It's no secret that the Bush administration prefers voluntary, collaborative efforts on the part of companies to improve their safety records. Since the administration took over in 2001, the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has forged hundreds of agreements with companies and business associations to improve their safety records while rulemaking has been sharply curtailed.

Labor unions and some watchdog groups would rather OSHA play its more traditional role, issuing regulations.
"We have a preference for an actual regulation that is enforceable and fair across the board," said J. Robert Shull, senior regulatory policy analyst at OMB Watch, a nonprofit group funded mostly by foundations that has three union officials among its 15 directors.
Since fall 2000, the agency has not been regulating in the traditional sense, OMB Watch found in a series of reviews. Twenty-four rules that were in some stage of development on OSHA's agenda were withdrawn by the administration. Nine rules were completed, but none were major and several were related to recordkeeping.

"It's a meager output. It's the black hole of government," Shull said. "OSHA cleared the decks of its agenda. Just swept it clean." His group maintains that gutting the agency's regulatory agenda is a sop to business, which won a big victory when the Bush administration cancelled a final rule to protect workers from ergonomic injuries.
Pro-business governments in the European Union consider OSHA as a model for the promotion of “a new approach” and soft law.

• Read the full paper from the Washington Post
• Read the full report from OMB "The Bush Regulatory Record - A Pattern of Failure"