Occupational Safety and Health Small Business Day in Court Act of 2004

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH SMALL BUSINESS DAY IN COURT ACT OF 2004 -- (House of Representatives - May 18, 2004)

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 645, I call up the bill (H.R. 2728) to amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to provide for adjudicative flexibility with regard to an employer filing of a notice of contest following the issuance of a citation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, today is a very sad day in the history of the workers of the United States. The Republican Party is bringing out here onto the floor of Congress an all-out assault on the protection of the rights of people who work in the fields of our country, in the factories of our country, in the offices of our country. What they are saying is that they are going to try to tie the hands of OSHA to protect the rights of workers to be living and working in safe and healthy environments.

And how do they do it? Well, the way they do it is they make it possible for there to be a wholesale delay in the implementation of improvements in health and safety protections in the workplace. They make it very difficult for the Secretary of Labor to exercise the authority of that agency to move in and to protect our workers. And they make it almost impossible to even bring a case unless the agency is 100 percent sure it is going to win the case. As a result, the hands of this agency are going to be tied by the Republican legislation out here on the floor.

GOP. It used to stand for Grand Old Party. Now it stands for "gut OSHA protections" for ordinary workers in our country. And it is all part of a pattern. The same thing happened with overtime pay. With overtime pay they want to make it very difficult for workers to be able to collect that bonus that helps their families across our country.

GOP. It used to stand for Grand Old Party. Now it stands for "gut overtime pay, "or "gut OSHA protections."

And on the minimum wage, you know, Harry Truman used to say about the Republican Party, "Oh, the Republican Party believes in the minimum wage. The lower the minimum, the better." And here we are, year after year trying to improve the lot of working people by giving them that increase that they need in the minimum wage; and, like OSHA, and like overtime pay, it is all part of a deliberate assault upon the working men and women in our country, in their workplace, for their families, that makes it difficult to protect them.

And when it comes to unemployment benefits as well, they also stand in the way of helping those families have the protections when they need it with unemployment benefits.

So it is all part of a pattern. And, today, on the House floor, with four separate bills all aimed at a different part of OSHA, they continue this assault upon the progress that was made to improve the lives of working people in the workplace.

I remember when I was a boy, my father used to walk around without one of his fingers that he lost in an accident in the workplace. And I think of how far we have come in terms of the protections which we give to families, because so many thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of workers were just constantly subjected to the risk of being injured in ways that would forever alter their lives, and because of OSHA that has changed.

But when the Republicans control the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court, you can see this lingering resentment of the laws which were put on the books to protect these ordinary people, these laws which they voted against when they were originally proposed. And what we are seeing here today is that continuing assault to turn into a relic an agency which has so dramatically changed the lives of ordinary people.

Oppose each and every one of these Republican assaults upon the working men and women in our country.

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