(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Douglas Parker, President Joe Biden’s Occupational Safety and Health Administrator, is warning Congressional Republicans against massive cuts - which GOP President Donald Trump proposes - in job safety and health enforcement and in the research that backs it up. Parker raised those points at a House Sub-Committee hearing on job safety and health, called by the Republican-run House Workforce Protections Sub-Committee. Unlike other hearings by that panel’s parent committee - Education and the Workforce, questions from both sides of the aisle lacked Right-Wing fireworks. The future of job safety and health protections is in doubt. Republican witnesses before the panel - led by Pat Sughrue, the Health and Safety Director for the Cianbro Corporation of Maine, speaking for the Anti-Union and Anti-Worker Associated Builders and Contractors, proposed looking forward to preventing hazards, rather than enforcement. Other witnesses sang that line, too, if less strongly. Trump proposes a $50 million (13.5%) cut in enforcement money at OSHA for the fiscal year starting October 1st and a 36% cut in inspections nationwide. Trump would cut research on safety and health hazards, which Workers and OSHA Inspectors depend upon, by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) by 75% in that fiscal year. Trump, through multi-billionaire Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), wanted to completely kill NIOSH. But the United Mine Workers of American and furloughed NIOSH Workers led a mass protest in Downtown D.C. against that elimination. It drew so much publicity Congress retreated. “Thankfully, through the efforts of the public, including leading voices from Labor and management, this decision was reversed,” Parker said. “This non-partisan recognition of the critical role of a public institution in providing value to both Workers and employers was a welcome departure from the current climate of divisiveness.” But in his budget for fiscal 2027, Trump is trying again.

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