Party platforms offer contrasting visions for OSHA

The Democratic platform appeared to stand firm behind the “New” OSHA and its ramped-up enforcement stance.

“Our Occupational Safety and Health Administration will continue to adopt and enforce comprehensive safety standards,” the Democratic platform reads. Under the Obama administration, OSHA has increased penalties, implemented a Severe Violator Enforcement Program and has cracked down on recordkeeping, among other things.

But OSHA has run into some partisan headwinds in Congress and that was evident from the Republican platform:

“Many regulations are necessary, like those which ensure the safety of food and medicine, especially from overseas. But no peril justifies the regulatory impact of Obamacare on the practice of medicine, the Dodd-Frank Act on financial services, or the Environmental Protection Agency’s and OSHA’s overreaching regulation agenda. A Republican Congress and president will repeal the first and second, and rein in the third.”

“We support a sunset requirement to force reconsideration of out-of-date regulations, and we endorse pending legislation to require congressional approval for all new major and costly regulations,” the Republicans said.

OSHA is currently considering permissible exposure limits to airborne contaminants as well as rules on silica, infectious diseases, bloodborne pathogens, recordkeeping, walking work surfaces and personal fall protection systems, and an injury and illness prevention program.

Subscribe to Jim Stanley’s OSHA blog and receive updates in your inbox or on your reader.