Is Workplace Safety Regulation Bad for Business?
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
I’m sure you’ve heard this one — the problem with this country is that there’s too much government regulation. “Government regulation” gets in the way of competitiveness and profits and a bunch of other stuff. If industry doesn’t fight off the do-gooders in government, it will ruin American business.
There’s also the libertarian argument that government regulation of business and industry is unnecessary. This is because business owners will want to do what’s best for the long-term health of their businesses, and that means they will be responsible employers and make safe products without government oversight.
And as soon as someone figures out on which planet that is true, do let me know.
The history of industrial and commercial use of asbestos shows us that while some business owners are responsible to customers and employees, the exceptions are all too common. There are no end of sad stories of workers and even whole communities of people who were recklessly exposed to asbestos from mining and manufacturing long after the dangers were known.
More than a century ago observers noticed that asbestos miners and people who worked with asbestos developed lung disease. In 1924, a British physician made the first diagnosis of asbestosis. The patient was a 33-year-old woman who died of the lung disease. Major medical journals began to publish studies linking asbestos to lung cancer in the 1930s. By the 1950s the connection between asbestos and mesothelioma was well known. Studies that showed people who lived near asbestos mines were also at risk were published in the 1960s.
However, for the most part mining companies and other asbestos-related companies made little attempt to protect workers and consumers until pressured by government regulators and courts, and that didn’t happen until decades after the dangers were well understood.
During the recent Bush Administration, the White House staffed regulatory agencies with people connected to the industries being regulated. For the past eight years, many workplace health and safety regulations were either un-enforced or watered down. In its last six months, the Bush Administration went into overdrive to dismantle regulatory protections of workers. In “U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules,” Carol D. Leonnig wrote in the Washington Post (July 23, 2008) that the Bush Administration’s Department of Labor was “moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers’ on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.”
The department’s speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order
The reason the un-regulating regulators were so hostile to regulation is that they believed fervently that regulations were bad for business. They may honestly have thought they were serving some greater good by cutting regulation. But Sidney A. Shapiro, a distinguished professor in Law, Wake Forest University, argues that business has it wrong.
Professor Shapiro, one of the country’s leading experts in administrative procedure and regulatory policy, says that an objective look at the issue reveals there is no real proof that shows safety regulation somehow makes U.S. business less competitive. In testimony to the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs Committee on Government Reform U.S. House of Representatives, Professor Shapiro said that industry’s aversion to regulation is based on overblown cost estimates. Further, safety regulation provides real benefits to industry that might save them money over the long run.
To Professor Shapiro, industry’s opposition to regulation is more about knee-jerk ideology than facts. It’s important to understand that many workers continue to face real danger from toxic substance in the workplace. And if anything, federal regulators have tended to under-react to these dangers rather than over-react.
Barbara O’Brien
