental protections are bad, that they hurt profits and kill jobs. \u00a0There is no evidence of any of that, but Federal policy is now driven by that dangerous myth.<\/p>\n

But the Occupational Safety and Health Act recognizes an important government role in protecting workers by issuing standards and strongly enforcement those protections in the workplace.<\/p>\n

And any further burdening of the process, or rolling back existing regulations is nothing more than a betrayal of Congressional intent and of the workers’ sweat and blood that paid for these legal protections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attached here is an article I wrote for Law 360 about OSHA’s painfully slow process for issuing standards that protect workers, and how the Trump administration is trying to make it even slower. OSHA’s law, court decisions and OMB Executive Orders have already slowed the process to a crawl, but Trump’s Executive Order requiring one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[147,50,60,29,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemical-standards","category-congressional-review-act","category-deconstructing","category-regulations","category-regulatory-process"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Workers Wait So Long For OSHA Standards (And How Trump Is Making It Worse) - Confined Space<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"OSHA's regulatory process is pretty much broken and Trump's Executive Orders promise to make it worse. 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