OSHA and the International Window Cleaning Association (IWCA) have renewed an Alliance to address slips, trips, falls from heights, and the safe use of high-reach access equipment such as ladders and scaffolding in the window cleaning industry.
Call it the OSHA relevancy scale. After the election, and staring at another four-year cycle at OSHA, we posed this question to several in-the-know sources: In terms of its various activities and their impact on safety pros, how influencial and relevant is OSHA after 40+ years of existence?
Mere days after the presidential election, the honeymoon is still on for the winners. That includes agencies such as OSHA, MSHA and EPA, whose top leaders were political appointments made after Obama’s 2008 win.
OSHA watcher in Washington lament the loss of one of the very few members of Congress with a serious interest in the agency – Lynn Woolsey, (D-Calif.), the ranking minority member of the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Workforce Protection.
Most of the sources with longstanding OSHA connections that ISHN has contacted post-election contend that we are in for a revival of the Injury and Illness Prevention Program (i2P2). OSHA officials backed off discussing in public to any detailed degree the controversial rule during the 2012 presidential election race.
Jobs creation and avoiding the fiscal cliff are top of mind issues of national business groups following the election. More narrow issues, such as OSHA policies and standards, are for another day, probably sometime in 2013, especially if OSHA makes noises about new standards.
Peg Seminario, longtime director of health and safety for the AFL-CIO, told ISHN in an exclusive day after the election interview, “We don’t buy at all the claim that regulations kill jobs. Quite the opposite, according to recent research.”
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