Although injury and fatality rates are falling, too many workers are being killed and injured on the job. In 2,000, 5,915 workers died from traumatic injuries, and more than 50,000 died from occupational diseases. More than 5.7 million workers were injured on the job.

On an average day, 153 workers lose their lives as a result of workplace injuries and illnesses, and another 15,600 are injured. That's one workplace death or injury every five seconds.

Millions of workers still lack OSHA protection - more than 8.39 million state and local public employees are not covered by OSHA. Millions of workers in the transportation industry do not benefit from OSHA protections.

For many serious hazards, standards are of out of date or non-existent. Since OSHA was enacted, comprehensive standards have only been issued for 29 toxic chemicals. Permissible exposure limits for toxic chemicals adopted in 1971 have never been successfully updated. Ergonomic hazards, the major source of workplace injury and illness, still have no standard, since OSHA's November 2000 ergonomics regulation was repealed by Congress and President Bush.

Other major safety and health concerns facing workers today include issues of work organization such as increased hours of work, intensification of work due to downsizing, increased paced of work and other changes in technologies and work processes. Many of these changes have been associated with repetitive strain injuries, stress, workplace violence and even fatalities.

Thousands of workers are retaliated against by their employers each year for raising job safety concerns or reporting injuries, fired or harassed simply because they want a safe place to work. OSHA whistle-blower and anti-retaliation provisions are too weak to provide any real protection to workers who try to exercise their legal rights.

At the workplace the move toward behavior-based safety and incentive programs is particularly alarming. Rather than examining how core work processes affect health and safety, behavior-based safety programs claim that an overwhelming majority of job injuries and illnesses are the result of the unsafe acts of workers themselves. Behavior-based safety programs attempt to place the responsibility for a safe workplace squarely on the backs of workers, rather than addressing workplace hazards.

And since the terrorist attacks on September 11, a whole new set of workplace safety and security issues have emerged.

OSHA is a small agency that does not have the funding or staff to oversee the safety and health of 110 million workers in 7.6 million workplaces under its jurisdiction.

Federal OSHA only has about 860 safety and health inspectors and can inspect workplaces, on average, once every 119 years.

OSHA's current budget (FY 2002) of $443.6 million amounts to $3.66 per covered worker.

Employer groups are fighting each and every attempt by OSHA to regulate any hazard, no matter how serious a problem it is for workers. Even negotiated rulemakings are being challenged in court. A coalition of steel and metal manufacturers recently challenged the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's steel erection safety standard, which was issued following negotiated rulemaking between the agency, labor, and industry.

It is very clear that many in the business community and right wing Republicans have a strong anti-regulatory ideology that allows no room for common sense regulation to protect workers and their communities.

In an extreme action, in response to employer demands, the Republican-controlled Congress and President Bush repealed OSHA's November 2000 ergonomic standard, which would have prevented these crippling injuries. While the Administration made promises that if the standard were repealed, it would pursue a "comprehensive approach" to ergonomics, in the year since the ergonomics standard was repealed, the Bush Administration has done nothing to protect workers from ergonomic hazards. ' Workers are left with no protection from the biggest job safety hazard in America.

The Bush Administration has demonstrated clearly that it has no interest in worker safety and health. In just a year's time, the Bush Administration has attacked the ergonomics standard, and gone back on its promise to address the issue. It issued a one-year stay on provisions of the new record keeping rule to prevent ergonomic injuries from being recorded. The Bush regulatory agenda makes clear that it is abandoning or delaying action on many important worker protection measures by withdrawing and halting action on dozens of standards. The budgets proposed by President Bush cut funding for the agencies involved in worker safety and health. In 2001, the Administration withdrew funding for 19 long-term training grants. In a direct slap in the i face to workers, the President nominated one of the industry's anti-ergonomic leaders, Eugene Scalia, as the Labor Department's top lawyer, clearly demonstrating his commitment to big business, rather than workers.