Abstract

Over the years, many state and federal governments have tried to enact legislation to protect employee physical well-being at work without much success. State law governs factory inspections, machine protection and provided a limited number of provisions on health hazards, but many remained uncontrolled risk. The end of a tiring of the political struggle to adopt state regulation of workplace hazards, it was noted the signing into law of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to December 29, 1970.

Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970

Introduction

Occupational Safety and Health Act or OSHA says: "Every employer shall provide to each of his employees employment and places of employment that are free from recognized hazards that cause or may cause death or serious injury to their employees. Every employer is obliged to comply with safety and occupational health standards promulgated under this Act." (White, p44) Highly publicized incidents in the metallurgical and mining industries shocked people and led to the creation of the U.S. Steel Committee in 1908, and the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1910. The purpose of the United States became the Safety Committee to reduce the number of accidents as much as possible. The Committee was safety first, and its success caused it to spill over into other industries and led to the creation of the National Security Council in 1915 (Viscusi, p76). In 1913, Congress created the Department of Labor and its main objectives were to improve working conditions in the country and do bad work healthy. Congress called on the Ministry of Labor report on occupational diseases and accidents.

Discussion and Analysis

By the end of 1960, however, the prospects for greater federal regulatory role have improved in several respects. On the one hand, Americans as a result of the New Deal and the civil rights movement largely accustomed to federal oversight, as industrial production, once controlled primarily by the state. On the other hand, the federal court system have been substantially corrected the balance of the Constitution of the state and federal powers since the end of 1930 in order to accommodate a more aggressive national regulation. Most importantly, the decade of regulatory failure is clear to most observers that the faith of the people in state laws to protect workers' health and safety of long tragically misplaced. rates in workplace accidents continues to grow unabated, as Minister of Labor reported in 1969, disabling work-related injuries increased by 20 percent, to 2.2 million a year, only since 1958. State governments fought constantly to pay for an energetic performance of their health and safety. And states competing with each other to attract and retain manufacturing jobs, are facing the strongest incentives to water down its standards of security in order to reduce costs businesses operating within their borders.

Threat to the security staff continues to grow in the 1950's and 60's and the federal government began to take a more active role. Walsh-Healey Act was originally enacted in 1936, was amended in 1960. This law allowed the Department of Labor to ...