Date: 2004-05-18
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding me time and for all of his involvement over many years on the issues affecting OSHA and the workplace safety of American workers. The Occupational Safety and Health Act has substantially improved the safety of the American workplace to the benefit of the American worker. Far fewer workers are killed or injured today than was the case before the law was enacted. Despite this progress. too many Americans continue to be sick or injured or killed in workplace accidents that could have been or should have been avoided. Fifteen Americans were killed and more than 12.800 were injured each day in 2002. This does not include the 50.000 and 60.000 deaths that occur every year as a result of occupational diseases. None of the bills before this committee today will do anything to improve the occupational safety or health of Americans. H.R. 2728 unnecessarily and indefinitely delays the abatement of safety and health hazards in compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration citations. H.R. 2729 unnecessarily expands the size of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission. and H.R. 2730 weakens the fundamental responsibilities of the Secretary of Labor. It contorts the law and confuses the enforcement responsibilities of both the Secretary and the review commission. H.R. 2731 significantly diminishes the protections of Occupational Safety and Health by discouraging OSHA from even enforcing the Occupational Health and Safety Act and punishing tax payers unless the agency. like Perry Mason. can win every case. That is not going to happen. These bills do no good. and some of them do substantial harm. The House should not waste time considering them. If the House truly wants to address the economic needs of the American people. why not spend time on legislation raising the subpoverty minimum wage or extending unemployment benefits to the 90.000 workers a month who are losing that benefit because of the inaction of Congress or stopping the Labor Department from issuing overtime regulations that will cost middleclass workers critical amounts of their income? Why do we not spend our time on those bills instead of this meaningless and political agenda? Rather than hurting workers. we should be raising the minimum wage. The minimum wage has not been increased since 1997. and the real value of the minimum wage is approaching alltime historic lows. It is worth noting that the Republican Congress has increased Members salaries six times since the minimun wage was last increased. It is time for Cdngress to do for others what we have repeatedly done for ourselves. Instead. we are considering bad bills to undermine worker safety and health. If we cannot do good for workers. we should at least avoid doing them harm. I We should not be encouraging employers to litigate OSHA complaints instead of correcting health and safety hazards. but two of the bills. H.R. 2728 and H.R. 2731 have exactly that effect. Tax payers should not be paying the legal expenses of employers who endanger their workers. but. again. that is what H.R. 2731 requires. It is nonsense to contend that the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission knows better what the Secretary of Labor intended than the Secretary herself. but that is not exactly the premise that underlies H.R. 2730. Finally. our Republican colleagues argue that we should expand the size of the commission with no commensurate expansion in its responsibilities. In effect. the taxpayers should go on the hook to put two more lawyers to work for no good reason. This is the effect of H.R. 2729. This is bad legislation. It is unfortunate that we have spent time considering these bills when there is so much we could be doing to help workers and their families in this country. Let us not compound the error by foisting these bills on the other body.