The Demise of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration: A Case Study in Symbolic Action

Abstract

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, supposedly designed to protect U.S. workers on the job, was seen by many as no more than a symbolic gesture to labor when it was created in 1971. Yet it has become a major target of deregulation by the Reagan administration. This paper attempts to explain why. I suggest that while OSHA had little immediate, impact on working conditions, it did provide a vehicle for incremental gains by labor, both material and ideological. I trace the advances made by labor under OSHA and argue that attacks on the agency by the Reagan administration are an attempt to revoke those gains and erase the concessionary message of the 1970s.