Not much of a threat

I love our Ozarks and all the wonderful businesses that drive our prosperity. I was an enviroment, health and safety professional for a couple of decades at a large company. I’m retired now but dealt with all three forms of OSHA on a regular basis: the feds, state programs that have a charter, and our state Safety Division as part of the Arkansas Department of Labor that provides assistance but has little real enforcement authority.

It’s important to know that federal OSHA can’t just walk in and disrupt your business without a warrant. Typically it takes them two or three months to get a warrant so sometimes in spite of coercion and threats they eventually wander off looking for a softer target. It’s interesting that if a bunch of businesses required warrants it would probably clog up OSHA’s legal departments for years.

OSHA can’t fine anybody, either. If it finds something, all it can do is propose penalties. A business can accept or deny or negotiate proposed penalties with OSHA. OSHA prefers to avoid litigation as it strains resources so it often reduces proposed penalties to a fraction of what it originally wanted. Only a judge in court can drop the gavel and compel a company to pay up.

Is noncompliance risky? I’m not sure exactly how many the agency has today, but there were only eight federal OSHA inspectors assigned to Arkansas before I retired. There are probably more than 30,000 affected businesses statewide they have to cover. Think of the odds. It’s obvious they can’t begin to make a dent inspecting, so mandates only work if businesses voluntarily comply.

Knowing the reality of it, I don’t see a reason to fear or fall for Biden’s threats because they are a lot less dangerous than they appear. He’s asking OSHA to bite off a heck of a lot more than it can chew. I’m being mindful that just because some scary beast is snarling and acting all froggy doesn’t mean it is actually much of a threat.

JEFF COOK

Springdale