The new decade began with a challenge unlike any other faced by the American workforce as the coronavirus pandemic impacted workplace safety and health in unprecedented ways.
OSHA acted quickly to protect the nation's workers through outreach and education efforts, ensuring compliance with agency standards, and collaborations with federal, state, and local authorities.
The agency continues to work tirelessly to address the demands of this evolving health crisis. Even with the dramatic improvements to workplace safety over the last five decades - and now with the nation responding to a global pandemic - OSHA's mission is as important as ever.
Very few States included compensation for disease, although much was already known about occupational illness. Still, insurance company safety experts helped improve their clients' safety programs and the establishment of compensation gave the safety movement a moral boost. An idea that developed alongside of workers' compensation probably produced more significant long-run results.
If the States would create industrial commissions with authority to establish specific safety and health regulations, it would not be necessary to go back to the legislatures and amend the factory laws in order to cover new hazards or change requirements. A workers' compensation advocate, John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin, found this system in use in Europe and urged its adoption in the United States. Wisconsin, in another pioneering move, created the first permanent State industrial commission which developed and enforced safety and health regulations, after hearing comments from labor, management, and others.
The Federal Government was relatively inactive, though not dormant, on safety and health until the era of workers' compensation. In , the First Congress passed an ineffective merchant seaman's act which gave the crew of a ship at sea the right to order the vessel into the nearest port if a majority of the seamen plus the first mate believed it was unseaworthy. In , at the urging of the commission and the railroad unions, Congress passed the "coupler bill" which banned the notoriously dangerous link-and-pin method of coupling cars.
Industrial disease studied. After the turn of the century, the Federal Government quietly began investigation into industrial diseases. In , the U. Bureau of Labor began publishing graphically detailed studies of death and disease in the dusty trades, as well as other safety and health topics. In , the Bureau published a study by a labor law advocate, John B. Andrews, on the horrors of phosphorus necrosis "phossy jaw" , a disfiguring and sometimes fatal disease of the jawbone suffered by workers in the white phosphorus match industry.
In , Congress passed the Esch Act, which placed a prohibitive tax on white phosphorus matches. The Diamond Match Co. By a lucky stroke, U. Commissioner of Labor Charles Neill met Dr. Alice Hamilton now considered the founder of industrial medicine in America at a European conference on occupational accidents and diseases.
Hamilton, at the time just beginning her career, was in the midst of pioneering investigations into the lead trades as director of the Illinois Occupational Disease Commission.
Neill invited her to work as a special investigator for the Bureau of Labor. She accepted and until traveled around the country visiting lead smelters, storage battery plants, and other hazardous workplaces. In , she published a study of the white lead industry that was the first of a series of Bureau of Labor reports known as the "Federal survey. She found many examples of foul conditions and gross neglect and some "remarkable instances of wise and humane employers.
Department of Labor formed. In , Congress created the Department of Labor and one of its main purposes was "to improve working conditions. Wilson, to report on industrial diseases and accidents. A "miner" poet, Wilson described the horror of a mine disaster in this excerpt from "The Explosion," originally written in Stalwart men were but as feathers Driven with a cyclone's fire. Fast their flesh and sinews shriveled, Scorched and roasted with the fire. Bureau of Labor started compiling regular accidents statistics in the iron and steel industry and gradually included other industries.
Wilson sought to establish the principle that, instead of feeding men "into the maw of unhealthy occupations Working Conditions Service created. The entry of the United States into World War I precipitated a crisis in health and safety conditions in the hard-pressed war production industries. To meet this challenge, Congress initiated the Working Conditions Service. The service inspected war production sites, advised companies on reducing hazards, and helped States develop and enforce safety and health standards.
When the war ended, the service was allowed to expire, but the Labor Department ordered its records saved for the time "when public and legislative opinion again shall have become focused upon the necessity for a constructive organization of this character.
Frances Perkins appointed. In , President Franklin D. She brought to the Labor Department long experience in occupational safety and health with the State of New York. To help assure that workplaces would be "as safe as science and law can make them," Perkins created a Bureau of Labor Standards in as a rallying point for those interested in job safety and health.
The Bureau helped State governments improve their administration of job safety and health laws and raise the level of their protective legislation. Congress enacted three laws as part of Roosevelt's New Deal which augmented the Federal Government's role in protecting people on the job. The Social Security Act of allowed the U. Public Health Service to fund industrial health programs run by State health departments. This made the Public Health Service, which had begun doing industrial health studies in , the national leader in this field.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of , which set a minimum wage and banned exploitative child labor, gave the Labor Department the power to bar workers under age 18 from dangerous occupations. The Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act of allowed the department to ban contract work done under hazardous conditions. Maritime rules. By the late 's, the Federal-State partnership which Frances Perkins had cultivated was no longer adequate to deal with growing threats to workers' safety and health, so gradually the Federal Government took a more prominent role.
It gave the Labor Department authority to set safety and health standards for the very small work force covered under this law. In addition to protecting workers in one of the Nation's most hazardous industries, the amendment closed "the last remaining 'no man's land'" in safety enforcement.
The Secretary of Labor was authorized to seek penalties against willful violators, but not against those who only carelessly broke the rules. After holding public hearings, the department began enforcing standards in Compliance was good, and the high accident rates declined sharply.
In December , shortly after the congressionally ordered maritime rules became effective, the department issued on its own a set of mandatory safety and health standards under the Walsh-Healey Act.
The department had previously issued most of these standards in a "Green Book" of informal guidelines to aid Federal and State inspectors. States had been encouraged to inspect Federal contractors and enforce their own rules. Now they were barred from applying their standards and had to enforce the Federal rules instead. For the first time, the Federal occupational safety and health requirements were applied to the whole range of industry.
The new rules were not popular. Because there had been no hearings or prior announcement, labor and industry were caught by surprise and miffed that they had not been consulted.
Business protested strongly to the Labor Department against making the rules mandatory. The National Safety Council deplored this "monumental set of rigid regulations. Business opposition had been building up for 3 years and reached a peak at the hearings. More than witnesses appeared, mostly from industry. Business felt that the new rules were not only illegal, but also technically deficient and would inhibit innovation.
The mission of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards, providing training, outreach, and education, establishing partnerships, and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health. Here's a quick snapshot of the critical moments in OSHA history. So many of these things we've come to accept as everyday practice. Without looking back, we don't realize how many formal regulations are in place to protect workers.
Plus, it's a growing list of protections and not without revision when necessary to either improve protections or streamline rules. If you're better at videos than blog posts, the UFCW has posted a couple of videos that you may find of interest. It chronicles the development of workplace safety. All of the OHSA regulations exist to protect workers from hazards in the workplace. OHSA Regulation That protection needs to address exposure to mechanical, chemical, environmental, and radiological hazards or irritants.
Congress recognized when debating safety and health legislation that several states already were operating effective occupational safety and health programs. Participating states had to adopt a program comparable to the federal one, with standards at least as effective as federal standards. Additionally, states running their own programs were required to cover state and local government employees.
Today, 24 states and 2 territories now operate programs covering private-sector and state and local government employees. Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York have state plans that cover public employees only. States with their own OSHA programs conduct inspections to enforce health and safety standards and provide occupational safety and health training and education. In addition, they provide free onsite consultation to help employers identify and correct workplace hazards.
Early on, OSHA established its own Training Institute in the Chicago area to instruct its inspectors and provide limited training to employers and employees. During the mids, OSHA expanded its expertise in occupational health both through increased training and hiring of industrial hygienists to address workplace health issues. To encourage voluntary compliance and assist businesses, particularly small businesses, OSHA established free onsite consultation programs, delivered through state authorities, in The agency took its outreach efforts a step further in with its New Directions grants program.
The program provided seed money to other organizations to develop and offer safety and health training to employers and employees. In the s, OSHA began to focus on minimizing regulatory burdens. The agency relied more on computers to track its activities and provide accountability. Its goal was to provide a balanced mix of enforcement, education and training, standard-setting, and consultation activities. Major new health standards introduced during OSHA's second decade included requirements to provide employees access to medical and exposure records maintained by their employers; hazard communication; and more stringent requirements for asbestos, ethylene oxide, formaldehyde, and benzene.
In the early s, OSHA worked to refine its inspection targeting system to zero in on the most hazardous companies within the most hazardous industries.
On arrival at a workplace, OSHA inspectors would review an em-ployer's injury records. Employers with injury rates at or below average were exempted from inspection. In , OSHA adopted a policy of imposing instance-by-instance penalties on companies with egregious violations, significantly raising penalties for companies with many willful violations.
OSHA expanded its voluntary compliance efforts in several important ways during the s. Free consultations increased, and the program included, for the first time, a 1-year inspection exemption for employers who participated in a comprehensive consultation visit.
In , the agency established the Voluntary Protection Programs to recognize worksites with exemplary safety and health programs. During this period, many states running their own OSHA programs received final approval from the agency verifying that their programs met all the criteria for OSHA to relinquish concurrent federal enforcement.
By the end of the decade, 25 jurisdictions were operating their own OSHA programs. In its third decade, OSHA re-examined its goals as part of the overall government reinvention process, looking for ways to leverage its resources and increase its impact in reducing workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths.
The "New OSHA" focused on reducing red tape, streamlining standard setting, and inspecting workplaces that most needed help in protecting employees. The emphasis was on results. As part of its reinvention effort, the agency reorganized its area offices to provide rapid response to worker complaints and workplace tragedies as well as to focus on long-term strategies to lower job-related fatalities, injuries, and illnesses.
OSHA instituted a phone-fax policy to speed the resolution of complaints and focus investigation resources on the most serious problems. Many standards published during the s relied on a performance-oriented approach -- setting specific goals for worker safety and health -- but providing flexibility in how those goals were to be met.
Major safety standards included process safety management, permit-required confined spaces, fall protection in construction, electrical safety-related work practices, and scaffolds.
OSHA broke new ground in by introducing a bloodborne pathogens standard to address biological hazards. During the s, the agency also updated its asbestos, formaldehyde, methylene chloride, personal protective equipment, and respiratory protection standards; developed a standard covering lead exposure in construction; and issued rules to protect laboratory workers exposed to toxic chemicals.
OSHA also issued guidelines for preventing workplace violence in health care and social services work and in late-night retail establishments. The agency continued to refine its inspection targeting system to focus on serious violators, proposing sizable penalties when inspectors found sites where safety and health problems were most serious.
OSHA looked more closely at ergonomics and published guide-lines for the meatpacking industry. During the mids, OSHA began collecting data annually from about 80, employers in high-hazard industries to identify sites with high injury and illness rates.
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