Occupational safety and health is an issue of great concern for most institutions as it describes one of the sensitive areas for working conditions and compliance with policies. Critics state that the Bush administration had ignored the promotion of safer workplace practices, and the Obama regime seeks to provide the necessary changes (Spanos par. 4). The leaders are looking to implement newer policies that enhance the compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act) and also provide some improvements on it. The interest lies in establishing the new ways that the administration wishes to approach the issue in the American environment.
One of the activities that the Department of Labor (DoL) seeks to undertake is increasing the levels of penalties that violators of the OSH Act will pay upon conviction. That will require the implementation of a severe violators’ inspection program to assess the conditions in various workplaces in the US (Spanos par. 11). That objective also requires that the organizations have to adhere to procedures that demand frequent reporting of the illnesses and injuries that occur in the workplace. The Department of Labor points that it will hire new inspectors into the system to facilitate the exercises of organizational assessment and apprehension of any violators.
The DoL also states that it seeks to push for the implementation of new laws that will enable the country to achieve those objectives. The administrators aim to implement the Protecting America’s Workers Act that increases the fines and penalties that the violating employers pay (Spanos par. 4). A series of National Emphasis Programs is in place to pilot the implementations to reveal the efficiency of the proposals that the department seeks to set in motion. The DoL also plans to enhance its connection with the Department of Justice in a bid to increase the number of convictions for violators and improve compliance with the policies.
The main aim of those developments is to correct the negligence that most employers developed during the Bush administration. The DoL seeks to improve the levels of compliance with the policies that are in place. However, the progress that the DoL target is to introduce new regulations that offer penalties as incentives for compliance.
Works Cited
Spanos, Peter. “'There Is a New Sheriff in Town' What Employers Need to Know about OSHA Compliance Today.” Workforce. 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
