Claremont Professor Tom Kneisner Consulted in OSHA Debate
The government regime change will likely yield a new direction for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The expectation is that OSHA will move away from enforcement and toward compliance assistance for employers.
Amidst debate about the extent of OSHA’s ability to minimize workplace injuries, WorkCompCentral reached out to Tom Kniesner, an economics professor at Claremont Graduate University’s Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management.
Kniesner has long held the belief that OSHA enforcement does not decrease workplace injuries. The Claremont professor asserted that workers’ compensation is a more effective way to foster a safe work environment. In fact, Kniesner co-wrote a piece with John Leeth in 1995 titled “Abolishing OSHA,” in which he argued that OSHA is ineffective and should be scrapped entirely.
In the article, the authors suggested that: “OSHA can never be expected to be effective in promoting worker safety; that an expanded OSHA will cost jobs as well as taxpayer dollars; and that other means currently keep workplace deaths and injuries low and can reduce them even more.”
“Rather than wasting more resources on an agency that cannot be effective, policymakers would do better to shut down OSHA and allow state and local officials to better utilize their own means to ensure worker safety,” Kniesner and Leeth said.
According to his article, Kniesner’s research has not shown any significant reduction in injuries due to OSHA’s policies. He contends that state workers’ compensation rules and tort law provide the majority of workers’ on-the-job protection.
The professor holds that OSHA is ineffectual, as inspections are infrequent, its fines are not heavy and it does not regulate many of the main safety issues facing workers.
Haas Prof Wins Research Competition
Haas School of Business economist David I. Levine and his research team are one of three winners of the Random Controlled Trials competition sponsored by the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy. The win provides the researchers with a $96,000 grant to help conduct a new study, “The Effects of OSHA Inspections: Results from a Natural Field Experiment.”
The research team includes Michael W. Toffel, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and Matthew S. Johnson, a PhD candidate in the economics department at Boston University. The competition garnered 50 submissions and is designed to select and fund low-cost, randomized controlled trials in areas of high policy importance.
