Are current OSHA regulations enough to ensure worker safety?

June 19th, 2015 by Dakota Software Staff Industry News

David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, recently held a session at the American Society of Safety Engineers' Safety 2015 Professional Development Conference & Exposition in Dallas, according to Business Insurance. During the session, he explained that current OSHA safety regulations are adequate to keep employees safe in the workplace, but there is still room for improvement. 

The basis behind Michaels' statement is OSHA's regulations are meant to protect employees from specific hazards, not every potential hazard. A glaring example of this is when a SeaWorld trainer was killed by an orca, also known as a killer whale, in 2010. OSHA doesn't have any regulations in place specifically for orcas, although they can be dangerous. 

Examples like this are why Michaels feels that employers are responsible for protecting employees from "obvious" hazards because he feels that many of OSHA's standards are outdated, "especially our chemical exposure standards."

OSHA's goal is to take companies that have hazardous conditions and make them compliant and to make those that are already compliant even safer. 

"We know that employers don't like to get penalties," he said to Business Insurance. "We know that when they see in the newspaper we've issued a penalty to another employer, that wakes them up…We don't want to inspect, we want changes to occur before the next worker is hurt. That's really our objective here."

OSHA changes on the forefront
In regards to the changes that he hopes to see, Michaels hopes that regulations will include close-call reporting and better accident investigations, even when a company or business says that an accident was the worker's fault. Michaels added that employers should accept that "human error is a consequence, not a cause."

While none of the above listed changes have taken shape in OSHA's standards as of yet, there are some important changes on the forefront.  According to the National Law Review, OSHA Compliance Safety and Health Officers have been instructed to collect more employer data regarding fair pay and safe workplaces during OSHA inspections.

Executive Order 13673 ensures employers are compliant with labor laws after agreeing on contracts worth more than $500,000 with the federal government. It also declares that companies and businesses that aren't compliant won't be awarded federal contracts. 

In a recent memorandum, Tom Galassi, Director for OSHA's Directorate of Enforcement Programs, informed OSHA Regional Administrators that this executive order will lead to the first time that the Department of Labor and other federal agencies will be able to keep a record and have full access to the labor law compliance of employers that are looking to bid on government contracts.