A press release from OSHA's Region I headquarters in Boston sent out in July was the final straw for Dick Hughes, owner of the Excellence in Safety consulting service in Falmouth, Mass. OSHA and the Construction Safety Roundtable of Eastern Massachusetts were teaming up to provide workshops on construction safety, and to promote free safety consultation services.

"If this 'friendly OSHA' trend continues unchecked, us private sector trainers will be gone when OSHA gets bored with the challenges of teaching America's workforce and is told to get back to their core mission of enforcing America's safety laws," Hughes wrote in an email to ISHN.