OSHA

OSHA

Commentary

"What did we set up the government for?"

May 31, 2011

Cry Wolf Quotes

This fight's not over… The best-intentioned employer isn't going to be able to figure out [the standards], even if he has hundreds of lawyers. It's like getting your arms around a bowl of Jell-O.

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Randy Johnson, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Los Angeles Times.

[N]one [of our members] could operate if the NIOSH [vinyl chloride] Work Standard were imposed upon the industry.

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The Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI).

[M]uch of the scientific data obtained by researchers to date is inconclusive….misplaced reliance on mere suspicions rather than proven data, or precipitous and emotional reaction to such incomplete information…could lead to major economic consequences.

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Jerome Heckman, general counsel of the Society of the Plastics Industry.

We are particularly intrigued by the term byssinosis a thing thought up by venal doctors who attended last year’s ILO [International Labor Organization] meetings in Africa, where inferior races are bound to be afflicted by new diseases more superior people defeated years ago...As a matter of fact, we referred to the ‘cotton fever’ earlier, when we pointed out that a good chaw of B.L. dark would take care of it, or some snuff...Well, we want to tell Mr. [James] O’Hara [D-MI] that, and for all our life, we have hated federal interference in our lives businesses…Congressman O’Hara is typical of the lousy representation we get from time-serving Northern Democrats who sell their souls to the venal labor leaders.

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Unsigned editorial in America’s Textile Reporter, a trade publication.