Introduction
1. See the public opinion polls cited in Chapter 5.
2. Public Law 91-596, Sec. 2b (my emphasis).
3. Ibid., Sec. 5a(1).
4. Ibid., Sec. 6b(5) (my emphasis).
5. Conversations with Joel Rogers were enormously helpful in clarifying these issues. For a penetrating account of American labor law, see his “Divide and Conquer: The Legal Foundations of Postwar U.S. Labor Policy” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, June 1984).
6. This view is popular among economists and policy analysts influenced by the neoclassical economics paradigm. See, for example, James C. Miller III and Bruce Yandle, Benefit-Cost Analyses of Social Regulation (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1979), chap. 1.
7. Charles L. Schultze, The Public Use of the Private Interest (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1977); Richard Zeckhauser and Albert Nichols, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration—An Overview, pp. 103-248 in Study on Federal Regulation, Vol. 6, S. Rept. 13, 95th Cong, 1st sess., 1978; Robert S. Smith, “Protecting Workers’ Health and Safety,” in Robert W. Poole, Jr., ed., Instead of Regulation (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1982), pp. 311-338; Eugene Bardach and Robert A Kagan, Going By the Book: The Problem of Regulatory Unreasonableness (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), a Twentieth Century Fund Report.
8. The most compelling theory of how group conflict shapes regulatory policy is to be found in James Q. Wilson, “The Politics of Regulation,” in James W. McKie, ed., Social Responsibility and the Business Predicament (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974), pp. 135-168. Although there is some ambiguity in how his framework should be applied to occupational safety and health policy—it can be viewed as a case of either “interestgroup” or “entrepreneurial” politics—Wilson’s account provides the analytic foundations for an interest-group explanation of OSHA For efforts to chart the impact of political conflict on social regulation in general and OSHA in particular, see David Vogel, “The ‘New’ Social Regulation in Historical and Comparative Perspective,” in Thomas K. McCraw, ed., Regulation in Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 155-185; Mark Green and Norman Waitzman, Business War on the Law (n.p., Corporate Account ability Research Group, 1979); David P. McCaffrey, OSHA and the Politics of Health Regulation (New York: Plenum Press, 1982); Graham K. Wilson, The Politics of Safety and Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
9. There is a growing consensus in the literature on social regulation that different political-institutional arrangements play an important part in shaping national regulatory decision making by structuring the environments in which competing groups lobby for policies. See, for example, Graham K. Wilson, The Politics of Safety and Health; Ronald Brickman, Sheila Jasanoff, and Thomas Ilgen, Controlling Chemicals (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985); Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., Loading the Dice (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1985). These works were published after this book went into production, and I was not able to engage the authors’ specific arguments in the text. However, I do wish to note several things. First, this work can be read as a contribution to what has been called the “new institutionalism,” because in considering the relationship between economic structure and political-reform strategies it focuses on how public and private institutions affect the ability of workers and public officials to secure the implementation of social reforms. Nonetheless, this work differs from many of the new-institutionalist accounts in that I do not center the analysis on the organization of government itselt but my emphasis is not incompatible with those accounts. To the contrary, a complete theory of social regulation must consider all three factors: economic structure, political strategy, and governmental organization.
10. The literature on the capitalist state is large and growing. For two useful summaries, see Bob Jessop, The Capitalist State (New York: New York University Press, 1982); Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
11. Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1 (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), pp. 514-553.
12. V. I. Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” in Lenin, Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1969), p. 273.
13. On the problem of business confidence, see Claus Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State, ed. John Keane (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), pp. 119-129; Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977) , chap. 13; Fred Block, “The Ruling Class Does Not Rule: Notes on the Marxist Theory of the State,” Socialist Revolution 7, no. 3 (1977): 6-18. Michal Kalecki was the first to identify this phenomenon. See his The Last Phase in the Development of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), pp. 75-85.
14. See Adam Przeworski, “Material Bases of Consent: Economics and Politics in a Hegemonic System,” in Maurice Zeitlin, ed., Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 1 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980), pp. 21-66. See also the discussion of the structure of capitalist democracies and the formation of demands in this system in Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, On Democracy (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), chap. 3.
15. For two summaries of this literature, see Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Hugh Heclo, and Carolyn Teich Adams, Comparative Public Policy, 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983); Michael Shalev, “The Social Democratic Model and Beyond: Two Generations of Comparative Research on the Welfare State,” Working Paper no. 8, The Bertelsmann Quality of Working Life Program, The Work and Welfare Research Institute, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, August 1982. For focused studies that attempt to correlate policy development with the political and economic organization and strategies of labor, see Walter Korpi and Michael Shalev, “Strikes, Power and Politics in the Western Nations, 1900-1976,” in Zeitlin, ed., Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 1, pp. 301-334; J. Rogers Hollingsworth, “The Political-Structural Basis for Economic Performance,” Annals of the AAPSS 459 (January 1982): 28-44; E. H. Stephens and John D. Stephens, “The Labor Movement, Political Power, and Workers’ Participation in Western Europe,” in Zeitlin, ed., Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 3 (1982), pp. 215-249; and David R. Cameron, “The Politics and Economics of the Business Cycle,” in Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, eds. The Political Economy (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1984), pp. 237-262.
16. On organizational imperatives, see Anthony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967). Although Steven Kelman stresses the importance of the proprotectionist orientations of health and safety professionals in explaining OSHA rulemaking, his comparative account of regulation in the United States and Sweden builds from similar organizational theory assumptions. Agency staffers’ protectionist values and orientations can play such a powerful role in shaping agency policy only if the agency is free to make decisions independent of the kinds of structural and political considerations noted in this book. See Steven Kelman, Regulating America, Regulating Sweden (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981). As I make clear, I do not find Kelman’s claim for OSHA’s organizational autonomy from external pressures convincing—nor his claim that the United States and Sweden made similar decisions about occupational safety and health.
[1] The Political Economy of Workplace Regulation
1. The carcinogen cost estimate is in W. Kip Viscusi, Risk by Choice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 117. Viscusi converted the CWPS estimate into 1980 prices. For the noise cost estimate, see John F. Morrall III, “Exposure to Occupational Noise,” in Miller and Yandle, eds., Benefit-Cost Analyses of Social Regulation, p. 42. Note that Morrall takes exception toOSHA’s estimate and suggests that the “gross total costs” could be as high as $27.7 billion. Morrall’s estimate is based on his recalculation of information in a 1976 study done for OSHA’s economic impact statement. On chemical labeling, see U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Draft Regulatory Analysis and Environmental Impact Statement for the Hazards Identification Standard (Washington, D.C., January 1981), p. 1-52. This is the present discounted value in 1980 dollars.
2. Carl Gersuny, Work Hazards and Industrial Conflict (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1981), p. 2.
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Injuries and Illnesses in the United States, 1980 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1982), table 1, pp. 2-13.
4. For an excellent discussion of this issue, see Edward S. Herman, Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chap. 1.
5. See Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), chaps. 5 and 10; Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain (New York: Basic Books, 1979), chap. 8; Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Dan Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980), chap. 2.
6. See J. K. M. Gevers, “Worker Participation in Health and Safety in the EEC: The Role of Representative Institutions,” International Labour Review 122, no. 4 (July-August 1983): 411-428.
7. For a general discussion of health and safety in labor markets, see William T. Dickens, “Occupational Safety and Health Regulation and Economic Theory,” in William Darity Jr., ed., Labor Economics (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing, 1984), pp. 133-173. On risk premiums, see Martin J. Bailey, Reducing Risks to Life (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), p. 36; Robert S. Smith, The Occupational Safety and Health Act (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1976), p. 30; Paul J. Leigh, “Compensating Wages for Employment in Strike-Prone or Hazardous Industries,” Social Science Quarterly 65 (March 1984): 89-99; Viscusi, Risk by Choice, chap. 6.
8. Baruch Fischhoff, Sarah Lichtenstein, Paul Slovic, Stephen L. Derby, and Ralph L. Keeney, Acceptable Risk (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 28-30.
9. For evidence on the existence of risk premiums, see Viscusi, Risk by Choice, pp. 98-106. Reservations about studies such as this one are summarized in Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness and Injury in the Workplace (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1985), pp. 313-314. For evidence that some of the riskiest occupations are also the lowest paid, see Norman Root and Deborah Sebastian, “BLS Develops Measure of Job Risk by Occupation,” Monthly Labor Review 104, no. 10 (1981): 28.
10. Nicholas A Ashford, Crisis in the Workplace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976), pp. 502-505.
11. Peter S. Barth with H. Allan Hunt, Workers’ Compensation and Work-Related Illnesses and Diseases (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982); and The Report of the National Commission on State Workmen’s Compensation Laws (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1972).
12. Asger T. Braendgaard, “Occupational Health and Safety Legislation and Working Class Action” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1974), chap. 6.
13. For a summary of worker participation systems, see Gevers, “Worker Participation,” pp. 411-428. For an overview of the Western European programs in general, see L. Parmeggiani, “State of the Art: Recent Legislation on Workers’ Health and Safety,” International Labour Review 121, no. 3 (May-June 1982): 271-285; J. W. Leopold and P. B. Beaumont, “Joint Health and Safety Committees in the United Kingdom,” Economic and Industrial Democracy 3 (1982): 263-284; A Ian Glendon and Richard T. Booth, “Worker Participation in Occupational Health and Safety in Britain,” International Labour Review 121, no. 4 (July-August 1982): 399-416.
14. On West Germany, see Friedrich O. Hauss and Rolf D. Rosenbrock, “Occupational Health and Safety in the Federal Republic of Germany,” International Journal of Health Services 14, no. 2 (1984): 279-287; and Gevers, “Worker Participation,” p. 421.
15. Steven Deutsch, “Work Environment Reform and Industrial Democracy,” Sociology of Work and Occupations 8, no. 2 (May 1981): 180-194; Norman Eiger, “Economic Democracy and the Democratizing of Research: The Approach of the Swedish Labor Movement,” Labor Studies Journal 7, no. 2 (Fall 1982): 123-141; Kelmaa Regulating America, Regulating Sweden; and Bertil Gardell, “Scandinavian Research on Stress in Working Life,” International Journal of Health Services 12, no. 1 (1982): 31-41.
16. On West Germany, see Hauss and Rosenbrock, “Occupational Health and Safety in Germany,” pp. 279-284. For a discussion of how the public health orientation might be applied in the United States, see Frank Goldsmith and Lorin E. Kerr, Occupational Safety and Health (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1982), chap. 1.
[2] Before OSHA
1. Although comprehensive data on accident rates are not available prior to 1920, what evidence we do have indicates that the mechanization of work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to significantly in creased accident and death rates. See David M. Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 148.
2. Ibid., pp. 158, 179.
3. See these two classics: Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967); and James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).
4. Daniel Berman, Death on the Job (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978), pp. 4-31.
5. See Crystal Eastman, ed., Work Accidents and the Law (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910), pp. 244-245; Katherine Stone, “The Origins of Job Structures in the Steel Industry,” Review of Radical Political Economics 6, no. 2 (1974): 113-174; David S. Beyer, “Safety Provisions in the United States Steel Industry,” in Eastman, ed., Work Accidents, pp. 344-345; and David Brody, Steelworkers in America, The Nonunion Era (New York: Harper 8c Row, 1969), pp. 166-168. U.S. Steel also took an active hand in organizing the private safety movement. Prompted by Gary, the Association of Iron and Steel Electrical Engineers established the National Safety Council in 1911; the NSC’s agenda was modeled on the steel industry’s experience. Berman, Death on the Job, pp. 21-22.
6. Weinstein, Corporate Ideal, chap. 2.
7. Ibid.
8. David Noble, American by Design (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 80-82.
9. There were around 35,000 professionals employed in the field in the late 1960s, including toxicologists, industrial hygienists, safety engineers, doctors, and nurses. Approximately 85% of these professionals worked in the private sector, employed by individual firms, industrywide associations, private standard-setting and research organizations, and the insurance industry.
10. Data collected on a voluntary basis indicated that NSC members had injury rates that were, on the average, one-half those of their non-NSC counterparts. On the NSC, see Berman, Death on the Job, pp. 76-78.
11. The committee that revised the Z16.1 standard governing the reporting of accidents allotted only a single position to the AFL-CIO, 14 positions to government agencies, and 33 positions to business, insurance, and trade associations. Ibid., pp. 79-80.
12. Joseph A Page and Mary-Win O’Brien, Bitter Wages (New York: Grossman, 1973), pp. 23, 82, 158-161, 199; Berman, Death on the Job, pp. 79, 80, 99; Department of Labor Report, in U.S. Congress, Senate, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Labor of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 91st Cong., 1970, p. 1445; hereinafter cited as Senate Hearings, 1970; ANSI Managing Directors Report, in Senate Hearings, 1970, p. 440; and Ashford, Crisis in the Workplace, pp. 119, 154.
13. Standards and Regulations, Report Department of Labor, Record Group 174, James D. Hodgson, 1970, File LL-2-3, OSH, National Archives.
14. For a fascinating view of business attitudes, see Public Hearings on Proposed Revisions of Safety and Health Standards for Federal Supply Contracts under the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act, March 1964, Department of Labor Library. Particularly instructive is the testimony of William B. Barton, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Wesley M. Graff, National Association of Manufacturers; Wallace Smith, American Mutual Insurance Alliance; and Carl H. Hageman, Manufacturing Chemists Association. See also Berman, Death on the Job, pp. 76-77.
15. Goldsmith and Kerr, Occupational Safety and Health, p. 35.
16. Ibid., p. 31.
17. Statement of Charles Lema, safety chairman, USWA, Jersey City, N.J., March 7, 1970. Senate Hearings, 1970, pt. 1, p. 806. See also ORC Management, New Dimensions for Management, pp. 1-2, 27. The author of this memo is Leo Teplow, former official of American Iron and Steel Institute.
18. On accords in general and the postwar accord in particular, see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, “The Crisis of Liberal Democratic Capitalism: The Case of the United States,” Politics and Society 11, no. 1 (1982): 51-93; Claus Offe, “Competitive Party Democracy and the Keynesian Welfare State: Factors of Stability and Disorganization,” in Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State, pp. 179-206; and Michele I. Naples, “The Structure of Industrial Relations, U.S. Mining and Manufacturing 1930s-1980s” (paper presented at the Rutgers University Political Economy Colloquium, February 1983).
19. See Rogers, “Divide and Conquer,” chap. 5.
20. See Ashford, Crisis in the Workplace, pp. 492-495.
21. Frank W. Lewis, “Employers Liability,” Atlantic Monthly 103 (January 1909): 60, quoted in Weinstein, Corporate Ideal, p. 41.
22. Untitled paper, Department of Labor, Record Group 51, Series 61.1a, Box 232, File T2-9, p. 3. Records of the Bureau of the Budget, National Archives.
23. Ibid. The National Commission on Workmen’s Compensation estimated the median percentage of wage loss replaced in temporary total disability cases to be between 40% and 44%.
24. Federal Workmen’s Compensation Bill. Statement in Explanation, January 14, 1969, Department of Labor Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, File LL-2-3, OSH, National Archives.
25. Barth and Hunt, Workers’ Compensation, p. 147.
26. A Hosey and L. Ede, A Review of State Occupational Health Legislation, pp. 110-137, esp. p. 126, Senate Hearings, 1970.
27. State Budget Allocations and Staffing for Occupational Safety, Fiscal 1968, LSB—Division of Programming and Research, June 1969, Record Group 174, James D. Hodgson, 1970, File LL-2-3, OSH, National Archives.
28. Ibid.
29. Occupational Safety and Health Inspection Staff, LSB—Division of Programming and Research, Record Group 174, James D. Hodgson, 1970, File LL-2-3, OSH, National Archives.
30. Hosey and Ede, A Review, pp. 110-137.
31. Status of Occupational Health Programs in State and Local Governments, January 1969, pp. 103-109, Senate Hearings, 1970.
32. State Budget Allocations, Fiscal 1968.
33. Page and O’Brien, Bitter Wages, p. 73.
34. In 1966 the department reported that only 23 states “might” be interested in a grants-in-aid program if one was enacted. Special Task Force Report on Occupational Health and Safety, parts III-3-4, Record Group 174, Department of Labor, W. W. Wirtz, National Archives.
35. The Service Contracts Act also unequivocally granted the secretary of labor the authority to make and enforce rules and regulations apart from the states. The department estimated a workforce of 75 million workers and Department of Labor authority over almost 43 million workers. This estimate is based on Walsh-Healey Act coverage of approximately 25 million employees at one time or another each year. Other programs accounted for another 15 to 20 million workers. Note that this includes coverage of any part of the worker’s day. Current Department of Labor Responsibilities and Activities, Attachment 6, LSB memorandum, Record Group 174, W. W. Wirtz, 1967, File LN-5-1, Staff, National Archives.
36. 54% of the staff of LSB and 48% of its budget were devoted to maritime activities. Existing Staff Resources and Current Department of Labor Responsibilities and Activities, LSB memoranda, both in Record Group 174, W. W. Wirtz, 1967, File LN-5-1, Staff, National Archives.
37. Page and O’Brien, Bitter Wages, p. 100.
38. The Kirschner Report An Evaluation of Federal-State Relationships in the Administration of Labor Standards Law, Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, IAGLO, National Archives.
39. H. Heimann and V. Trasko, Evolution of Occupational Health Programs in State and Local Governments. U.S. Congress, Senate, Hearings on the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1968 (S. 2864) Before the Subcommittee on Labor of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 90th Cong., 2d sess., 1968, pp. 474-475. Hereinafter cited as Senate Hearings, 1968. Federal-State Agreements to Administer Walsh-Healey Act Safety Provisions, Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, Committee, IAGLO, National Archives.
40. Page and O’Briea Bitter Wages, p. 100.
41. Statement of John D. Hanlan. U.S. Congress, House, Hearings on Occupational Safety and Health (on HR 14816) Before the Select Committee on Labor of the Committee on Education and Labor, 90th Cong., 2d sess., 1968, p. 472. Hereinafter cited as House Hearings, 1968.
42. Interview with Dr. Norton Nelson, July 22, 1983.
43. Injury Rates, New York State Industries, 1962. New York State Department of Labor, Division of Research and Statistics, Publication B-145. Reprinted in House Hearings, 1968, p. 95.
44. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Bicentennial ed., pt. 1 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1975).
45. For the first statement of this relationship, see Max D. Kossoris, “Industrial Injuries and the Business Cycle,” Monthly Labor Review 46 (1938): 579-594; for a contemporary account, see Robert S. Smith, “Intertemporal Changes in Work Injury Rates,” Proceedings of the Industrial Relations Research Association, 1973, pp. 167-174; for a summary of this literature, see Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, chap. 2.
46. Smith, Occupational Safety and Health Act, pp. 5-9.
47. Michel Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation (London: New Left Books, 1979), pp. 116-122.
48. Alexander Cockburn and James Ridgeway, “The U.S. Crisis,” Village Voice, October 5, 1982, p. 23.
49. Senate Hearings, 1970, p. 1525.
50. Harvey J. Hilaski and Chao Ling Wang, “How Valid Are Estimates of Occupational Illness?” Monthly Labor Review 105, no. 8 (1982): 27-35.
51. Wallick’s efforts resulted in The American Worker: An Endangered Species (New York: Ballantine, 1972). Brodeur’s articles were later published as Expendable Americans (New York: Viking, 1973). Selikoff’s research is recounted in Statement of Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, in House Hearings, 1968, pp. 349-355. Davidson’s research appeared in Peril on the Job (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1970).
52. “New Data on Asbestos Indicate Cover-up of Effects on Workers,” Washington Post, November 12, 1978, p. Al.
53. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, p. 37.
[3] The Origins of the OSH Act
1. Jack Barbash, “The Causes of Rank and File Unrest,” in Joel Seidmaa ed., Trade Union Government and Collective Bargaining (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 52; P. K. Edwards, Strikes in the United States, 1881-1974 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 183.
2. Robert P. Quinn and Linda J. Shepard, The 1972-73 Quality of Employment Survey; Descriptive Statistics with Comparison Data from the 1969-1970 Survey of Working Conditions (Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1974), pp. 149-153.
3. Ralph Nader, “The Violence of Omission,” Nation 208 (February 10, 1969): 166-169; “Coal Workers Strike West Virginia Mines in Health-Aid Fight,” Wall Street Journal February 21, 1969, p. 3; “West Virginia Senate Fails to Satisfy Goals Set by Striking Miners,” Wall Street Journal March 6, 1969, p. 21; “West Virginia Miners Accelerate Campaign over ‘Black Lung’ Bill,” Wall Street Journal March 7, 1969, p. 2; “West Virginia Miners Expected Back on Jobs Within Next Few Days,” Wall Street Journal March 10, 1969, p. 12; “Labor Letter,” Wall Street Journal March 11, 1969, p. 1; “Success in ‘Black Lung’ Aid Fight Spurs Coal Miner Drive for More Health Gains,” Wall Street Journal April 1, 1969, p. 4; “New Strike Threatened in Coal Mines of West Virginia over ‘Black Lung’ Law,” Wall Street Journal, June 30, 1969, p. 4; “Cotton Mills Workers Said to Risk Lung Ill of a ‘Different Color,’” Wall Street Journal October 30, 1969, p. 17; “Labor Letter,” Wall Street Journal April 7, 1970, p. 1.
4. Personal interview with Jack Sheehan, March 4, 1983.
5. U.S. Congress, House, Hearings on H.R. 843, H.R 3809, H.R 4294, and H.R 13373 Before the Select Subcommittee on Labor of the Committee on Education and Labor, 91st Cong., 1st sess., 1969, p. 652. Hereinafter cited as House Hearings, 1969.
6. Interview with Dr. Nelson, July 22, 1983; interview with George Taylor, February 10, 1983. Cover letter to Dr. William H. Stewart, Surgeon General, from Dr. Norton Nelson, November 19, 1965, transmitting Frye Report. PHS/DHEW, 1965.
7. Public Health Service, Protecting the Health of 80 Million Americans (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1965), pp. 9, 13, 17.
8. See letter to Secretary W. Willard Wirtz from F. C. Love, executive vicepresident, Kerr-McGee Corporation, June 7, 1967, Record Group 174, Department of Labor, W. Willard Wirtz, 1967, File LN-5, Occupational Health and Safety, National Archives.
9. Summary of Events Relating to Uranium Miner Problems, January 27, 1969, Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, Legislation, File LL-2-3, Occupational Health and Safety, National Archives; Memorandum for the Secretary. From Esther Peterson. Subject: Background on Uranium Mining Hazards, n.d., Record Group 174. Department of Labor, W. Willard Wirtz, 1967, File LN-5, OSH, National Archives.
10. Ibid.
11. Memo from Esther Peterson to W. W. Wirtz, 1967, Record Group 174, W. W. Wirtz, National Archives.
12. Interview with Anthony Mazzochi, March 9, 1983; interview with Stanley Aronowitz, July 25, 1983.
13. Barbash, “Causes of Rank and File Unrest”; Edwards, Strikes, pp. 195ff.; Philip Taft, “Rank and File Unrest in Historical Perspective,” in Seidman, ed., Trade Union Government pp. 97-101.
14. Donald G. Sofchalk, “United Steelworkers of America,” in Gary M. Fink, ed., Labor Unions (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), pp. 357-359. “Steelworkers Reach Agreement on Proposal to Protect Earnings,” Wall Street Journal, August 8, 1969, p. 4; “Bid to Oversee Balloting of Steelworkers Denied,” Wall Street Journal February 5, 1969, p. 20; “Labor Letter,” Wall Street Journal, June 17, 1969, p. 1.
15. “Steel Union Girds for Record Settlement in 1971 Bargaining, Abel Tells Convention,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 1970, p. 3; “Labor Letter,” Wall Street Journal, November 24, 1970, p. 1.
16. Letter from George Meany to W. Willard Wirtz, December 5, 1963; letter to George Meany from W. Willard Wirtz, December 18, 1963; letter to W. Willard Wirtz from Andrew J. Biemiller, December 19, 1963; letter to Andrew J. Biemiller from W. Willard Wirtz, February 3, 1964; letter to W. Willard Wirtz from Andrew J. Biemiller, April 3, 1964; letter to Andrew J. Biemiller from W. Willard Wirtz, April 17, 1964. All Record Group 174, Department of Labor, W. Willard Wirtz, 1963, AFL-CIO; 1964, AFL-CIO; National Archives.
17. Staffers on the Senate Labor Committee despaired of attracting television reporters to their hearings because worker health and safety was not “sexy.” In response, they carefully orchestrated Ralph Nader’s appearances in support of the Democratic bill. Even then, their effort failed to capture and hold the media’s interest. Interview with Robert Nagle, July 29, 1983. For an analysis of the media and OSHA see Patrick Gerald Donnelly, “Social Problems Versus Social Issues: The Case of Worker Safety and Health” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware, June 1981), pp. 95-106.
18. Mazzochi credits environmentalists with showing him how worker health raised larger environmental issues, particularly issues about the control of industrial technology. Interview with Tony Mazzochi, March 9, 1983.
19. “Labor Notes,” Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1968, p. 1; letter from Peter Borelli to all senators, November 4, 1970; letter from Environmental Action to all senators, October 7, 1970. The letter was signed by a dozen scientists and environmentalists, including George Wald of Harvard, Dr. Paul Comely, president of the American Public Health Association, Dr. Samuel S. Epstein of the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation, Gary Soucie of the Friends of the Earth, Rene Dubos of Rockefeller University, Paul Ehrlich of Stanford, and Dr. Mary Bunting of Radcliffe.
20. “Nader Recruits 80 New Student ‘Raiders’ to Investigate the Operations of a Dozen Federal Agencies,” New York Times, June 1, 1969, p. 43. Letter to Secretary Shultz from Ralph Nader, May 22, 1969, Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, Labor Standards, File LN-5, OSH, National Archives. “Labor Letter,” Wall Street Journal December 30, 1969, p. 1. The Page and O’Brien study, Bitter Wages, is the fruit of the Nader effort.
21. Walter A Rosenbaum, The Politics of Environmental Concern, 2d ed. (New York: Praeger, 1977), pp. 76-81; Philip P. Micklin, “Water Quality: A Question of Standards,” in Richard A Cooley and Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith, eds., Congress and the Environment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970), pp. 130-147; M. Kent Jennings, “Legislative Politics and Water Pollution Control, 1956-61,” in Frederick N. Cleaveland and associates, Congress and Urban Problems (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1969), pp. 72-109.
22. Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., with Charles D. Hadley, Transformations of the American Party System, 2d ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), chaps. 4 and 5.
23. Secretary of Labor Wirtz reported that the Johnson White House considered this to be one of the great virtues of the OSH Act. Interview with Secretary Wirtz, July 25, 1983.
24. See “Labor Leaders Alarmed by Diminishing Support Among Rank and File,” Wall Street Journal, July 6, 1967, p. 1.
25. The source of this account appears to be Page and O’Brien, Bitter Wages, pp. 137-138. Meier also relies on this account; see Kenneth J. Meier, Regulation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), p. 206. See also Steven Kelman, “Occupational Safety and Health Administration,” in James Q. Wilson, ed., The Politics of Regulation (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 239.
26. Jones’s account of “speculative augmentation” gives the impression that Congress got carried away on issues of this sort and stepped into areas in which it had little knowledge or expertise. See Charles O. Jones, Clean Air (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), chap. 7.
27. Califano organized a series of interdepartmental task forces to generate ideas. Reversing its traditional role as a screening agency, the Bureau of the Budget coordinated the search for legislation. Interview with Joseph Califano, February 6, 1984; interview with Charles Schultze, February 6, 1984.
28. Office of the Federal Register, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1967), p. 540.
29. Testimony of W. Willard Wirtz, secretary of labor. House Hearings, 1968, pp. 12-18.
30. “Life or Death for Your Business?” Nation’s Business 56, no. 4 (April 1968).
31. Henry Ford II, “The Revolution in Public Expectations,” Public Relations Journal 26 (October 1970): 16-18.
32. Sol Linowitz, “The Growing Responsibility of Business in Public Affairs,” Management Review, September 1966, pp. 52-55.
33. Statement of Leo Teplow, vice-president, American Iron and Steel Institute, June 19, 1968. Senate Hearings. 1968, pp. 348-350.
34. Statement of John O. Logan, Universal Products, June 12, 1968. Senate Hearings, 1968, pp. 254-257.
35. Statement of David Goldstein, M.D., June 24, 1968. Senate Hearings, 1968, p. 452.
36. Statement of Leo Teplow. Senate Hearings, 1968, pp. 348-350.
37. For the NSC position, see prepared statement of Howard Pyle, president, NSC. Senate Hearings, 1968, pp. 519-526.
38. Special Task Force on Occupational Safety, 1966, Record Group 174, File III-3, 8, Secretary of Labor W. W. Wirtz, National Archives. Personal communication from Gardner, August 1, 1983; interview with George Taylor, February 10, 1983; interview with Dr. Philip Lee, February 17, 1984.
39. Memorandum to John Gardner from Joseph Califano, September 23, 1966. Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas. Memorandum from Health and Welfare Division (Terry Davies) to Director, Bureau of the Budget, November 3, 1966. Subject: Report on Task Force on Accident Prevention. Record Group 51, Records of the Bureau of the Budget, Series 61.1b, Box 10, Accident Prevention, National Archives.
40. The second task force was formed and chaired by the Office of Science and Technology, but officials from the PHS and LSB remained actively involved. The final report made few substantive recommendations. It was, in Califano’s words, “a bomb.” Memorandum from Health and Welfare Division (Terry Davies). Memo from Terry Davies to director of BOB, November 3, 1966. Subject: Report on Task Force on Accident Prevention. Record Group 51, BOB, Series 61.1b, Box 10, Accident Prevention, National Archives. Memo from Bill Carey to Director, BOB, Notes on the Califano Meeting with Task Force on Accident Prevention, Record Group 51, Records of the BOB, Series 61.1b, Box 10, Accident Prevention, National Archives. Memo for Joseph Califano from Philip R. Lee, M.D., assistant secretary for health and scientific affairs, HEW. Subject: Special Task Force Report on Occupational Health and Safety, December 14, 1966; memo for Joseph Califano from Ivan L. Bennett, Jr., deputy director, Office of Science and Technology, December 14, 1966. Both in Record Group 51, Records of the BOB, Series 69.2, Box 315, File T2-9, National Archives. Memo from Charles Elkins to Irving J. Lewis, September 11, 1967, Record Group 51, Series 68.2, Box 315, File T2-9, National Archives. Memo to Dr. Milch and Messrs. Radley, MacRaie, Messner, and Jasper from Human Resources Program Divisions, C. Elkins. Subject: Occupational Health and Safety, September 15, 1967. Record Group 51, BOB, Series 69.2, Box 315, File T2-9, National Archives. Memo for Mr. Califano from Charles L. Schultze, director, Bureau of the Budget, October 21, 1967, Record Group 51, Series 60.3a, Folder BOB/HRP/NIOSH/etc., National Archives. Schultze notes that the secretaries had not been brought into the picture at that time. When interviewed for this study, Secretary Wirtz, Assistant Secretary Peterson, and David Swankin, director of the Bureau of Labor Standards, reported that they had been unaware of the White House’s efforts during this period. Swankin believed that the Department of Labor had taken the issue of occupational safety and health to the White House in 1967, defended its claims against those of HEW, and convinced Califano to make this a priority issue. Personal interview with Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz; personal interview with Assistant Secretary of Labor Esther Peterson; personal interview with David Swankin, director of the Bureau of Labor Standards, July 27-29, 1983.
41. That the meeting took place and the conversations were reported is evident in references to two memos in a variety of documents that passed between Labor and the White House. See Memo from Secretary Wirtz to Douglas Cater, White House, re: Insurance Company Representatives Meeting; memo from Secretary Wirtz to the President, September 9, 1967, re: Meeting with Insurance Company Representatives. Neither memo is in Wirtz’s files or the Johnson Library at Austin. However, insurance company opposition to reform of workers’ compensation was well known, and was confirmed in personal interviews with Wirtz on July 27, 1983, and with Monroe Berkowitz, who chaired a White House Task Force on Workmen’s Compensation Reform, July 20, 1983; see also Untitled report on workmen’s compensation attached to November 14, 1967, memo from Wirtz to Joseph Califano. All of the above are located in Record Group 174, Labor, W. Willard Wirtz, 1967, Box: White House—President, National Archives.
42. Memo for Mr. Joseph Califano, from Gardner Ackley, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, November 22, 1967. Subject: Labor Department Proposals on Workmen’s Compensation. Folder: Task Force on Workmen’s Compensation, Container 41 (1743), Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas. Memo for Mr. Califano from Phillip S. Hughes, deputy director, November 28, 1967. Subject: Comments on the Department of Labor’s Workmen’s Compensation Paper. Record Group 51, BOB, Series 69.2, Box 315, File T2-9. National Archives. Memo to Joe Califano from Jim Gaither re: Meeting on Workmen’s Compensation, November 30, 1967 (memo dated November 29, 1967). Folder: Task Force on Workmen’s Compensation, Container 41 (1743), Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas.
43. Suggestions for Early Action, Consideration, or Pronouncement. A Report to the President-Elect. Submitted by Arthur F. Burns, chairman, Program Coordination Group, January 6, 1969. Memorandum to Dr. Arthur Burns from Alexander P. Butterfield, February 12, 1969. Subject: Notes from the President. Both in Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, White House—Reports Requested for the President, National Archives. Memorandum for George P. Shultz from Richard Nixon, February 11, 1969, Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, White House—Reports Requested for the President, National Archives. Interview with John Hodgson, August 10, 1983; interviews with Anthony Obadal, February 11, 1983, and July 26, 1983.
44. Ceremony for signing of Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, December 29, 1970, Conference Room B, Labor Department Auditorium, Record Group 174, James D. Hodgson, 1970, File LL-2-3, OSH, National Archives.
45. These meetings were described in interviews with Dr. Norton Nelson, who had chaired the working group that had supervised the preparation of the Frye Report, Dr. James Sterner, a member of the PHS’s Council on Environmental Health, and George Taylor of the AFL-CIO.
46. Statement of Howard Pyle. Senate. Hearings, 1970, pp. 561-576.
47. Department of Commerce position on Federal Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, attached to letter from Maurice Stans to George P. Shultz, March 7, 1969, Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, Labor Standards, File LN-5, OSH, National Archives.
48. Memo. Subject: Item-by-Item Reply to the Points Raised in Secretary Stans’s March 7 Letter on Occupational Safety. Attached to letter from George P. Shultz to Maurice P. Stans, March 24, 1969. Record Group 174, George P. Shultz, 1969, Labor Standards, File LN-5, OSH, National Archives.
49. This account of the informal negotiations draws heavily on private notes taken by USWA lobbyist John J. Sheehan. These notes are located in the USWA offices in Washington, D.C. and are far and away the most detailed record of the legislative history. They shed considerable light on events reported sketchily in the press at the time. These are hereinafter referred to as the Sheehan Papers. I have checked Sheehan’s account against press accounts, other actors’ recollections, and the documentary record. See also “Battle Looms over Safety Bill,” Washington Post, April 20, 1970, p. A4; “Omnibus Safety Bill—Congressional Battle Reaches a Climax,” Occupational Hazards, July 1970, pp. 41-44.
50. “Dispute Mires Job Safety Bill,” Washington Post, October 1, 1970, p. G1.
51. See memo from Leo Teplow, “Desirable Objectives in Federal Safety Legislation,” May 18, 1970. Sheehan Papers.
52. The act requires the heads of federal agencies to set up and operate programs that are consistent with the standards established by the secretary of labor (Sec. 19a). The act also provides that state and local government employees be covered under plans submitted by each state to the “extent permitted by its law” (Sec. 18c[6]).
53. Union lobbyists were willing to include the term “technical feasibility,” but industry lawyers advised the industry lobbyists that they stood a better chance of getting the courts to interpret “feasibility” broadly to include costs if the word was unqualified. As a result, the act was written without a more specific guideline as to how feasibility was to be taken into account. Interview with John J. Sheehan, June 8, 1983; interview with Leo Teplow, February 11, 1983; interviews with Anthony Obadal, February 11, 1983, and July 26, 1983.
54. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Labor, Legislative History of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1971), p. 986.
55. Ibid., p. 367.
56. Interview with Frank Bamako, July 25, 1983.
57. Testimony of Ralph Nader. Senate Hearings, 1968, pp. 610-611.
[4] The Politics of Deregulation
1. In general, see David Vogel, “The Power of Business in the United States: A Re-appraisal,” British Journal of Political Science 13 (1983): 19-43; Michael Useem, The Inner Circle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), chap. 6; and Sar A Levitan and Martha R. Cooper, Business Lobbies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).
2. David Rockefeller, “Corporate Task for 70’s: Social Action, Not Words,” Commercial and Financial Chronicle 215, no. 7166 (1972): 69.
3. Levitan and Cooper, Business Lobbies, pp. 19, 24, 27-33; David Noble and David Dickson, “By Force of Reason,” in Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, eds., The Hidden Election (New York: Pantheon, 1981), p. 270; and “The Naderites of the Other Side,” New York Times, September 30, 1979, p. F7; “OSHA Policy Could Cost $88 Billion, Raise Inflation Rate,” AIHC Estimates, Occupational Safety and Health Reporter. Hereinafter cited as OSH Reporter, March 30, 1978, pp. 1636-1637.
4. “Naderites of the Other Side.”
5. Michael S. Brown, “Setting Occupational Health Standards: The Vinyl Chloride Case,” in Dorothy Nelkin, ed., Controversy: Politics of Technical Decisions, 2d ed. (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1984), pp. 125-142, esp. pp. 128-132.
6. The industry actually prospered after the OSHA standard forced it to adopt new, more efficient production methods. On the original industry estimate, actual costs and the SPI response, see “Did Industry Cry Wolf?” New York Times, December 28, 1975, p. FI; “Economic Impact of Proposed Vinyl Chloride Rules Studied by A D. Little,” OSH Reporter, June 27, 1974, pp. 86-87; “Obey Hits Warnings on Cost of VC Rule; SPI Says Wait and See,” OSH Reporter, July 31, 1975, pp. 295-296.
7. Industrial Union Department v. Hodgson. 499 F.2d 467 (D.C. Cir. 1974).
8. Ibid.
9. American Textile Mfrs. Inst v. Bingham, No. 78-1378 (4th Cir. 1978), 212; “Industry Claims Lead Standard ‘Classic Example of Agency Capriciousness’,” OSH Reporter, June 21, 1979, p. 62; “OSHA Policy Could Cost $88 Billion,” pp. 1636-1637.
10. Mark A de Bernardo, OSHA Are You Listening? Staff Report, Labor Relations Committee, Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. (Washington, D.C.: 1979).
11. Arthur Andersen 8c Co., “Executive Summary,” in Cost of Government Regulation Study for the Business Roundtable, 3 vols. (New York: March 1979).
12. Ibid.
13. “Hazard Assessment Must be Made Outside Political Arena, Lang Says,” OSH Reporter, July 5, 1979, p. 105.
14. “OSHA Policy Could Cost $88 Billion,” pp. 1636-1637.
15. NAM Occupational Safety and Health Committee, Recommendations for OSHA Reform, submitted to the agency, April 24, 1981; letter to Thorne G. Auchter from C. Neil Norgen, chairman, Occupational Safety and Health Committee, NAM, April 28, 1981; statement of Richard Lesher, president, NAM. All from U.S. Congress, Senate, Oversight Hearings Before Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, March-April 1980.
16. “Objection Raised to Task Force Proposals on Tax Incentives, Penalty Modifications,” OSH Reporter, March 29, 1979, pp. 1606-1607. Statement by the Chamber of Commerce to Senate Select Committee on Small Business/Governmental Affairs, July 30, 1980; statement of Richard Lesher; NAM, Recommendations for OSHA Reform; and letter to Thorne Auchter from C. Neil Norgen.
17. Statement on OSHA Oversight Before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, April 1, 1980; typescript. NAM, Recommendations for OSHA Reform; letter to Thorne G. Auchter from C. Neil Norgea statement of Richard Lesher.
18. William R. Greer, “Value of One Life?” New York Times, June 26, 1985, p. Al.
19. Russell Franklin Settle, “The Welfare Economics of Occupational Safety and Health Standards” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974).
20. Jacqueline Karnell Corn and Morton Corn, “The Myth and the Reality,” in Robert F. Lanzillotti, ed., Economic Effects of Government-Mandated Costs (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1977), p. 106.
21. “Regulatory Reform Legislation,” recommendations of the Business Roundtable, January 8, 1980, mimeo.
22. Murray Weidenbaum and Robert DeFina, The Cost of Federal Regulation of Economic Activity (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978) . The 1979 figures are taken from John E. Schwarz, America’s Hidden Success (New York: Norton, 1983), p. 99.
23. Testimony of Murray L. Weidenbaum, “Use of Cost-Benefit Analysis by Regulatory Agencies.” U.S. Congress, House, Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Finance of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. 96th Cong., 1st sess., 1979, pp. 319-323.
24. See William K. Tabb, “The Cost of Not Regulating: The Political Economy of Protecting Workers, Consumers, and Our Living Space” (manuscript, n.d.); Green and Waitzman, Business War on the Law: Schwarz, America’s Hidden Success, pp. 101-106.
25. Testimony of Murray L. Weidenbaum, p. 452.
26. Ibid., pp. 321-324.
27. Zeckhauser and Nichols, OSHA, pp. 163-167, 188-191.
28. Smith, OSH Act, p. 2.
29. James Robert Chelius, Workplace Safety and Health (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1977), pp. 2-4.
30. Zeckhauser and Nichols, OSHA, p. 165.
31. Ibid., p. 167.
32. Viscusi, Risk by Choice, pp. 80-81.
33. Aaron Wildavsky, “Richer Is Safer,” Public Interest 60 (Summer 1980): 23, 29.
34. Ibid., p. 33.
35. Ibid.
[5] Labor’s Defense of Social Regulation
1. Bertil Gardell and Bjorn Gustavsen, “Work Environment Research and Social Change: Current Developments in Scandinavia,” Journal of Occupational Behavior 1 (January 1980).
2. On long-standing opposition to greater regulation, but support for social regulation, see Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, “The Public View of Regulation,” Public Opinion 2, no. 1 (January/February 1979): 6-13. On the differences between support for economic regulation and protective regulation, see Louis Harris and Associates, Consumerism in the Eighties, a poll conducted for Atlantic Richfield Company, 1983, pp. 35-36, 38.
3. Cambridge Reports, Public and Worker Attitudes Toward Carcinogens and Cancer Risk (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge Reports, 1978).
4. Cambridge Reports, Cambridge Report no. 16 (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge Reports, 1978).
5. “Toxic Chemical Dumps: Corrective Action Desired,” ABC News-Harris Survey 11, no. 82 (July 7, 1980): 3.
6. Louis Harris, “Substantial Majorities Indicate Support for Clean Air and Clean Water Acts,” The Harris Survey 47 (June 11, 1981): 2-3.
7. Cambridge Reports, Public and Worker Attitudes.
8. “More Conservatives Share ‘Liberal’ View,” New York Times, January 22, 1978, pp. Alff. The poll is on p. 30.
9. Louis Harris, “Views on Government Regulation of Business,” The Harris Survey 64 (August 10, 1981): 3.
10. Harris and Associates, Consumerism in the Eighties, p. 46; quote is on p. 38.
11. Philip Shabecoff, “Poll Finds Majority Opposes Weaker Environment Laws,” New York Times, November 14, 1982, p. A74.
12. Harris and Associates, Consumerism in the Eighties, pp. 46-47, 65, 70-71.
13. Morris E. Davis, “The Impact of Workplace Health and Safety on Black Workers: Assessment and Prognosis,” Labor Studies Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 29-40.
14. Jeanne H. Stellman, “Occupational Health and Women Workers: A Review,” Labor Studies Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 16-28. Norman Root and Judy R. Daley, “Are Women Safer Workers? A New Look at the Data,” Monthly Labor Review 103, no. 9 (1980): 3-10.
15. Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff, What Do Unions Do? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 199-201.
16. The 1969 and 1972 data are comparable and indicate a small increase. The 1977 data are not comparable with data from the previous surveys, but the increase is significant. Richard Frenkel and W. Curtiss Priest, Health, Safety and the Worker (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Policy Alternatives, 1979), pp. 78, 93-94.
17. Ibid., pp. 179, 181, 214.
18. Bureau of National Affairs, OSHA and the Unions (Washington, D.C,: The Bureau, 1973), p. 1. See also Winston Tillery, “Safety and Health Provisions Before and After OSHA” Monthly Labor Review 98, no. 9 (1975): 40-43.
19. BNdA OSHA and the Unions, pp. 3-4.
20. Health Research Group, Survey of Occupational Health Efforts of Fifteen Major Labor Unions (Washington, D.C.: Health Research Group/Public Citizea 1976); Michael Merrill “Organizing for Job Safety and Health,” Socialist Review 66 (November-December 1982): 133-138; Dan MacLeod United Auto Workers, What Every UAW Representative Should Know About Health and Safety (Detroit: UAW, 1979).
21. Health Research Group, Survey; Public Citizen Health Research Group, 1983 Survey of Fourteen Union Occupational Safety and Health Programs (Washington, D.C.: Public Citizen Health Research Group 1984).
22. “Abel to IUD Safety Confab: No ‘Environmental Blackmail,’” Steel Labor. July 1971, p. 3.
23. Richard Grossman, “Environmentalists and the Labor Movement,” Socialist Review 15, nos. 4 and 5 (1985): 63-87. See also Richard Kazis, Fear at Work (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1982), prepared under the auspices of EFFE; and Industrial Union Department, “OSHA/Environmental Watch” (Washington, D.C.: AFL-CIO), published four times yearly.
24. “Lax Enforcement Perils Health and Safety Legislation,” Labor Today, January 1973, p. 10. My discussion of the COSH movement is based on interviews with COSH activists and the following sources: Daniel Berman, “Grassroots Coalitions in Health and Safety: The COSH Groups,” Labor Studies Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 104-113; Merrill, “Organizing for Job Safety and Health”; and Gail Robinson, “Organizing Against Workplace Pollution,” Environmental Action, September 1980, pp. 4-10.
25. OSHA gave 40 awards totaling $3.4 million in 1977; 45 awards totaling $3 million in 1978; $6.4 million in awards in 1979; and 66 awards totaling $3.5 million in 1980. The President’s Report on Occupational Safety and Health (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 1978, 1979, 1980), Appendix C.
26. Do-It-Yourself Tactics: Local Action on Job Safety (Philadelphia: PHILAPOSH and American Labor Education Center, n.d.).
27. See “One Man Scoops the Experts,” In These Times, March 18-31, 1981; “Fighting for Their Lives,” Solidarity, pp. 7-9.
28. Legislative Department, USWA “Safety and Health Legislation, 1978–1979,” p. 2.
29. MacLeod, What Every UAW Representative Should Know, p. 17.
30. Public Citizen Health Research Group, Survey, p. 1.
31. Statement of Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO. U.S. Congress, Senate, Hearings of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources on Oversight of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, April 1, 1980. Testimony, AFL-CIO. U.S. Congress, Senate, Hearings of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Subcommittee on Labor, Labor and Human Resources Committee, September 23, 1981.
32. Grossman, “Environmentalists and the Labor Movement,” p. 66.
33. Ibid., p. 76.
34. Testimony, AFL-CIO.
35. Berman, “Grassroots Coalitions in Health and Safety”; Merrill, “Organizing for Job Safety and Health”; Robinson, “Organizing Against Workplace Pollution.”
36. Rob Wrenn, “The Decline of American Labor,” Socialist Review 15, nos. 4 and 5 (1985): 89-117.
37. Wrenn, “The Decline of American Labor,” pp. 97-103.
38. Freeman and Medoff, What Do Unions Do?, pp. 194-198.
[6] The White House Review Programs
1. “Inflation Boosts Chance for Policy Changes,” National Journal. September 9, 1974, p. 1394.
2. Weidenbaum and DeFina, Cost of Federal Regulation, p. 3.
3. Edward F. Denison, Accounting for Slower Economic Growth (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1979), pp. 69, 71, 129, 145; and Edward F. Denison, “Effects of Selected Changes in the Institutional and Human Environment upon Output Per Unit of Input,” Survey of Current Business 58, no. 2 (1978): 21.
4. George C. Eads and Michael Fix, Relief or Reform? Reagan’s Regulatory Dilemma (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 1984), pp. 37, 46-50.
5. See the Data Resources study for the Council on Environmental Quality, “The Macroeconomic Impact of Federal Pollution Control Programs, 1978 Assessment,” prepared for the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency. Submitted January 11, 1979.
6. Worker health and safety absorbed 12.3% of capital spending in the steel industry in 1972. Economics Department, Annual McGraw-Hill Survey of Investment in Employee Safety and Health (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984), table iv.
7. “Marshall Supports Effort by Controversial Task Force,” OSH Reporter, July 21, 1977, pp. 235-236.
8. “Carter’s Assault on the Costs of Regulation,” National Journal, August 12, 1978, p. 1282.
9. Congressional Quarterly, Federal Regulatory Directory, 1981-1982 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1981), p. 73.
10. Executive Order 11, 821, November 27, 1974.
11. “Inflation Boosts Chance for Policy Changes,” p. 1394; “Ford Initiates Reform Offensive,” National Journal, July 5, 1975, p. 1000; “President Raises Cost-Benefit Issue for Safety, Noise Regulations,” OSH Reporter, May 1, 1975, p. 1559. Ford’s figure, based on a 1975 OMB study, was soon abandoned by White House staffers and a General Accounting Office study ultimately discredited it. Eads and Fix, Relief or Reform?, p. 28. See also, Julius W. Allen, Estimating the Costs of Federal Regulation (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 1978).
12. Washington Post interview with Ronald Reagan, June 5, 1980, quoted in Sierra Club, Poisons on the Job, Natural Heritage Report no. 4 (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1982), p. 21.
13. Ronald Reagan, “Address to Joint Session of Congress on the Economy,” in Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, February 21, 1981, p. 363.
14. “Vice President Bush’s Statement on the Executive Order on Regulatory Management Signed by President Reagan, February 17, 1981”; typescript.
15. Ibid.
16. “Another Round of Reform,” National Journal, November 27, 1976, p. 1712.
17. “Carter Has Landed Running on Regulatory Reform Issues,” National Journal, April 16, 1977, pp. 59-63; David Dickson and David Noble, “By Force of Reason: The Politics of Science and Technology Policy,” in Ferguson and Rogers, eds., Hidden Election, p. 269.
18. “President Endorses Substitution of Economic Incentives for Safety Rules,” OSH Reporter, July 28, 1977, p. 267.
19. The task force included the secretaries of the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and Labor, the chair of the CEA, the director of OMB, the attorney general, and the president’s domestic policy adviser.
20. Charles E. Ludlam, Undermining Public Protections: The Reagan Administration’s Regulatory Program (n.p., Alliance for Justice, 1981), p. 9.
21. General Accounting Office, Improved Quality, Adequate Resources, and Consistent Oversight Needed if Regulatory Analysis Is to Help Control Costs of Regulation (Washington, D.C.: GPO, November 2, 1982), pp. 50-54. The GAO report is discussed at length in Eads and Fix, Relief or Reform?, chap. 6. See also Ludlam, Undermining Public Protections.
22. Congressional Quarterly, Federal Regulatory Directory, 1981-1982, p. 74.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Thomas D. Hopkins et al., A Review of the Regulatory Interventions of the Council on Wage and Price Stability, 1974-1980 (Washington, D.C.: CWPS, January 1981), Appendix A; and Murray L. Weidenbaum, “Regulatory Reform Under the Reagan Administration,” in George C. Eads and Michael Fix, eds., The Reagan Regulatory Strategy (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 1984), p. 24. See also Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, Reagan Administration Achievements (Washington, D.C.: GPO, August 11, 1983). These estimates, like the original cost estimates, should be taken with a grain of salt. The administration took credit for preventing regulations that were unlikely ever to have been issued, and probably exaggerated the costs of proposals that it did prevent.
26. Christopher C. DeMuth, “Constraining Regulatory Costs. Part 1: The White House Review Programs,” Regulation, January/February 1980, pp. 13-26.
27. “Costle, Muskie Express Views on Cost Cutting in Regulations,” OSH Reporter, March 1, 1979, p. 1504.
28. In 1976 the Senate Labor Committee challenged the confirmation of Michael Moskow, former head of CWPS, as undersecretary of labor because he had played a leading role in the review program.
29. “Projected Regulatory Analysis Program Expected to Utilize Review Group,” OSH Reporter, December 29, 1977, pp. 1171 -1172.
30. “What Will Happen When the Regulators Regulate Themselves?” National Journal, November 4, 1978, p. 1771; “Rogers Asks GAO Investigation of White House Advisors’ Role,” OSH Reporter, June 29, 1978, p. 101; and “Costle, Muskie Express Views,” pp. 1504-1505.
31. Natural Resources Defense Council et al v. Charles Schultze, Chairman, Council of Economic Advisors et al., U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action 79-153, dismissed January 1979.
32. Sierra Club v. Costle, Civil Action 79-1565, D.C. Court of Appeals, April 28, 1981.
33. Morton Rosenberg, Presidential Control of Agency Rulemaking: An Analysis of Constitutional Issues Which May Be Raised by Executive Order 11291, Committee Print 97-0, Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives, 1981, pp. 38, 42. See also Ludlam, Undermining Public Protections.
34. Quoted by Ronald Brownstein in “Making the Worker Safe for the Workplace,” Nation, June 6, 1981, p. 694.
35. “Administration Backs Regulatory Reform Bill,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, April 11, 1981, p. 627.
36. “Regulatory ‘Reform’ May Lose to Regulatory ‘Revolution’ Advocates,” National Journal, June 14, 1980, pp. 971-972.
37. S. 1080 was first drafted in consultation with the administration and reflected the Reagan position. It included a cost-benefit requirement for independent commissions and executive branch agencies that could be circumvented with OMB approval; it limited court challenges to cost-benefit analyses; and it did not include a legislative veto. But congressional opponents of social regulation succeeded in strengthening the bill in committee, and later drafts included automatic cost-benefit tests, heightened judicial scrutiny, and the legislative veto. “Regulatory Reform Bill in Logjam,” Washington Post, November 26, 1982, p. E8; “Administration Backs Regulatory Reform Bill,” pp. 627-628.
38. Sierra Club v. Costle. Also see Michael Sohn and Robert Litan, “Regulatory Oversight Wins in Court,” Regulation, July/August 1981, pp. 17-24.
39. American Petroleum Inst. v. OSHA, 581 F.2d 493 (5th Cir. 1978), affd. sub nom. Industrial Union Dep’t. v. American Petroleum Inst, 448 U.S. 607 (1980).
40. AFL-CIO v. Marshall, 617 F.2d 636 (DC. Cir. 1979), affd. sub nom. American Textile Mfrs. Inst v. Donovan, 452 U.S. 490 (1981).
41. “Council on Wage and Price Stability Testimony on Coke Oven Emissions Inflation Impact Statement,” OSH Reporter, May 13, 1976, pp. 1796-1800; quote is on p. 1799.
42. Ibid.
43. See “Pressure from VP, Study Confirming Benefits Pushed OMB to Issue OSHA Rule,” Inside O.M.B. 1, no. 7 (March 28, 1982): 1, 5-9.
[7] OSHA
1. Meier, Regulation, p. 216.
2. In 1977 and 1979, the following committees considered OSHA activities: the Senate and House Labor Committees; the House Government Operations Committee; the House Select Committee on Small Business; the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee; the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee; the Senate Finance Committee; the Senate Judiciary Committee; the House Science and Technology Committee; the Senate Government Affairs Committee; and the Joint Economic Committee.
3. The average is actually 2 years and 11.2 months. This undoubtedly understates the case; I have used as a measure the time between the first official action by the agency and the date of the standard’s publication in the Federal Register. But OSHA considers standards before it takes public action. The first official action varied and included the first meeting of a standards advisory committee, the issuance of an emergency temporary standard, advance notice of proposed rulemaking, or notice of proposed rulemaking. In each instance I have used the earliest date. The time taken to develop each of the standards in the table is as follows: asbestos, 6 months; 14 carcinogens, 7 months; vinyl chloride, 6 months; coke-oven emissions, 60 months; benzene, 43 months; DBCP, 6 months; arsenic, 40 months; cotton dust, 42 months; acrylonitrile, 8 months; lead, 37 months; cancer policy, 27 months; employee access to medical records, 22 months; noise exposure/hearing conservation, 83 months; labeling, 100 months; ethylene oxide, 41 months.
4. For the number of employees covered by inspections, see Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, table A-4; for the number of employees, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1985, 105th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1984), table 690, p. 412.
5. U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, “Federal Compliance Activity Reports,” mimeo, various years.
6. Viscusi, Risk by Choice, p. 22.
7. SACs included organized labor on an equal footing with industry, and as a result they tended to recommend strict exposure levels. Under the terms of the act, they were also action forcing; the SAC had to make a recommendation, and the agency had to accept or reject it.
8. This standard was developed under Corn’s predecessor, John Stender.
9. See “Memorandum to the Under Secretary” from George C. Guenther, June 14, 1972, reprinted in Ashford, Crisis in the Workplace, pp. 543-544. As the Nixon White House would have said, the operative section is “While I have discussed with Lee Nunn the great potential of OSHA as a sales point for fund raising and general support by employers, I do not believe the potential of this appeal is fully recognized. Your suggestions as to how to promote the advantages of four more years of properly managed OSHA for use in the campaign would be appreciated.”
10. “Corn Tells House Subcommittee That Safety Outweighs Economics,” OSH Reporter, December 11, 1975, pp. 974-975.
11. “OSHA Will Issue 13 Health Standards by Month’s End to Avoid Impact Rules,” OSH Reporter, September 18, 1975, pp. 731-732; and “OCAW Sues over Inflation Studies; AFL-CIO, IUD Question Delay in Rules,” OSH Reporter, March 11, 1976, pp. 1331-1332.
12. Eula Bingham, “The New Look at OSHA Vital Changes,” Labor Law Journal 29, no. 8 (August 1978): 487-492.
13. “No Obstacle to OSHA Seen from Regulatory Council, Bingham Says,” OSH Reporter, October 26, 1978, p. 700.
14. “Change in Economic Impact Policy Being Considered, NACOSH Is Told,” OSH Reporter, March 3, 1977, p. 1253; “Transition Paper on Economic Analysis Not Policy Statement, NACOSH Group Told,” OSH Reporter, April 14, 1977, p. 1424.
15. “No Obstacle to OSHA” pp. 699-700.
16. The head of the agency’s Office of Environmental, Inflationary and Economic Impact announced that he expected “we will find that we have been averting substantially more costs than most people realize.” See “$100,000 Contract to Include Study of ‘Implicit’ Social Costs of Injuries,” OSH Reporter, August 25, 1977, p. 399. Four peer reviews were ordered in 1978: on labeling, arsenic, lead, and toluene. See “Standard Cost Could Be $14 billion; OSHA to Get Review of Economic Study,” OSH Reporter, February 23, 1978, p. 1451.
17. Viscusi points out that this jump reflects a decrease in the number of safety inspections. Viscusi, Risk by Choice, p. 20.
18. Ibid., pp. 18 and 23.
19. U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA, “Federal Compliance Activity Reports,” various years.
20. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, table A-7, p. 370.
21. Jeffrey Lewis Berger and Steven D. Riskin, “Economic and Technological Feasibility in Regulating Toxic Substances under the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” Ecology Law Quarterly 7 (1978): 303-308.
22. A “safe” workplace was defined as one in which there were no deaths and a minimum number of workdays were lost because of injury. Although reasonable on its face, the bill allowed employers to redefine the workplace so that separate activities could be treated as separate workplaces. Keep in mind as well that workplace injury records remain a poor guide to health hazards.
23. Making Prevention Pay, Final Report of the Interagency Task Force on Workplace Safety and Health (draft), Sec. III, at pp. 15-20, December 14, 1978.
24. “Safety Agency to Forgo ‘Cost-Benefit’ Analysis,” New York Times, July 13, 1981, p. Al 1; and Thorne G. Auchter, “OSHA A Year Later,” Labor Law Journal 33, no. 4 (April 1982): 195-201.
25. Auchter, “OSHA A Year Later,” pp. 195-201.
26. Benjamin W. Mintz, OSHA History, Law and Policy (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Affairs, 1984), p. 420.
27. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, table A-5, p. 368; U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA, “Federal Compliance Activity Reports,” various years.
28. Michael Wines, “Auchter’s Record at OSHA Leaves Labor Outraged, Business Satisfied,” National Journal, October 1, 1983, p. 2010.
29. Smith, The OSH Act, p. 61.
30. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, table 13-1, p. 259.
31. See “Pressure from VP,” pp. 5-9. On industry support, see “Reagan Plan on Labeling Hazards Is Drawing Fire,” New York Times, October 10, 1983, p. B12; and “State to Enforce Right to Know Law,” New York Times, December 11, 1983, Sec. 11, p. 1.
32. “U.S. in a Reversal, Maintains Dust Controls at Textile Mills,” New York Times, May 20, 1983, p. 16; and “Fight Grows over Cotton Dust Rules,” New York Times, May 11, 1983, Sec. B, p. 6.
33. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, p. 235.
34. Viscusi, Risk by Choice, pp. 23-24.
35. Ibid., p. 85.
36. Ruth Ruttenberg and Randall Hudgins, Occupational Safety and Health in the Chemical Industry, 2d ed. (New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1981).
37. For a promising effort to splice the two series, see Michele I. Naples and David M. Gordon, “The Industrial Accident Rate: Creating a Consistent Time Series,” mimeo, December 1981.
38. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, pp. 34-36.
39. Smith, “The Impact of OSHA Inspections on Manufacturing Injury Rates,” Journal of Human Resources 14, no. 2 (Spring 1979): 145-170.
40. David P. McCaffrey, “An Assessment of OSHA’s Recent Effects on Injury Rates,” Journal of Human Resources 18, no. 1 (1983): 131-146.
41. W. N. Cooke and F. H. Gautschi III, “OSHA Plant Safety Programs, and Injury Reduction,” Industrial Relations 20, no. 3 (1981): 245-257.
42. Mendeloff, Regulating Safety, chap. 6.
43. See also W. Kip Viscusi, “The Impact of Occupational Safety and Health Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics 10, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 117-140. For summaries of this literature, see James R. Chelius, “The American Experience with Occupational Safety and Health Regulation,” New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations 8 (1983): 123-132; and Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, pp. 264-268.
44. Barth and Hunt, Workers’ Compensation, pp. 15-27.
45. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, p. 48.
46. John Mendeloff, An Analysis of OSHA Health Inspection Data, contract report prepared for Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress, Washington, D.C., April 1983. Cited in Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, p. 268.
47. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, p. 268.
[8] Regulatory Reform
1. Smith, “Protecting Workers’ Health and Safety,” pp. 311-338, esp. pp. 321-322; quote is on p. 322.
2. Ibid., pp. 330-334.
3. For an excellent exposition of the economic model underlying this approach, see Dickens, “Occupational Safety and Health Regulation and Economic Theory.”
4. Ibid., p. 136.
5. Smith, “Protecting Workers,” p. 326.
6. Ibid., pp. 330-334.
7. Ibid., pp. 328-329; and Chelius, Workplace Safety and Health, pp. 63-69.
8. Smith, “Protecting Workers,” p. 327.
9. Chelius, Workplace Safety and Health.
10. Dickens, “Occupational Safety,” pp. 134-135, 137-138, 141, 147-148. On the marginal worker’s characteristics, see Freeman and Medoff, What Do Unions Do?, pp. 9-11.
11. Smith, “Protecting Workers,” p. 321.
12. Michal S. Baram, Alternatives to Regulation (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1982), p. 81.
13. For the best statement of this approach, see Stephen Breyer, Regulation and Its Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). See also Robert E. Litan and William D. Nordhaus, Reforming Federal Regulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
14. Lester B. Lave, The Strategy of Social Regulation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1981), pp. 23-25.
15. Zeckhauser and Nichols, OSHA, p. 226.
16. Lave, Strategy, pp. 19-21.
17. DeMuth, “Constraining Regulatory Costs. Part 1,” p. 26; idem, “Part 2: The Regulatory Budget,” Regulation, March/April 1980; and Litan and Nordhaus, Reforming Federal Regulation, chap. 6.
18. Zeckhauser and Nichols, OSHA, pp. 188-191. Though the authors prefer performance standards to detailed physical standards, they have doubts about the degree to which performance standards will produce an optimal level of efficiency compared to a reformed compensation system.
19. Schultze, The Public Use of the Private Interest.
20. The general argument for incentive mechanisms is discussed in Steven Kelman, What Price Incentives (Boston: Auburn House, 1981); on performance standards, see Viscusi, Risk by Choice, pp. 128-132; on OSHA see Making Prevention Pay, chap. 4, pp. 14-17.
21. E. J. Mishan, Cost-Benefit Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1976), p. 414.
22. Viscusi, Risk by Choice, p. 82.
23. Ibid., p. 80.
24. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, pp. 78-85.
25. The classic piece remains Philippe C. Schmitter, “Still the Century of Corporatism?” Review of Politics 36 (1974): 85-131. For a more critical view, see Leo Panitch, “The Development of Corporatism in Liberal Democracies,” Comparative Political Studies 10, no. 1 (April 1977): 61-90.
26. See Gevers, “Worker Participation” pp. 413-414. See also Les Boden and David Wegman, “Increasing OSHA’s Clout: Sixty Million New Inspectors,” Working Papers for a New Society 6 (May/June 1978): 43-49.
27. Leopold and Beaumont, “Joint Health and Safety Committees in the United Kingdom,” pp. 270-271; Glendon and Booth, “Worker Participation in Occupational Health and Safety in Britain,” p. 400; and Gevers, “Worker Participation,” p. 422.
28. Gevers, “Worker Participation,” pp. 415-417.
29. Leopold and Beaumont, “Joint Health and Safety Committees in the United Kingdom,” pp. 270-271, 278-280; Glendon and Booth, “Worker Participation in Occupational Health and Safety in Britain,” pp. 400-406; and Gevers, “Worker Participation,” pp. 412, 416-419, 422, 424.
30. Hauss and Rosenbrock, “Occupational Health and Safety in Germany,” p. 284; and Gevers, “Worker Participation,” pp. 420-421.
31. Hauss and Rosenbrock, “Occupational Health and Safety in Germany,” pp. 279-284; Gevers, “Worker Participation,” p. 421; and Matt Witt and Steve Early, “The Worker as Safety Inspector,” Working Papers, September/October 1980, pp. 21-29.
32. Gevers, “Worker Participation,” pp. 417-425. For an interesting brief for a collective-bargaining approach in the United States, see Lawrence S. Bacow, Bargaining for Job Safety and Health (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980).
33. Deutsch, “Work Environment Reform,” pp. 180-194, quote on p. 187; Eiger, “Economic Democracy and the Democratizing of Research,” pp. 123-141; Kelman, Regulating America, Regulating Sweden, passim; and Gardell, “Scandinavian Research on Stress in Working Life,” pp. 31-41.
34. Kelmaa Regulating America, Regulating Sweden.
35. Deutsch, “Work Environment Reform,” p. 187; Parmeggiani, “State of the Art,” p. 276; Frank Goldsmith, “Sweden’s New Occupational Health Law: The Impact on Occupational Physicians,” Journal of Occupational Medicine 21, no. 11 (November 1979): 761.
36. On the rest, the agencies had set the same levels. This analysis is based on my comparison of TWAs from the “Alphabetical List of Substances” in the International Labour Office’s Occupational Exposure Limits for Airborne Toxic Substances, 2d ed. I have restricted this comparison to substances that both countries regulate. Differences in the economies of these two nations are likely to yield differences in the use of toxic substances and, consequently, different health hazard priorities. See International Labour Office, Occupational Exposure Limits for Airborne Toxic Substances, 2d ed., Occupational Safety and Health Series no. 37 (Geneva: ILO, 1980). Steven Kelman does not consider these data, and his study of rulemaking in Sweden reaches different conclusions. He stresses the “surprisingly similar” regulations of OSHA and ASV and attributes these similarities to the strategic role that protectionist professionals play in both agencies. But Kelman’s evidence actually supports my conclusion. He does note that “the rule-making decisions on occupational safety and health in the United States and Sweden during the period considered were very similar but not identical and differences that did exist were in the direction of higher protection in Sweden” (p. 110). Small differences in occupational safety and health standards are often very important. Kelman identifies four specific instances of rulemaking in which ASV chose a more protective standard than OSHA: the retrofitting of tractors with rollover protective devices; the installation of load-indicating devices on cranes; the banning of asbestos cement; the establishment of an 85-dBA noise standard. Kelman also notes that ASV established lower TLVs for a number of toxic chemicals (p. 81). Kelman, Regulating America Regulating Sweden.
37. Office of Technology Assessment, Preventing Illness, p. 261; Kelman, Regulating America Regulating Sweden, passim.
38. Glendon and Booth, “Worker Participation,” pp. 409-410.
39. The works council’s authority is statutorily limited because members are a minority on the plant health and safety committee. It generally confines its deliberations to organizational matters such as the selection and functioning of health experts. See Gevers, “Worker Participation,” pp. 420-421; Hauss and Rosenbrock, “Occupational Health and Safety in Germany,” p. 284.
40. The literature on the problems and prospects is enormous and growing. See Walter Korpi, The Democratic Class Struggle (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983); John Stephens, The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism (London: Macmillan, 1979); Andrew Martin, “The Dynamics of Change in a Keynesian Political Economy: The Swedish Case and Its Implications,” in Colin Crouch, ed., State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), pp. 88-121; Jonas Pontusson, “Behind and Beyond Social Democracy in Sweden,” New Left Review 143 (January-February 1984): 69-96; Mary Nolan and Charles F. Sabel, “Class Conflict and the Social Democratic Reform Cycle in Germany,” in Zeitlin, ed., Political Power and Social Theory, 1 vol. 3 (1982), pp. 145-173; Mark Kesselman, “Prospects for Democratic Socialism: Class Struggle and Compromise in Sweden and France,” Politics and Society 11, no. 4 (1982): 397-438; Gosta Esping-Andersen, Politics Against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); and Adam Przeworski, “Social Democracy as an Historical Phenomenon,” New Left Review 122 (1980): 27-58.
1. The classic statement of this phenomenon remains Francis Fox Piven and Richard A Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1971). See also Nolan and Sabel, “The Social Democratic Reform Cycle.”
2. On the enduring liberalism of the American electorate, see William Watts and Lloyd A. Free, State of the Nation III (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978), pp. 87-95; Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Economy, Elections, and Public Opinion,” Tocqueville Review, Fall-Winter 1983, pp. 431-469.
3. See, for example, Schwarz, America’s Hidden Success; Thomas Bryne Edsall, The New Politics of Inequality (New York: Norton, 1984).