The Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA

In 1970 about 14,000 American workers died on the job each year and more than two million were injured. The Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed by Richard Nixon on December 29, 1970, with support from both parties, gave the federal government for the first time the power to set safety standards for nearly every private workplace. OSHA opened on April 28, 1971. The law also created a separate research institute, NIOSH, inside what is now the Department of Health and Human Services, and an independent review commission to hear appeals from employers who contest citations.

OSHA works by writing standards and enforcing them. Standards cover hazards from fall protection on construction sites to exposure limits for chemicals to the lockout of machinery during repair. Writing a new one takes years and survives court challenges only sometimes, so much of the agency's enforcement rests on a general duty clause requiring employers to keep workplaces free of recognized hazards. Inspectors, who number about 1,800 federally, respond to fatalities, complaints, and referrals and conduct programmed inspections in high-hazard industries. Penalties, raised in 2016 after decades frozen, top out around 165,000 dollars per willful violation.

Twenty-two states and territories run their own OSHA-approved programs covering private workplaces, with federal OSHA covering the rest. Even combined, the inspector force could visit every workplace in the country roughly once a century. The agency therefore relies on the deterrent effect of publicized citations, on consultation programs for small businesses, and on requirements that employers record and report injuries. Workplace deaths have fallen to about 5,300 a year, a rate roughly a third of what it was in 1970, though how much of that is OSHA's doing and how much is the shift from manufacturing to services is disputed.

OSHA has been a flashpoint since its first year. Businesses have long argued its rules are costly and rigid. Unions and safety advocates argue it is understaffed and its penalties trivial. The Supreme Court has twice limited its reach, striking a benzene standard in 1980 and the pandemic vaccine-or-test rule in 2022, and the agency has rarely had a confirmed leader for a full term. Proposed standards on heat exposure and workplace violence have been pending for years. Staffing cuts in 2025 reduced the inspector force further.