The Effectiveness of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Complaint Procedures

A GAO report dated April 9, 1979, discussed the complaint policies and procedures of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and made recommendations for improving those policies and procedures to the Secretary of Labor and the Congress. Based on information collected in OSHA offices in six representative States, the report found that virtually every complaint that OSHA and States received resulted in an inspection. However, most of the alleged hazards did not violate safety or health standards and did not involve high-risk industries. Because OSHA did not have sufficient manpower to make prompt investigations of all complaints, potentially serious hazards sometimes were not investigated in a timely manner, and high-risk industries did not receive adequate attention and followup inspections. GAO recommended that (1) the Congress amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to give OSHA authority to resolve formal complaints without inspections when the complaints do not involve potential hazards that can cause death or serious physical harm, and (2) the Secretary of Labor direct OSHA and the States to develop criteria for screening safety and health complaints. Effective September 1, 1979, OSHA revised its procedures for handling worker complaints to enable the agency to respond promptly to serious hazards and to deal with many less serious hazards without inspections. Although no evaluation had been made of the new procedures, OSHA inspection data for the first 4 months of fiscal year 1980 showed that complaint inspections comprised about 27 percent of OSHA inspection activity, a drop of about 8 percent from the previous year.