The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), founded in 1970, exercises an extremely broad jurisdiction over American workers and their safety in the workplace. Its measures pertain, in theory, to every working person in the United States, with exceptions such as the self-employed, miners, transportation workers, and many public employees.

OSHA investigates workers' complaints regarding the safety and/or health of their working environment, conducts workplace safety inspections of companies suspected of violations, establishes standards defining necessary levels of workplace health and safety in the industries it monitors, and cooperates with businesses and media to spread information regarding techniques to improve safety in the workplace.

Presently, OSHA's budget is on the rise, with $461.6 million allocated to it for Fiscal Year 2005, an increase of $4.1 million from the previous fiscal year, and a significant increase from its budget of about $300 million during Fiscal Year 1995. Nevertheless, compared to budgets such as that of the Environmental Protection Agency, this is a small allocation; OSHA receives 1/20 of the EPA's funding, and the amount of federal health and safety inspectors is 1/6 that of fish and game inspectors.

Since the federal commitment to workplace health and safety has been comparatively small, economists such as Thomas Kniesner and John Leeth argue that the substantial drop in workplace fatalities (about an 80% decline from 1970 to 1993) has been due to factors other than OSHA, such as technological improvements in safety, states' workers compensation programs, and increases in the availability of information regarding worker safety. Studies have shown that OSHA, by itself, has reduced fatalities only by about 1-5% during that time period.

At the same time, in many businesses, the cost of compliance with OSHA regulations outweighs the benefits gained from increased worker productivity due to decreased injuries and fines. This is due to the fact that many of the dangers that OSHA mandates firms to protect themselves against, such as repetitive motion disorders, are not uniformly likely in every industry, and many industries lose money by establishing federally mandated programs to defend against them.

Personal factors outside of businesses' control may also be responsible for these threats.

Today, the leading causes of work-related deaths are not mechanical errors or wanton negligence on the part of business owners, but highway fatalities on the way to and from work and murders by coworkers or customers on the job, factors that businesses and OSHA guidelines have little or no control over. Nevertheless, OSHA continues to impose its standards on firms, which detracts from those businesses' ability to more efficiently use their money. Small businesses especially find OSHA the second most frustrating federal agency to deal with after the IRS. In 1995, businesses spent $11 billion per year to comply with OSHA regulations. The safety benefits produced by these measures were valued at only zero to $3.6 billion, which implies that, under even the most optimistic estimates of OSHA's impact, the agency's costs to the economy outweigh its benefits by a factor of three.

Though OSHA's intended impact is to improve economic efficiency, this social goal is in fact hindered by the agency, since it prevents an optimal allocation of resources, and forces businesses to invest more in safety and health standards than the return the businesses would get on such an investment. OSHA is also a means of pouring government funds at a problem that generally does not exist in the areas at which OSHA directs most of its attention. OSHA has no jurisdiction over the self-employed, yet these individuals (9% of the population), account for 20% of workplace fatalities. OSHA has no jurisdiction over health and safety conditions inside people's homes, yet the chances of dying from an accident at home are over two times greater today than the chances of dying from an accident at work. Government should not regulate the above spheres of human activity, as this would be a gross intrusion upon individuals' economic freedom. But it makes even less economic sense to regulate health and safety conditions in places where an even smaller threat to health and safety exists than pertains to the self-employed and people in their own homes.

Kniesner and Leeth suggest a gradual phasing-out of OSHA, with the first step involving simplification and increased flexibility and accessibility of regulatory standards (which would render compliance for businesses), as well as communication between inspectors and businesses that would permit OSHA to make more realistic assessments of safety and health threats.

Nine years after this recommendation was made, OSHA has indeed become more open to comments from businessmen and the public regarding its work, and has sought to render many of its standards more explicit. In the long term, however, Kniesner and Leeth recommend that this agency, which contributes minimally to the reduction of safety and health threats, be allowed to wither away into non-existence, and be replaced by more efficient safety measures undertaken by the free market and state and local governments. The end of OSHA would revitalize the economy by saving businesses immense sums of money presently spent to comply with regulations, and relieving taxpayers of the burden of funding OSHA, so that they could choose to spend their funds in a more rational manner.

G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois Libre,  Rebirth of Reason, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, weekly columnist for GrasstopsUSA.com, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov also publishes his articles on Helium.com and Associated Content to assist the spread of rational ideas. His newest science fiction novel is Eden against the Colossus. His latest non-fiction treatise is A Rational Cosmology. His most recent play is Implied Consent. Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

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