Hacker News Reader

Comment by hipadev23 | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

OSHA exists because workplaces routinely skip safety in favor of quicker and cheaper work sometimes in ways invisible to the regular employees. There's no chance to learn because a lot of these accidents kill or maim their victims to the point they can no longer work. If businesses could actually be trusted to not take those shortcuts in favor of profits maybe we could get rid of OSHA but it's been 50 years and it's not looking like voluntary compliance works.

We could fix this by having the states sue employers for workman’s comp cost recover as a result of failure to meet OSHA. Right now the profits are privatized but the costs of injury socialized

The vast majority of money paid out for workers comp already comes from insurance premiums paid by the construction companies. Safer contractors get lower premiums and too many accidents can make them uninsurable which usually drives them out of business.

Keep in mind all workers are paying premiums too. Socialized costs aren't only governmental. The point here is this is not punitive in a way that would lead the company to behave differently.

None of this will matter in a few years as project 2025 will effectively neuter any regulation and allow companies to do whatever they want. All that will hold them back from the most deplorable treatment of workers will be social media and spin affecting profits at that point.

While it’s true about lower premiums to a point I think the incentive model is still pretty strong in favor for having poor safety practices just to the point where you could get sued for negligence.

Yep. I’m not suggesting dismantling OSHA, in fact I prefer to benefit from hard-won lessons and advancements from our ancestors like the earth is round, vaccines are good, nazis are bad, and government regulations actually have a purpose that’s almost always rooted in safety.

I’m saying a majority of the population in the US is eschewing this knowledge in favor of re-learning things the hard way.

Even more sad is that it's not really a majority. Instead what you're seeing is minoritarian rule. The GOP hasn't won the popular vote for POTUS since 1988, and the filibuster all but guarantees you need a supermajority to pass any legislation, i.e. the minority can just allow our institutions to deteriorate. No majority necessary!

The GOP hasn't won the popular vote for President since 2004 (Bush had more votes than Kerry).

When a business has leverage over your livelihood, it's easily abusable. It's not as simple as saying "no" when the consequences include your family losing their home. This is why OSHA is so great, it rightly shifts the liability from the employee to the employer who is running the job and telling the workers what to do.

Some thing that stuck with me early on in engineering school, there was an ethics seminar, and the instructor asked me what I would do if I were told to sign off on say some sort of waste dump into a residential area. The thing that stuck with me is he didn’t let me off the hook when I said I would say no he said OK so they fire you and now they sue you and what do you do now?

Ha yeah that dump is going in you just dot your i’s and cross your t’s make sure you meet minimum requirements keep your emails and don’t let your professional insurance lapse because you know there will be lawsuits. That’s just yet reality of the job

There are about 5,000 worker fatalities in America every year, with a third of them being falls. When was the last time you fell? What would happen if there was no floor underneath to catch you?

Personally I'd imagine the vast majority of these 5000 people any given year are much fitter specimens than the typical HN user but due to the whims of fortune are not in a position to waste away in a desk chair like yourself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com