President Barack Obama recently signed a budget blueprint that seeks to increase funding to the

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). With the increase, OSHA can “vigorously enforce workplace safety laws and whistleblower protections, and ensure the safety and health of American workers,” the budget blueprint says.

“For the past eight years, the department’s labor law enforcement agencies have struggled with growing workloads and shrinking staff,” the budget blueprint said. “The president’s budget seeks to reverse this trend, restoring the department’s ability to meet its responsibilities to working Americans under the more than 180 worker protection laws it enforces.”

For AFL-CIO safety director Peg Seminario, Obama’s proposal is a welcome change in direction from the policies of President George W. Bush. During his term, Bush repeatedly proposed either cutting or freezing OSHA’s budget.

Randy Johnson, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that instead of spending money to monitor every job site, OSHA should focus more on educating employers about workplace safety.

A New Day

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat and the chairwoman of a workforce protection panel in the House of Representatives said that Obama’s proposal “signals a new day” for workers.

“The health and safety of our workers is absolutely paramount, but under President Bush, enforcement of safety violations had been hindered by out-of-date regulations and inadequate funding,” she said. “Simply put, OSHA in recent years has failed in its obligation to protect our workers.”

Lawmakers also show signs that they will be making OSHA a bigger priority. In fact, there is now a 2009 appropriations bill before Congress that seeks to increase spending for OSHA and requires the agency to perform better in tracking injuries and illnesses. The bill proposes a $27 million increase to the agency’s budget, making it a total of $513 million. The bill requires that the increase not only be used to rebuild OSHA’s enforcement capacity but also to increase the pace at which the agency creates new safety standards.

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