To hear industry lobbyists tell it, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is an out-of-control monster, constantly spewing out oppressive regulations and handing out fines at the slightest violation. The Bush administration, for its part, has responded obligingly to this critique, proposing to cut OSHA’s budget, shifting enforcement resources to “compliance assistance” programs, and rolling back worker health and safety protections. At long last, the monster is dead. OSHA’s Major Rules Since 1996 Occupational Injury and Illness Recording and Reporting Requirements. This standard, published Jan. 19, 2001, improves the recording and reporting of occupational injuries and illnesses, including the forms employers use to record those injuries and illnesses, producing millions of dollars in administrative savings. Safety Standards for Steel Erection. By enhancing protections for steel erection, OSHA predicted that its standard, published Jan. 18, 2001 after a negotiated rulemaking, will prevent an additional 22 fatalities and 838 injuries, which would not have been prevented even with full compliance with the previous standard. Ergonomics Program. OSHA estimated that over the first 10 years, its ergonomics standard -- published on November 14, 2000, and subsequently repealed under President Bush on March 7, 2001 -- would avert approximately 2.3 million currently reported musculoskeltal disorders (MSDs) related to repetitive motion injuries, and an additional 2.3 million MSDs that are not currently reported (OSHA estimates that only 50 percent of MSDs are actually reported), for a total of 4.6 million MSDs averted. OSHA estimated the annualized benefits accruing over the first 10 years to be $9.1 billion. Powered Industrial Truck Operator Training. With new requirements for truck operator training, OSHA estimated its standard, published on Dec. 1, 1998, would avert 11 deaths and 9,422 injuries per year, resulting in a direct cost savings of $83 million per year, including savings in medical costs, value of lost output, and savings in administrative costs of workers' compensation claims. Respiratory Protection. By requiring industrial employers to establish and maintain a respiratory protection program, OSHA estimated that its standard, published on Jan. 8, 1998, would prevent 289 to 1,187 inhalation injuries/illnesses per year, as well as 554 to 8, 095 chronic respiratory illnesses, with the best estimate at 4,046 injuries and illnesses. OSHA estimated this reduction to save $18.8 to 218 million per year, with a best estimate of $93.9 million. OSHA also predicted the standard would avert 203 to 835 cancer deaths and 125 to 845 deaths related to cardiovascular disease annually, with a best estimate of 932 lives saved annually. Methylene Chloride. OSHA found that this standard, published on Jan. 10, 1997, would lead to the reduction of 1,045 cancer-related deaths over 45 years, or 31 deaths avoided per year and 3 lives per year from acute overexposure, and protect 57,000 to 70,000 workers from experiencing acute central nervous system effects. Yet was there really ever a monster in the first place? The record shows otherwise. Since 1996, OSHA has promulgated only six rules (see box) deemed economically significant (meaning an estimated annual impact of $100 million, including cost savings), according to the General Accounting Office's rules database, far fewer than virtually any other health, safety or environmental agency (for example, EPA had 26 such rules, the Dept. of Transportation 15, and the Dept. of Interior 37). Moreover, two of these (injury/illness reporting & truck operator training) merely replaced older rules and did not create any new significant burdens, and another (steel erection) was agreed to by regulated industry through a negotiated rulemaking. In fact, OSHA has promulgated no major rules over the first year of the Bush administration, which has instead backtracked on worker health and safety. Most notably, OSHA’s ergonomics standard, completed toward the end of the Clinton administration, was voted down by Congress at the urging of President Bush and never took effect. During the debate, Bush promised a new, less costly standard to address repetitive motion injuries, winning crucial votes in the process. Yet a year later, OSHA meekly issued a set of unenforceable voluntary guidelines, leaving some senators with a sense of betrayal. The Bush administration has also stopped action on 29 pending job safety initiatives, including 16 from OSHA and 13 at the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), according to the Transport Workers Union. As standard setting turns to standard revoking, OSHA inspections remain amazingly paltry. The U.S. labor force grew by 11.9 percent from 1990-2000, and is now over 100 million workers, while the number of workplaces has reached 7 million, double the number that existed when OSHA was created 30 years ago. Yet the number of inspections remained relatively flat through the Clinton administration, and actually fell in the first year of the Bush administration. OSHA performed just 35,941 inspections in FY 2001 -- 409 fewer than in FY 2000, according to the AFL-CIO’s "Death On the Job: The Toll of Neglect" -- while the 26 state-approved OSHA plans, where OSHA has ceded authority, conducted an additional 55,948 inspections. Much of this is due to inadequate staffing. According to OSHA, the agency only has 1,123 inspectors, with 1,378 additional inspectors operating under OSHA-approved state plans. Less than 1 percent of all workplaces are inspected in a year, and that number is declining; in fact, the AFL-CIO estimates it would take OSHA 84 years to inspect each workplace one time with current staffing levels. Nonetheless, the Bush administration has proposed to cut OSHA's budget by $9 million for FY 2003, which will eliminate 83 full-time OSHA positions, including 64 enforcement positions. The cuts are targeted at specific areas, slashing $1.3 million from the development of safety and health standards, $700,000 from federal enforcement, and $7.2 million from worker safety and health training grants. Meanwhile, the administration is proposing a several million-dollar boost to OSHA’s compliance assistance budget to help businesses deal with regulations. Such programs can be useful, but also can function as a sort of low-grade corporate welfare, where the government takes on certain burdens of complying with the law that should be properly placed on industry. Certainly, it shouldn’t detract from an agency’s enforcement budget. Similarly, the administration has also proposed a $4 million cut to the MSHA budget, even though injury and illness rates for miners have actually increased in recent years. At least in the case of MSHA, Congress has required that the agency inspect underground mines at least 4 times a year, and surface mines at least twice, regardless of the administration’s indifference. OSHA, on the other hand, has no such inspection requirement. Instead, its inspections respond reactively to complaints or an accident (26 percent of all inspections), target a significant hazard (50 percent), or represent referrals or follow-ups (24 percent). Where these inspections occur, however, OSHA has turned up significant violations. In 2001, OSHA uncovered 78,900 violations, 68 percent of which were considered serious, meaning “there is a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result and that the employer knew, or should have known, of the hazard.” From these violations, OSHA recovered $82 million in penalties. The state-approved OSHA plans found another 140,708 violations, and levied almost $74 million in fines. Data on fatalities, injuries, and illnesses better illustrate the extent of the problem. Specifically, there were 5,915 workplace deaths related to traumatic injuries in 2000 (the most recent year for which data is available), slightly lower than 1999, and 5.7 million reported injuries and illnesses in private sector workplaces, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), as reported by the AFL-CIO. Meanwhile, occupational diseases kill an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 workers each year. To be sure, OSHA has made a significant difference. For instance, OSHA standards have drastically reduced exposure to vinyl chloride, which can cause rare liver cancer and other severe health effects; wiped out byssinosis -- a crippling, irreversible lung disease -- associated with cotton dust exposure, which claimed 12,000 victims at the time of OSHA’s standard in 1976; and sharply cut fatalities from grain dust explosions, which killed 65 agricultural workers in 1977 alone; today, there are about two deaths a year from such explosions. Indeed, even as the workforce has expanded, occupational fatalities have been steadily falling since the creation of OSHA in 1970 when there were 13,800 fatalities. Yet the number of fatalities still remains unacceptably high. OSHA’s past success should encourage a greater commitment of resources to protect worker health and safety, and should also discredit industry lobbyists, who, as they always do, vigorously opposed all of the life-saving standards mentioned above. Unfortunately, the Bush administration sees things differently.