Depending on which side of the employer-worker fence you're on, OSHA's workplace safety standards are either too strict or too lenient.
Enforcement is too tough or too lax.
But that hasn't stopped OSHA from trying. If required to inspect every work site, agency officials often say, staff at OSHA's 67 area offices could do so only about once every 80 years. It's hard to say precisely how much improvement in workplace safety and health can be attributed to OSHA actions vs. other factors such as safer technologies, but few dispute that OSHA has had a positive effect during its 28-year existence. Management Basics OSHA is an agency built on the backs of idealists who believe every American has the right to a safe work environment. For years, writing safety and health standards and fining employers who violated them took precedence over basic management tasks.