H.R. 86, “Nullify Occupational Safety and Health Administration Act (NOSHA),” was introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), with the stated purpose of abolishing federal OSHA, leaving it up to the states to set and enforce workplace safety and health standards. (Refer to “The Pros and Cons: Maintaining Safety Balance in Efforts to Disrupt OSHA in 2025” for more details.) Whether or not the bill moves forward through Congress (it currently has no co-sponsors), we wanted to hear what the EHS community thinks of the idea. So we created a quick poll and asked EHS Today readers: Should federal OSHA be abolished?
While not a scientific study by any means, we heard from over 1,100 EHS professionals, and overwhelmingly they are not in favor of abolishing federal OSHA. 60% said, simply, no. Another 10% said no, but that federal OSHA should be reduced in size and budget. You can see the full results below.
President Trump has nominated David Keeling, formerly head of safety at UPS and Amazon, to be the next head of OSHA (replacing Doug Parker), so there's no reason to believe that federal OSHA is going to be abolished. But OSHA under the Trump 2.0 administration will certainly operate under different priorities than it did under President Biden.
• 60% No, that would be a very bad and dangerous idea.
• 19% Yes, and transfer workplace safety enforcement to the states.
• 10% No, but federal OSHA is too big and its budget should be reduced.
• 4% Yes, and abolish the state OSHAs as well, leaving it up to companies to set safety standards.
• 2% I don’t know.
• 4% Other
Here is a representative sampling of some of the comments we received, from those who chose “Other” as their response:
We need federal-level standardized practices and regulations, otherwise it would be left to the states to handle, and by doing that, nationwide companies would have to abide by different sets of standards and it would be impossible to manage effectively to keep our team members safe.
OSHA has no teeth. Lawyers and insurance companies provide more incentive to reduce injuries and incidents.
All state OSHA and environmental agencies should be eliminated and all states be under Federal.
Leaving things to individual states translates to non-uniformity and a race to the bottom as far as safety goes.
Federal rules are the minimum standard and if it’s left to the states they can lower the requirements. Is that a good idea?
I have reported several serious violations and OSHA has not had the manpower to be able to respond within eight working days. Smaller contractors often ignore the OSHA rules putting their employees in SERIOUS danger, especially Hispanic, non-English speaking or illegal [immigrant] employees. We need OSHA or a safety enforcement body of some type.
The standards should be taught and practiced in K-12 and college within all programs, not just construction and safety areas of study.
[Abolishing OSHA] is obviously an idea coming from people who have never worked for a living or looked at injury statistics.
OSHA is too big and ineffective. It needs to stay but needs to be streamlined and rebuilt to a more effective entity. Maybe set up OSHA as identifying general requirements and having the states work out the details, where enforcement would be a combination of the federal and state OSHAs.
Safety and health are not negotiable. An oversight mechanism to set minimum standards, at national level, with the requisite safety experts from across industry is needed, together with a proper mandate, accountability, etc.
OSHA was established to protect workers throughout all industries and to assist in ensuring companies and personnel such as myself are doing what we should do in providing a safe and healthy work environment.
OSHA should be retained at its current funding level. A systematic evaluation of its policies and their implementation should be conducted by an independent organization to evaluate the fairness of enforcement and objectives of the agency.
Transfer [oversight] to the states with a tiered enforcement policy that starts with mandatory remediation for offending employers, followed by fines, and ending with the ability to shutdown willful offenders. Also, state OSHAs must be balanced between employer and employee accountability. Language needs to exist to protect employers from employees that willfully disregard rules and standards.
OSHA needs a major overhaul as to how they write the regulations and how they enforce them, as well as more enforcement officers in the field visiting construction sites.
Increase OSHA’s funding to provide for more investigators, better response time for letters of interpretation, and more assistance with individual business plans.
Federal OSHA should be overarching, and boots-on-the-ground should be performed at the state level.
Feel free to add your own comments below.
