OSHA creates office to help small businesses
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (www.osha.gov) is creating an Office of Small Business Assistance as part of an agency reorganization that expands efforts to help employers comply with OSHA regulations.
The small business office will be part of the Directorate of Cooperative and State Programs, the first time OSHA will have a separate organization to coordinate compliance assistance activities. The office will provide information on how to reduce workplace injuries and illnesses, and solicit comments from small businesses on how the agency should address their concerns.
"This reorganization realigns our resources and functions around proven strategies that will produce the best results in reducing workplace injuries and illnesses," says OSHA Administrator John Henshaw.
In addition, the agency will consolidate its safety and health standard-setting directorates into one organization, which also will develop nonregulatory approaches to workplace issues.
Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., praised the reorganization plan, saying Henshaw "made it clear from the start that he thought more compliance could be achieved if employers had more assistance rather than just getting threatened with more citations, so I'm pleased to see that he has found a way to make this happen."
Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, also says the OSHA reorganization plan "helps deliver" on President Bush's promise that "small businesses would be better provided for under this administration while at the same time maintaining the necessary emphasis on enforcement."
