Congressman Andy Briggs of Arizona sponsored a new bill with the goal of abolishing OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is part of the US government’s Department of Labor.
The H.R.86 bill, titled Nullify Occupational Safety and Health Administration Act, or NOSHA Act, reads:
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is repealed. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is abolished.
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Basically, they want to dismantle OSHA.
While OSHA isn’t universally loved, the organization is centered around worker safety. Nullify OSHA, and a lot of worker protections and safety guidelines would disappear along with it.
Digging deeper, while this is a new bill, it’s not exactly a new bill. The same congressman sponsored an identical bill at least twice before.
The first time Briggs sponsored this bill, there were 9 cosponsors, representatives Chip Roy (TX), Thomas Massie (KY), Matt Gaetz (FL), Ralph Norman (SC), Mary Miller (IL), Scott Perry (PA), Louie Gohmert (TX), Gregory Steube (FL), and Paul Gosar (AZ).
The second time Briggs sponsored this bill, there was 1 cosponsor, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
So far, there are no cosponsors for Bigg’s current reiteration of their “NOSHA Act” bill.
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From a press release announcement tied to their original bill, it seems that Biggs’ desire to eliminate OSHA stems from pandemic vaccine mandates and a belief that “Arizona, and every other state, has the constitutional right to establish and implement their own health and safety measures.”
In a recent announcement about this and other reintroduced bills, Biggs claims to be “committed to limiting the size and scope of government and restoring the balance of powers, both horizontally and vertically,” and says their bills support the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative.
Although this is Bigg’s third and latest attempt to get rid of OSHA, all bills have the potential to be passed and written into law.
Sources:
H.R.86 via Congress.gov (January 2025)
H.R.69 via Congress.gov (January 2023)
H.R.5813 via Congress.gov (November 2021)
Notes
Keep the comments section civil and as free from personal politics as possible.
Kent hanson
Non-USA resident here and without getting too political its tough to see what’s going on in your country right now.
Bonnie
It’s tough from inside the country too.
Stuart
This strikes me as politic posturing rather than an earnest attempt at lawmaking.
Patrick
While that may be true, that line has certainly gotten more blurry lately.
Steve L
Agencies are being dismantled or/and top staff dismissed/investigated at
– Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
– Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
– USAID
– FBI
– Justice Department
I do not regard any of these actions as being an earnest attempt at lawmaking so anything could happen with OSHA
Stuart
The same person that introduced the NOSHA Act law wants to remove the US Secret Service from its founding mission of investigating and preventing counterfeiting of US currency.
The Secret Service was established by President Abraham Lincoln to investigate crimes against the financial system, with protection of government officials added later after McKinley’s assassination.
There’s also a new/repeated bill to abolish the IRS and income tax, to be replaced by a national sales tax administered by the States. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/25/text
There’s been sensationalist coverage about that bill too, but it’s also the 3rd iteration, and there were others before it.
Scott K
It does – but if it were to pass it would have some serious negative consequences. There are plenty of people who complain about regulations without appreciating the protection they offer. This is an oversimplified statement, but if regulations are too expensive for your company, you may not be running a sustainable operation.
Brad
This happens all the time its jut not covered by the media often.
You’ll see lots of “throw everything against the wall” type bills submitted to the house/senate from little known back-bencher members looking for soundbites.
99.9% of these nutzo bills will never get out of committee as the chair will file 13 them as nonstarters let alone get to a floor vote.
Mike
True, but in the present political climate of “dismantle the entire government,” a bill like this could get support. Best to write your Congressperson anyway. It’s good to get involved with your representatives, too many of us let it slide until too late.
Mark
I’m sure the states will do a good job of regulating this stuff. And having 50 of them do it separately certainly won’t cost more.
Jronman
Sounds like it will cost the states money vs the federal? Sure maybe some states it will cost more but others maybe it will cost less? I suppose it depends how efficient each state handles safety and comparatively how populated a state is too. Should a state with 50 million people be paying the same rate as a state with 1 million?
J . Newell
Very respectfully (and I mean that), having this become the responsibility of state regulators would result in something like cardiac arrest. It’s not humanly possible that even half of the states would come to the same conclusions, and if we think that dealing with federal regulators is something between a headache and a nightmare, significant state-level regulation would result in paralysis or worse.
For starters, whole categories of product would quickly disappear. For example, you can’t buy a lot of categories of OPE in California today. Granted, that’s an air quality issue rather than a worker safety issue, but the effect would be similar – just a lot bigger.
fred
I’m a big fan of individual freedom to choose and that often extends to state’s rights issues where it is sometimes better to push things down to the local level – but just as often – maybe even more so it’s not. National standards sometimes restrict our freedoms and cost us something – but having 50 different standards would likely cost us more. When I was working – it was bad enough that we had to deal with different regulations, permits, work start/stop times etc., across the several states and a plethora of municipalities in which we worked. I can’t imagine what a tool manufactured would have to do if they had to comply with different standards imposed by states – rather than just be OSHA compliant. Toolguyd has often been a forum for conversations about the lack of battery interface standards, imagine if how much worse it would be if we devolve into multiple standards for many other things.
There has been a lot of public talk about return to the Gilded Age (1870’s to 1890’s) or even the early years of the 20th, Century. Even though I’m an old codger – I don’t have firsthand experience – but do know that “gilded” is not gold – and those ages came with good but also lots of bad. The cheap immigrant labor and laissez faire attitudes that fueled the NY Garment industry – also led to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire with unconscionable loss of life. I for one, can put up with the added costs that seatbelts added (my 1955 Chevy had none) and other national safety mandates – but I’d be really annoyed if a car that I bought in Florida could not be driven in New Jersey.
There is also the issue of efficiency – and while it is good to reexamine how best to do things – it is sometimes more efficient and less costly (overall) to do things at a national rather than local level (or vice versa).
Jack D
I chuckled a bit at the Florida car comment. It may not really speak to the topic at hand, but I had a friend who was ticketed for not having a front license plate in NY, even though he was visiting from Florida, where they don’t require them.
I think, given the importance of manufacturers having a standard to meet–all cars have a spot in front for a plate,
regardless of state regulations–OSHA serves a good purpose.
If anything, I would remove their power to regulate and place it directly in Congress’ hands. OSHA would be the enforcers, essentially.
fred
A similar issue went all the way to the US Supreme Court. A driver was given a summons/ticket for a minor traffic infraction – with an added fine because his vehicle had a copy (not the original) of the vehicle registration in the glove box. This was a company truck, and that practice was legal in the state that the vehicle was registered but not in the state where the tickets were issued. When it arrived in the Supreme Court – it was ruled that the part of the fine for the registration copy was invalid as it violated Interstate Commerce laws that only Congress could change. The ticket was voided, and the plaintiff was locality was ordered to pay the plaintiffs costs for bringing the action. It sounds like your friend has a case about local uninformed police action – unless there is more to the case.
ToolGuyDan
“If anything, I would remove their power to regulate and place it directly in Congress’ hands. OSHA would be the enforcers, essentially.”
You realize this is the current system, right? Literally, exactly, precisely the current system.
There’s a chemical, 1,3-Dichloro-5,5-dimethyl hydantoin. It is definitely toxic. What should the exposure limit be, in milligrams per cubic meter? How should that concentration be measured, how often? Which testing equipment model numbers are acceptable? Which calibration laboratories may certify that test equipment, and how often must the equipment be certified?
Let’s assume for a moment that congresscritters can possibly have or develop an educated opinion on all of that, and write it into law. Now what happens when someone starts producing a new isomer of that chemical? Should the old rules apply? What if there’s preliminary evidence showing that it is far more—or less—toxic, and Congress is on one of its frequent recesses when a major company decides to switch isomers, because the new one is 10% cheaper to make and the toxicity hasn’t been sufficiently proven, and in any event causes infertility, not inability to continue to work?
Politicians are very good at getting elected—empirically, they’re quite literally the best at it in their entire districts. Sometimes, they’re also pretty good at writing laws, but that’s a weak correlation at best. Imagining that they’re also chemical engineers, and that they also dabble in farming, educational policy, trade agreements, highway and air safety, real estate, space launch systems, and more… that’s just absurd. Nobody can be all of those things. So Congress writes a law that says, “The GSA shall purchase and maintain appropriate office buildings for the staff of the various agencies.” They might add “The GSA may not sell the White House” or “The GSA shall not buy HVAC components not made in the U.S.”, but they really shouldn’t be listing which model numbers of which HVAC equipment go in which buildings, or how much to offer or to demand in the first round of bidding for buying or disposing of a government building, because that’s insane.
OSHA has a mandate to protect worker safety, while giving due regard both to productivity and to the capital and operational costs of compliance. There are some guidelines and guiderails—quite a few, actually—but for the most part, the expectation is that OSHA does the research and gets into the nitty-gritty of a tough issue (like SawStop) so that Congress can focus on its job: getting re-elected (or, more charitably, updating old laws and passing new ones to better reflect a changing world).
G console
Imagine owning a company with workers in multiple states and having to follow all the different laws, rather than one set. Certainly there are some individual state laws, but with no federal laws or enforcement the complications created wont make things easier.
States can compete on having the fewest regulations and more unsafe work environments, so there’s that.
Robert
Cutting down giant corporations to state size may be a good thing. We don’t seem to invoke Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-trust laws any more.
Gordon
But those same laws will also apply all the way down to the contractor who lives and works in multiple states. One set of laws, regulations, fees, permits, and BS for one job, and an entirely different set for another job.
fred
Working near the dividing line between 2 villages – we ran into a noise issue. The village we were working in had an 8AM start time – while in the adjoining village it was 9AM. A complaint from a homeowner in the 9AM village had code enforcement folks show up on our jobsite and harass our excavation subcontractor. Not having deep pockets for lawyers and wanting to be good neighbors – we just shut down that morning and started up from then on after 9AM
Scott K
This was one of my first thoughts and I almost mentioned it in reply to the comment above. There are fair complaints about the size of some corporations, but there are also plenty of small companies that work in several states and plenty of large corporations that do good work that would be negatively impacted.
Jronman
I have felt OSHA has gotten a bit bloated. If OSHA is abolished and replaced with a state by state version to make things more efficient and less wasteful I would be ok with getting rid of OSHA. I like safety and don’t want it gone.
Jronman
In my entire working life, I have never seen OSHA on the job site. Maybe a state by state system would get safety enforcement on to more job sites. I have found the issue with OSHA is things aren’t enforced at least for the smaller companies. So many companies can get around the regulations because of this.
Wayne R.
That’s the “cut funding so it doesn’t work, then kill it” process.
Gordon
It’s also decades of convincing workers that OSHA is out to get them not the company.
RC
I have seen OSHA in my workplace more than once. I do work for a larger employer, but I have seen OSHA enforce regulations and laws against my workplace. OSHA shows up when summoned. Every time I have seen them or talked to them, it’s because a worker on the floor called them after an accident or a near accident occurred.
Scott
I’m 100% confident companies will make sure there are sufficient workplace safety protocols and protections in place, if OSHA disappears (Insert Sarcastic themed music). If companies did the right things, then OSHA would not be needed. Enough don’t so there’s a need for some sort of government standards and protection.
Jim Felt
Can one even imagine the work/safety environment if literally driving down a street in the more densely populated adjoining state areas your crew had entirely different “safety” requirements? Let alone workmen’s comp and all the other various insurance issues to deal with on a state by state basis?
Sounds like a low information “FreeDumb” political rant more than any “safety” issue.
AKA The Absolute Law of Unintended” consequences.
MM
As I understand things, that is how trucking regulations work right now. Semi truck drivers that cross state lines have to deal with different laws in each state. I imagine that creates a certain amount of hassle, but it’s not a sky-is-falling-scenario.
Jim
* This bill was sponsored the campaign contributions of international construction companies with absolutely no vested interested in reduction of cost associated with less governmental oversight of worker safety.
Clearly this is all about government efficiency; as others have said, creating and maintaining 50 independent regulatory agencies will surely be more efficient than fixing any singular entity. Nor will it disadvantage any of those agencies in the regulation of multi-billion-dollar trans-national construction companies.
Jason. W
i firmly believe without OSHA, or some other large cooperation to dictate safe practices, businesses would 100% put their people into dangerous circumstances. anything to save a buck
Wayne R.
It’d be a lot different with single-payer healthcare, but without it & OSHA, lots of unsafe work will result in mangled, uncared-for ex-workers. Third world, here we come!
And that initial list of sponsors was pretty scary too.
Stuart
Based on the messaging behind the bill’s first introduction, the cosponsors might have jumped in only to express opposition to the government’s pandemic vaccine policies.
Bonnie
They already do this enough even with the spectre of OSHA threat. It’ll be a literal bloodbath if the agency gets abolished or gutted.
Ray
OSHA has dropped the ball badly with inconsistent enforcement and an over focus on things like arguing t shirt color (at least in my region) and very little focus to no focus on staging and other items.
There potential demise isn’t going to cause any tears to be shed over here.
Brad
So throw the baby out with the bathwater?
Farmerguy
Workplace safety will be administered by those whom insure the company’s workplace safety.
Mandate workplace injury insurance and premiums will govern workplace safety with heavier oversight by insurer’s. (Safer=cheaper premium) Maybe more safety will come before an accident than OSHA investigation after an accident and slap on hand penalty.
Mike (the other one)
Safety codes are written in blood.
What is the point of standards if there ends up being 50 different standards in the nation?
States with lax safety laws will attract more companies, but they won’t care if their workers are maimed or killed. Just like China, pull the body out of the machine and keep going.
This is one of many attacks against workers rights. All of this assuming your job won’t be replaced by AI-enabled robots, which a certain billionaire (who now has access to all of our SSNs) is pushing.
Champs
If Sinclair Lewis wrote The Jungle today, the stockyards would go to social media pledging to do better, the press would insist that we hear them out, and the rest of us would nod and smile politely.
If corporations are people, whatever happened to “one person, one vote?”
MM
Upton Sinclair was the author of The Jungle. And I’d like to think that if he wrote it today, the Social Media companies would be the ones making the sausage.
Brad
Social media’s data machines aren’t great, but they don’t appear to be transgressing in areas like workplace safety or inhumane labor practices. It’s still in mostly traditional labor in traditional sectors, from factory floors to food production to field workers, where the biggest problems are.
MM
I don’t mean to make light of industrial safety, and it has been a long time since I have read The Jungle, but as I recall the focus was more about human exploitation in general and it was lot limited to the physical hazards of an unregulated factory floor. Sinclair was also very critical of yellow journalism and of people using journalism and its associated influence to push their particular political views and enrich themselves. I think a sausage factory is a great metaphor for that, especially when when so much of today’s content is chopped into little tweets, tiktoks, and shorts, just like the filling of a sausage.
Champs
Thank you for the correction.
I typed it several times, unsure of why it felt wrong, and now I know. 🤦🏽
J . Newell
Too late, Elon Musk will be there first.
matthewj
If it falls to states to regulate worker safety, not only will there be a race in some states to see who can regulate the least, there will be a rush to _prevent_ employers from enforcing standards higher than those the state requires. See Texas trying to make it illegal for private investment companies to engage in any ESG initiatives. Surely requiring more safety procedures and equipment than the state deems sufficient is a violation of a fiduciary duty as well…
AF
I am a safety manager in a state that has its own occupational regulatory deoartment. A lot of people don’t realize that almost half of the states have their own agencies to manage safety and health. The federal requirement is that if a state has its own plan it must be at least as stringent as the federal program (OSHA) which are minimum specs. Here’s the issue, who has jurisdiction over who? Federal projects in any state fall under OSHA. The military has their own safety standard but OSHA still regulates but defers to the military standard if the specific spec is more stringent. And then there are agreements between industries, unions and the government. It can be a spider’s web of jurisdiction. From what I have seen over the past 13 years I’ve been in the industry (construction), too many employers will try to get away with what they can which creates massive potential for injury, death and damage to projects. The nature of man is to do what’s easiest, fastest and most convenient. Safety regulation is an issue that can go on forever but one thing is for sure, unless everyone makes the conscious decision to live, work and play safely, we will continue to have incidents and people will suffer. OSHA is the result of injury and death that occured everyday in America until its creation in 1970. Have they gone too far and possible over-stepped their mandate? I believe they have, and that is everyone’s fault, government, private industry. lawyers and even individuals.
William
I own a cabinet shop and have employees. We’ve never had an OSHA visit nor do I want one. That said, I’m not sure doing away with it all together would be wise. There are certainly lots of good that has come from safety standards. On the other hand, the compliance costs to be totally in compliance are quite high and the penalties very steep.
Insurance companies would be far better at administering safety mandates than OSHA. My insurance has a vested interesting in helping me keep my help my people be safe. They make money when I’m safe and lose money when I’m not. OSHA makes money when I’m unsafe and looses money when I am safe. Who do you think would be more beneficial for an employer.
Ben
1. OSHA does not “make” money. It’s not a corporation. Its budget is set by the Department of Labor, which is funded by the budgets approved by Congress.
2. If you’re counting on an insurance company to “administer” anything, we must be living in two different worlds. Getting them to do anything has, in my experience, been like pulling teeth.
3. It’s not about employer benefits or cost savings. It’s about actual human safety. I get your point about insurance companies having a vested interested in you having a safer business, but you cannot boil down someone’s life and/or livelihood to a number on some actuary’s spreadsheet.
MM
I think that William makes some valid points here. The fact that OSHA is not a business that has to compete in a free market means that it has no reason to perform efficiently either. Government agencies can easily get fat, lazy, and wasteful when there is no competition and they get the same budget next year regardless of how good a job they do.
Insurance companies can be a hassle to deal with, but thinking back to personal experience they’re far better to deal with than the government, both in terms of efficiency and waste.
It’s sad, but in the end it’s this is always going to end up as a calculation on someone’s spreadsheet, whether we want to think about it that way or not. The question is whom do you want administering that spreadsheet? Buy beyond that, I think there are some good examples of how the insurance industry has improved safety. Underwriter’s Laboratories is one. Another is IIHS. There’s no reason something similar couldn’t extend to workplace safety.
William
Obviously ‘making money” isn’t the precise term. OSHA fees still get paid to the United States government though and that naturally effects OSHA. It may not technically “make money” but the fact remain that money changes hands when there’s a penalty.
I have Federated Insurance. They specialize in insurance for millwork shops and therefore have the expertise and appropriate products to insure me. If there were more specialized companies like Federated they would be more efficient and better equipped to handle issues/claims. As example, the last insurance company I had wanted to move $100k of tools outside and cover them with a tarp when we had a water leak in the shop.
I’m a fan of keeping all my fingers, avoiding death and dismemberment, and helping my employees achieve the same. I’m not saying a life shows on on a spreadsheet. Extension ladders for example require restraint at the top and bottom of the ladder according to OSHA. How many residential jobsites have you seen painters with properly secured ladders. My insurance company would lose a lot if someone fell off a ladder. It would make sense for them to want to help me train people for safe ladder usage. They also want to be reasonable and recognize that there is acceptable levels of risk in all applications. So wide stabilizing legs and spiked feet or a block on secured to the floor is plenty for them. For OSHA it’s not the rules so they take issue.
OSHA is also not good at protecting employees of small business like mine. I don’t want them more involved, but everyone needs insurance as a contractor which puts insurance companies closer to the end user or employee. OSHA cannot get bogged down with Remodeler Ron and his old saw missing a guard. His insurance company can though.
Jeremy
Man, I can’t wait to do construction work under Florida’s version of OSHA. Whatever the boss says goes. If it’s cheaper it’s legal. Who cares about a few deaths when there’s profit to be squeezed.
Frank D
Restoring the power of balance, horizontally and vertically???
S
I really hope this doesn’t go anywhere.
I’m definitely not a fan of OSHA, but I’ve also seen what many states write for laws and do for enforcement, which is almost nothing.
To eliminate a nationwide standard would definitely be a step back towards the 1920’s. Where there’s a line of people at the front door, and they let each one in while rolling the bodies out the back door. And we don’t have the glut of extra population they did back then…
Couple that with the global birth rate decline, and if this were to go through, America would be right next to China with “ghost cities” within a few years.
Saulac
What have we learned so far about taking down aviation safety regulations? What could go wrong if we take down the restaurant food safety rating?
Birdog357
No where in the constitution is the federal government granted the power to regulate worker safety. This bill cuts the feds back to where they belong.
DRT42
I have honestly not read any of this. But, I thought Stuart always stated, very clearly, No Politics. Isn’t that what this is ? Just saying…
Stuart
There’s a difference between news and politics.
Mopar
Every state I’ve ever lived or worked in has had it’s own state version of OSHA, except my current home state. In every case we dealt exclusively with the state, never had any dealings at all with the federal version. I wonder how many states have their own agency vs using the federal one?
The redundancy is indeed wasteful. I’m a huge fan of personal responsibility and limited government, but it seems to me in this case one national standard is better than 50 different ones. The problem is the feds can’t force the states to dismantle theirs, federal lawmakers can’t make state laws, and these days it’s virtually impossible to get 50 states to all agree on anything.
scott taylor
With no OSHA we would not have the saw stop controversy 🙂
Garry Annibal
Retired health and safety consultant here. OSHA does allow states to adopt their own health and safety regulations as long as they provide at least as much protection as does OSHA. Last I looked 22 states had their own set of regulations, though some only covered government employees not covered by federal OSHA. So if the argument is to give power back to the states, that option already exists.
Saulac
Yes. And this how federal/state/local regulations work. Each later can go above but not below the former. The federal regulations are there to ensure everyone get at least the minimum no matter where they live.
JerrBear
Just reminding everyone that a vast many OSHA regulations were written in the blood of fellow tradespeople. Like firefighting watch outs, workplace regulations/codes that many find annoying/bothersome and/or uncool, were created so that hopefully someone won’t have to spill their blood or have their family get “that call” again. Not to mention the vast amount of workers rights the agency has fought and provided for.
Remember it’s hard to be annoyed or inconvenienced when your dead do to preventable measures people were able to avoid because it became legal again to do so.