Contact: Gail Gitcho 202-225-2365

Washington, May 19, 2004 - Yesterday, U.S. Representative Steve Pearce voted on a series of bills, which he said “are designed to make life a little easier for Small Businesses in New Mexico and the entire nation.” H.R. 2728, H.R. 2729, H.R. 2730 and H.R. 2731 were all passed by the full House.
“These OSHA reform bills will help enhance business competitiveness and encourage further job creation, but most importantly they will help improve worker safety by promoting a climate of cooperation between OSHA and employers that focuses on results,” said Pearce.
“The reforms are important to small business owners who struggle every day to comply with complex OSHA laws and provide a safe working environment for their workers while facing an increasingly competitive worldwide economy,” added Pearce.
“Small employers should be spending their time providing safe workplaces, generating innovative new products, and creating new jobs,” Pearce said. “They should not be forced by their government to spend their time dealing with senseless litigation that drains their energies and money.”
“These four bills are designed to remove the arbitrary and unintentional ‘legal traps’ in current OSHA law that hamstrings better trust and voluntary cooperation between the agency and employers,” Pearce said.

“This week is Small Business week, and the best thing we can do for them is help remove unnecessary obstacles so that they can focus on results,” he said.

Brief summaries of the four bills are included below.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Small Business Day in Court Act (H.R. 2728) gives the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) additional flexibility to make exceptions to the arbitrary 15-day deadline for employers to file responses to OSHA citations when a small business misses the deadline by mistake or for good reason. Under current legal interpretation, employers who fail to meet this 15-day deadline lose their right to a day in court, regardless of whether there were intervening circumstances that inadvertently caused an employer to miss the deadline. The bill restores some common-sense and flexibility to the law.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Efficiency Act (H.R. 2729) increases the membership of OSHRC from three to five members to ensure that cases are reviewed in a timely fashion. Because a quorum of two (of the three) Commissioners is needed for decision-making, OSHRC has in the past often been unable to act. The appointment process is sometimes controversial, leading to vacancies, and sometimes Commissioners must recuse themselves from consideration of cases, meaning a situation is created where even if there is one seat open, there is no working quorum. Increasing membership to five Commissioners will help ensure that cases are reviewed in a more timely fashion.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Independent Review of OSHA Citations Act (H.R. 2730) restores independent review of OSHA citations by clarifying that OSHRC is an independent judicial entity given deference by courts that review OSHA issues. Congress passed the OSHA law only after being assured that judicial review would be conducted by "an autonomous, independent commission which, without regard to the Secretary, can find for or against him on the basis of individual complaints." The bill restores the original system of checks and balances intended by Congress when it enacted the OSHA law and ensures the Commission ("the Court"), and not OSHA ("the prosecutor"), would be the party who interprets the law and provides an independent review of OSHA citations.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Small Employer Access to Justice Act (H.R. 2731) levels the playing field for small businesses and encourages OSHA to better assess the merits of a case before it brings unnecessary enforcement actions to court against small businesses. Under current law, the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) allows small business owners to recover attorney's fees if the owner successfully challenges a citation. However, if OSHA can establish that its enforcement action was "substantially justified" or the result of "special circumstances," small businesses can be refused attorney's fees even if OSHA loses the case in court. Historically, the law's "substantially justified" and "special circumstances" standards have made it easy for OSHA to prevent recovery under this broad standard, so attempts by small business owners to recover costs often merely exacerbate the financial harm caused by OSHA's questionable enforcement actions.