Labor Committee Chairman Enzi Urges Cooperative Approach to Improve Worker Safety

Labor Committee Chairman Enzi Urges Cooperative Approach to Improve Worker Safety

U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said the way to better ensure a safer environment for the nation's workforce is by promoting assistance, guidance and support between employers and OSHA rather than a strategy consisting only of inspections and fines.

"Our primary responsibility is to insure a safer and more healthful workplace. We cannot simply inspect or fine our way to safety," Enzi said Tuesday, during a hearing of the HELP Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. "We need policies and practices that encourage voluntary compliance, foster better understanding of safety issues and increase cooperation between OSHA and the employer community, particularly where small businesses are concerned."

During the hearing, which focused on legislative solutions to lighten the regulatory load on small business, Enzi said the overwhelming majority of employers are committed to ensuring the health and safety of their employees and need more help from OSHA- not more headaches. "We need a system that encourages employers who work in good faith to protect employees to find out how to achieve safety voluntarily. All government regulations - no matter how necessary or useful - impose a burden on the businesses that are regulated. Unfortunately, that burden falls disproportionately on small firms," he added. He emphasized that too often, small employers are left on their own to try to understand and comply with complicated OSHA regulations. However, procedural changes in regulations and industry/OSHA training exchanges may be ways not only to lessen those burdens, but to actually improve workplace safety.

"Complying with workplace regulations is hard enough for large employers who have an in-house staff of safety experts. But for small employers whose safety expert is also the human resources manager, accountant, and systems administrator, the task is nearly impossible," Enzi said.

He pledged to continue to support, sponsor, and advance proposals that use practical approaches to secure safer and healthier workplaces. Toward that goal, Enzi will introduce an updated version of the bill he offered during the 108th Congress as S.2719, the SAFE Act, or the "Safety Advancement for Employees (SAFE) Act."

That bill would have allowed OSHA to effectively target the few bad actors who willfully place their employees at risk and also includes provisions to improve hazard communication and reduce injuries and illnesses caused by the presence of hazardous chemicals in the workplace.

http://enzi.senate.gov/osha4.htm