Home > Major Acts of Congress > Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970

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.

THE ENACTMENT OF OSHA

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.

OSHA'S IMPACT IN THE WORKPLACE

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.

See also: FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938; .