OSHA gets substantial budget increase
March 16, 2009 by Fred HosierPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Injuries, Latest News & Views, OSHA news, enforcement
The new federal funding bill will help President Obama carry out his mission to reinvigorate the federal agency in charge of workplace safety.
The spending bill that funds the federal government through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year, contains a 6% boost for OSHA. Its funding will increase $27 million to a total of $513 million.
OSHA can use the money to enforce safety regulations.
The funding measure also contains a $52 million increase for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), some of which is aimed at improving the reporting of workplace injury statistics.
BLS has been criticized for under-reporting injury and fatality stats.
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Tags: enforce safety regulations, OSHA funding, workplace injury statistics

March 24th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
This is exciting news for our company. We supply safety materials (related to OSHA) and our sales have been great this year. We’re projecting 15% growth for 2009 and can’t hire enough employees.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:49 am
This is good news for companies that do no manufacturing and just supply materials. However manufacturing facilities could do without another $27 Million worth of safety redundancy. Over 30 percent of our yearly budget is consumed by training and PPE purchases required by OSHA’s new standards for last year. In these economic times I feel this puts an undue stress on small employeers financial well being.