prominently as a member of two committces at the National Academy of Sciences.

My principal observation is that safety and health standard setting by OSHA has virtually come to a stóp. The machinery turns, from time to time, but product seldom emerges, generally as a result of a court order. It is also clear that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is putting sand in the gears, both by direct intervention and by pushing its political agenda and concerns upstream into the rulemaking process. OMB has also announced an intention to take an even more activist role in standards setting, imposing its own scientific analyses in place of those adopted by the public health agencies, its own criteria for protection in place of those imposed by statute on those agencies.

My comments are limited by lack of access to internal communications between OSHA and OMB, and by a limited understanding the relationship between the Competitiveness Council and OMB.

These general concerns for the role of OMB in OSHA rulemaking are illustrated by recent OSHA's lack of productive activity on standards for formaldehyde, energy lockout, blood borne infectious disease, medical and exposure monitoring, confined space entry and ergonomics. The OMB general strategy is laid out in several articles in the Regulatory Program of the United States and the Budget.

OMB interference starts with a formal role in data collection for standards setting, at the proposal stage of rulemaking, in approval of the final standard, and in direct authority over those parts of a standard which relate to documentation. Equally important to the formal role is the general imposition of a particularly radical cost-benefit ideology on the agency process.

As a result, at OSHA these days the agency isn't effectively moving forward on standards. It isn't even looking over its shoulder at industry. Instead, OSHA is watching out for OMB.

The need to increase the pace of safety and health standard setting at OSHA is generally recognized by those in the public health community, including many observers associated with industry and the present Administration. A brief account is contained in the report Options for Improving Safety and Health in the Workplace by the General Accounting Office (GAO). The Comprehensive OSHA Reform Act now before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee has an extensive section listing the rules already promised but not delivered by OSHA.

The analysis of the record on setting standards doesn't lend itself to a scorecard or numerical approach. It is best under

stood in terms of particular standards.

1. The OSHA Lockout/Tagout standard illustrates OMB's specific intervention to change rules in response to industry demands.

The history of the OSHA standard for energy lockout shows that OMB interference is not limited to chemical exposure or other standards for protection of health.

Energy lockout is a short hand term for a comprehensive set of protections from machine movement or other hazardous energy for workers servicing, repairing or installing machinery and equip. ment. The term "lockout" comes from the central practice of turning off power and each exposed worker securing each energy isolating device with an individually assigned lock, so that equipment can't be accidentally energized with the worker in the danger zone.

Lockout program failures were responsible for the deaths of 92 UAW members on the job since 1973, the largest single cause of occupational fatalities in our industry, as well as an estimated 1,000,000 less than fatal injuries. Lockout, or less effective tagout, is a familiar industry practice and was the subject of an industry consensus standard issued in 1982.

The UAW first petitioned OSHA for a standard for lockout in 1979, when the recorded death toll among UAW members was in the twen ties. Activity was stalled during the 1980's. By all reports,

OMB was highly critical of OSHA's attempts to write a rule converting the industry consensus standard into an enforceable regulation. The activity was only restarted by oversight hearings in the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee in 1988. A proposal was finally issued in April 1988, hearings were held in the fall of that year, and the rulemaking record was certified and closed on May 3, 1989.

Nearly two months later, on June 30, 1989, OSHA forwarded its final standard to OMB. While OSHA's standard was pending before OMB, certain industry representatives were given copies of OSHA's final rule; union representatives were not. with access to OSHA's draft final standard, on August 3, 1989, Newport News Shipbuilding and United Technologies, non-participants in the rulemaking, submitted alleged new data and arguments to OSHA and OMB highly critical of several aspects of the final rule. Shortly thereafter, OSHA forwarded a revision to the standard to OMB which excluded from the lockout/tagout requirement of the standard so-called "minor" servicing and maintenance activities. This revision directly responded to ex parte industry comments.

The last gasp nature of this revision is evident from the written format of the change in the rule. These so called "minor" activities were responsible for about one fifth of lockout related activities, among UAW members, 18 deaths. The failure of the standard to provide protection during these activities was a key reason why the UAW was forced to challenge the standard as insuf·

ficiently protective.

The UAW's legal challenge was unsuccessful.

Partly this was because it is difficult to overcome the agency's claim of discretion not to act, and partly because the full record of special access of industry representatives to OMB was not available.

2.

The OSHA Formaldehyde Standard illustrates OMB substituting its own analysis of risk for that adopted by the agency.

Formaldehyde is a 5 billion pound a year chemical. It was shown to pose a cancer hazard by laboratory studies in 1979. The UAW launched an effort to get a new standard for this megaton chemical because we represent thousands of workers in foundries, where exposures were highest among all American industries. About 2 million workers in other industries, such as wood products, plastics, paper, textile and apparel also have significant exposures. When OSHA didn't act after several years, the UAW, 14 other unions and the American Public Health Association petitioned for a new standard in 1981.

When OSHA denied the petition in 1982, the UAW went to court. After a dozen or more legal skirmishes, OSHA was ordered to begin rulemaking, and later to issue a standard, which finally happened in November 1987.