passed a more reasonable and practical version of the act in the first. instance than did the Senate, and it is unfortunate for the Nation's small and independent businesses and for all businesses that your bill did not prevail in conference. The House amendment to the LaborHEW appropriations bill last week which provided that none of the fiscal 1973 funds for administering OSHA may be used to pay salaries or expenses for inspecting the facilities and activities of firms having 25 or fewer employees is a message that needed to be sent to those who have allowed the arrogance of power to run roughshod over thousands of struggling small enterprises and their employees in the name of safety.

The issue presented by the brief history of this act and the way it has been administered is clearly one of arrogant power versus education and persuasion. It is the issue of tyranny versus reason. I can best phrase it in the form of a question which I would ask those who are bringing down the heel on anyone whose attitude is not proper because he cannot understand the wrong of allowing the ice to come into contact with the water when an employer serves ice water to his employees, or the necessity for replacing all built-in melal ladder rungs on a silo with rungs that are 8 inches away from the way if the present rungs are but 6 inches from the wall. I will phrase the question this way: "Is the Federal Government mandated to make every job so supersafe that it's willing to destroy a lot of jobs in the process?

To anyone who answers affirmatively, I would suggest that he begin by calling on the Secretary of Labor this afternoon to prosecute the Federal Government forthwith for sponsoring an event at Dulles Airport several weeks ago in which three persons were killed in separate accidents while performing in front of crowds of spectators. He might next take on the Indianapolis Speedway and all other automobile racing competition. He could very easily write a set of rules and regulations that would put every airshow and every circus and every rodeo out of business in the United States. Those are high-risk occupations in which the threat of death or injury to participants, and in some instances also to crowds of spectators, might be deemed imminent.

Please be assured that I did not come here to challenge those occupations or events. I merely cite them as examples to show how ridiculous it is to wage hostile Federal police action against employers who engage in comparatively safe enterprises with seldom a lost-time accident in their stores or plants, some of whom have as few as one employee, which employee may be only part-time.

The law itself constitutes an unfair and an unwise delegation of power. It is vague and indefinite. It incorporates by mere reference. thousands of requirements which have never been discussed by the Congress, and the Secretary of Labor has adopted regulations containing references giving the force of law to still more thousands of standards and specifications which were never intended to be the law of the land.

On this table before me is a partial collection of the codes, standards, specifications and other requirements which have been blanketed into law by reference in the Occupational Safety and Health Act or the regulations implementing it. Did you know you were voting on this pile of printed material when you voted for job safety for Americans 2

years ago? Can you imagine a businessman with a few employees in a small town searching through a library or talking to his lawyer to find out just what requirements apply to his line of work? Can you imagine his frustration when he discovers that he is subject not only to the regulations specifically pertaining to his line of work but also to the broad general-duty clause which brings thousands of hidden requirements into play!

I use the term "hidden" advisedly. One week ago yesterday-on Monday, June 12th-I asked the Library of Congress to provide me with a copy of every backup standard and code which OSHA blanketed into law. On Wednesday, the Library advised my office that it was a monumental undertaking which would require the cooperation of the Labor Department. The Library had asked the Department to mail it a list of all of the documents. On Friday, the list still had not arrived. A member of my staff called the Labor Department and was told that the Department has a complete set of the documents but cannot lend them to anyone, not even for an hour or so not even to a Member of Congress. The Department was kind enough to send a list of the documents to my office by messenger on Friday afternoon. A member of my staff went to the Library of Congress on Saturday and Sunday and looked up the call numbers which enabled Library personnel yesterday and today to gather this collection of material. I would estimate this stack of books and pamphlets 4 feet high represents about two-thirds of the wirtten requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Is it any wonder that Congress has received thousands of complaints? Is it any wonder that businessmen, particularly those with small businesses, are scared? Is it any wonder that a man who hires one or two students to work part time for him in the summer is not hiring them this year? Is it any wonder that a Nebraska doctor called me aside the other day and told me he had treated two farmwomen for injuries they received doing work that normally would have been done by men their husbands would not risk hiring because of the Occupational Safety and Health Act?

I would like to present to the committee a copy of a letter that I sent to the Secretary of Labor on the 6th day of April, 1972. The letter reads as follows:

DEAR SECRETARY HODGSON: I have a request from a gentleman in a small city in Western Nebraska. He is the proprietor of a gasoline filling station and he has four employees. He wants the information as to what he is required to do to be in compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Will you please send this to me so that I can forward it to him a statement giving him the full information that he needs?

Thank you very much, I am

Sincerely yours,

CARL T. CURTIS, U.S. Senator.

My letter, as you can see, was a request for information as to what a filling station operator with four employees would have to do to comply. The reply is not at all informative.

The interesting part is that it took the Department almost 6 weeks to reply, and then he sent this packet of materials which I hold in my hand, consisting of several volumes of regulations as printed in the Federal Register. The language for the most part is technical gobble

dygook. It is voluminous and complex. It is wrong and unfair to suggest to a man who works probably 12 or more hours a day servicing automobiles, trucks, and tractors for a living that he drop everything and spend the next week or two or more trying to make sense out of these regulations.

What I wanted the Secretary to do, and what I asked him to do, was to prepare a statement giving the full information that a filling station operator needs to meet the requirements of the law-not a code of technical standards that a safety engineer would use in designing and operating a refinery.

One of the major problems under this law is that no one has really tried to sit down and write a set of requirements in plain English that everyone can understand for a particular industry such as the thousands upon thousands of service stations operating across the United States.

I wish to include the reply of the Assistant Secretary of Labor. To save time, I will just read parts of it:

Enclosed are the following list of materials which should assist your constituent in complying with the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970: 29 CFR Part 1903, Inspections, Citations, and Proposed Assessment of Penalties;

29 CFFR Part 1904, Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses;

29 CFR Part 1910, Occupational Safety and Health Standards;

and so on.

It advises him where he can get additional information, and I will make reference to this later on.

(The letter signed by George C. Guenther, Assistant Secretary of Labor, dated May 17, 1972, follows:)

Hon. CARL T. CURTIS,
U.S. Senate,

Washington, D.C.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR,

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION,
Washington, D.C., May 17, 1972.

DEAR SENATOR CURTIS: This is in response to your letter of April 6, 1972 to the Secretary in which you ask for information pertaining to the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 on behalf of a western Nebraska filling station operator.

Enclosed are the following list of materials which should assist your constituent in complying with the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (copy enclosed):

CODE OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS

29 CFR Part 1903-Inspections, Citations, and Proposed Assessment of Penalties.

29 CFR Part 1904-Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses.

29 CFR Part 1910-Occupational Safety and Health Standards.

29 CFR Part 1975-Coverage of Employers under the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR PUBLICATIONS

A Handy Reference Guide to the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970

Recordkeeping Requirements under the Williams-Steiger Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970

Your constituent's interest in voluntarily complying with the Act is appreciated. If he needs more specific information, I suggest that he contact the nearest Occupational Safety and Health Administration Area Office, which is located at the following address: City National Bank Building, Room 630, Harney and 16th Streets, Omaha, Nebraska 68102, telephone 221-3276.

Very truly yours,

GEORGE C. GUENTHER, Assistant Secretary of Labor.

Senator CURTIS. I think the Department of Labor is just as puzzled as the service station operator who wrote to me. The Department itself doesn't understand the conflicting, vague, unintelligible and voluminous regulations. If the Secretary, who has this vast Department at his command, cannot come forth with a clear, understandable answer to my letter, how can we expect the people back home to find out?

I have tape-recorded evidence of inaccurate information disseminated by the Labor Department in enforcing the act in the field. The area director for OSHA in Nebraska has told groups of employers that the person who complains of a hazardous condition, leading to an OSHA inspection, must be "an employee or his representative." The law states that an employee or his representative may complain-with emphasis on "may"-but does not limit it to that. In fact, the area director's statement doesn't pass the test of logic, for he would be derelict if any private citizen volunteered information as to a dangerous working condition to him and he did not check it out.

This same area director tells his audiences that his compliance or inspection officers note the "attitude" of each employer, and gage the size of the fines levied on alleged violators accordingly. I have one employer in my State who, by those standards, must have the worst attitude found to date throughout the United States. This particular employer was fined more than $36,000 by OSHA. He didn't have any fatalities or serious accidents which brought the inspectors to his job site. He was having some labor union difficulties. He made one further mistake which was evidence of a "poor attitude." He wrote a letter to me, and I contacted the Labor Department about his case. The inspectors went back to his jobsite a short time later and threw the book at him, imposing the fine of more than $36,000 and announcing that fact publicly in a press release.

This raises another point which warrants the consideration of this committee. A newsman in Nebraska complained to me recently about the indictment-type press release which the Labor Department issues in cases of this type. The press releases tell only the prosecutor's side of the story. They are issued in the alleged violator's hometown or home State, for all of his neighbors to see. In the manner in which they are worded and issued they constitute one additional step that is being assumed by the bureaucracy in the chain of arrogant power: policeman, judge, jury, and news reporter.

I have made many trips to Nebraska in the last 6 months. Everywhere I go there are citizens, good citizens who want to obey the law, who come up and talk to me about the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Some of them have been cited and fined. Others hear about these citations and requirements, and it makes them wonder whether or not they can stay in business.

On one occasion, some 20 to 22 individuals who had had experiences with the administration of this law gathered in a room with me. One citizen said he was fined $85 because he did not have barricades around some floor openings. The reason the barricades were not up right then was that the phase of construction in which the workmen were engaged required the barricades to be down.

I ask you: Is that just?

I believe each department of Government has a responsibility to be just and fair with our citizens. The Department of Labor has been punitive and unfair.

One citizen reported that a deputy administrator of the act, a regional director and an area director were all present in the same meeting and they gave three different interpretations of their own regulations:

The area director stipulated that all guardrails had to be made out of 2 by 4 lumber.

The regional director stipulated that 2 by 4's or cable would suffice, but only those two pieces of material.

The Deputy Administrator finally said that anything that passes the 200-pound test criteria would be adequate, suitable guardrail material.

They thought this controversy was being cleared when one of the men said that any material or type of construction that will withstand 200-pounds plus is all right, whereupon the area director opened the book and said it had to be 2 by 4's.

How can the public or any businessman or his employees know what is right and what the law requires when even the administrators and enforcers do not know?

I also received a complaint about the regulation using the term "place of work." The regulations require that certain records and files must be kept at the jobsite. Yet the work at one site may be completed in a matter of 2 or 3 hours, particularly for a subcontractor on a building project. Two cases were mentioned where the citizen in question actually had the papers and records required, but he was cited because they were in his office rather than out where the work was being performed.

Mr. Chairman, I ask the question:

"Is the Department of Labor interested in safety and health, or are they out on a rampage of harassment?"

Another citizen reported that if he had an argument with a union. business agent, a Federal safety inspector comes out within 1 hour to see if he can issue a citation for something. I have several specific cases in my files where OSHA safety inspections were conducted while employers were having union organizing or negotiating difficulties. One establishment was inspected four times during such a period. This is a form of harassment in which the law and the Labor Department are being used as pawns.

The situation is so bad that one businessman said he did not dare to call the Occupational Safety and Health Office for information because it was an invitation to a fine; that when he tried to get information, he would have his insurance agent or somebody else call and ask for the information.