June 25, 2026

Senate Should Not Slash Funding for OSHA

Dear Members of Congress:

Public Citizen, a national nonprofit consumer and worker advocacy organization with more than one million members and supporters, writes to urge the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies to reject the Administration’s proposed cuts to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for Fiscal Year 2027.  We write to call on the Senate to maintain OSHA funding at no less than the FY2026 enacted level of $629.3 million.  Anything less would compromise the agency’s ability to fulfill the Department of Labor’s mission to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of wage earners; improve working conditions; and assure work-related benefits and rights.

The FY2027 budget request proposes a 24.8% reduction in the Department of Labor’s discretionary budget authority, decreasing funding from $13.7 billion to $10.3 billion.  This funding reduction constitutes an act of austerity incompatible with the Department’s statutory mission.  Within that request, OSHA’s budget would be reduced by $46.9 million (7.5%), from $629.3 million to $582.4 million.  The House-passed bill proposes an even lower amount of $576.9 million.  These reductions affect the frontline infrastructure that safeguards American workers, and evidence clearly shows that such cuts will endanger lives.

The workers OSHA protects are the constituents of every member of this Subcommittee.  They are miners in West Virginia and Kentucky, construction workers in Texas and Ohio, farm workers in Florida and California, and poultry and warehouse workers across the rural South.

Their safety is not a partisan issue, and the decision before this Committee and Subcommittee should not be treated as one.

For more than a decade, OSHA has operated with nearly flat funding, despite a substantial increase in its mandate and responsibilities.

The Administration has described the budget request as a shift toward prioritizing compliance assistance.  In practice, this approach reduces the enforcement of the law and relies on employers to comply voluntarily.  However, decades of peer-reviewed research demonstrate that voluntary compliance, without the credible threat of inspection and penalty, does not reduce workplace injuries or deaths.  The evidence provided in this letter confirms that enforcement is effective, and reductions in enforcement result in preventable loss of life.

These cuts arrive at a moment when American workers are dying at rates that demand greater federal investment, not less.  In 2024, 5,070 workers were killed on the job, one death every 104 minutes.  An estimated 135,000 additional workers die each year from occupational injury, placing the true annual toll at approximately 140,000 lives, more than 380 workers every single day.  American private-industry employers reported 2.5 million nonfatal injury and illness cases in that same year.

The enforcement infrastructure meant to prevent these deaths is already dangerously thin. OSHA currently has one compliance officer for approximately every 93,877 workers.  At current inspection rates, federal OSHA would take 191 years to inspect every covered workplace once, compared to 84 years in 1991.  The FY2027 budget projects only 22,040 inspections, 27% below the FY2025 level and among the lowest annual totals in OSHA’s 55-year history.  These figures reflect the state of worker safety today, before any cuts take effect.  The proposed cuts would make each of them materially worse.

The case for maintaining OSHA enforcement funding is grounded in evidence.  A substantial body of rigorous, peer-reviewed research demonstrates a clear causal relationship between OSHA inspection activity and reduced workplace harm.

A landmark study published in the National Library of Medicine found that random OSHA inspections reduce injury rates by 9.4% and injury costs by 26% at inspected facilities, with no detectable negative effect on employment, sales, or firm survival.  A follow-up study published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics found that each random OSHA inspection prevents an average of 9% fewer serious injuries over five years, generating an estimated $125,000 in social benefit, approximately 35 times the cost of the inspection itself.  A separate analysis published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that first-time pre-scheduled OSHA inspections reduced plant fatality rates by 52-57%.  A 2026 study published in the Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology, which reviewed decades of research, demonstrated that workplaces subject to inspection are measurably safer than those that are not.  This evidence underscores the critical role of oversight in protecting workers’ health and safety.

The evidence is clear and compelling.  Reducing enforcement funding by 13.5% does not result in cost savings.  Instead, it increases workers’ compensation claims, lost productivity, and litigation costs.  Most importantly, it places the greatest burden on workers and their families, who face preventable injury and death as a result.  Three specific program cuts within the FY2027 request illustrate how that harm would unfold.

1. The FY2027 request cuts OSHA’s Federal Enforcement appropriation from $243 million to $210.1 million, a $32.9 million (13.5%) reduction that directly limits the number of inspections, investigations, and penalty actions the agency can conduct. With only 618 federal inspectors already covering a workforce of 155 million, this cut further narrows the deterrence effect that peer-reviewed research has identified as the primary mechanism by which OSHA saves lives.
2. The FY2027 request cuts OSHA’s Safety & Health Standards line from $18.5 million to $15.7 million and funds only 44 staff within OSHA’s Directorate of Standards and Guidance, down from 96 staff budgeted for this function in FY2012. This represents a 54% reduction in rulemaking capacity over 14 years.  The immediate and most consequential casualty of this cut is the Heat Injury and Illness Prevention Standard.  The proposed rule, supported by more than 43,000 public comments, would protect approximately 36 million workers from heat-related illness and death.  Heat kills and injures thousands of workers each year.  BLS data documented 48 heat-related worker deaths in 2024 and 3,890 heat injuries serious enough to cause workers to miss time on the job between 2011 and 2020.  Public Citizen has reported that a comprehensive heat standard could prevent at least 50,000 injuries and illnesses annually.  The 44 Directorate of Standards and Guidance staff cannot meaningfully analyze 43,000 public comments, complete the required economic and technical analyses, respond to litigation-ready objections from industry, and produce a legally defensible final rule, while simultaneously managing every other active rulemaking on OSHA’s agenda.  Eliminating funding for the Directorate of Standards and Guidance severely undermines OSHA’s capacity to establish and implement critical protections for workers exposed to significant hazards, beginning with the heat standard, and extending to other essential safeguards.  It is imperative that the Senate acts to restore this vital function.
3. Finally, the FY2027 request eliminates the Susan Harwood Training Grant Program in its entirety, removing $12.8 million in funding for competitive grants to nonprofits, community organizations, unions, and educational institutions for hazard-recognition training and worker-rights education targeted at workers in high-hazard industries. Since 1978, the Harwood program has trained approximately 2.1 million workers across 24 languages, with an explicit focus on small-business employees, low-income workers, immigrants, young workers (ages 16–24), and others who lack access to safety training. These are precisely the workers most likely to be killed or injured, and least likely to have the organizational infrastructure to assert their rights without external support. Congress has repeatedly rejected proposed eliminations of the Harwood program.  We urge the Senate to do so again.

The Administration proposed near-identical cuts to OSHA in its FY2026 budget request. Congress rejected them.  In FY2026, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted favorably to restore OSHA’s funding.  The final consolidated appropriations act funded OSHA at $629.3 million, only 0.5% below the FY2025 enacted level.  This bipartisan decision reflected an evidence-based judgment that OSHA’s enforcement, standards-setting, and training capacity are essential infrastructure for a functioning worker-safety system.  That judgment was sound and should be reaffirmed in FY2027.

The Senate appropriations process is currently the most consequential safeguard against the Administration’s proposed dismantling of the federal worker-safety system.  The House bill goes further than the Administration’s request, cutting OSHA to $576.9 million and eliminating the Susan Harwood grants outright.­­­  The Senate Appropriations Committee has both the authority and the demonstrated bipartisanship to reverse that trajectory.

Public Citizen urges the Senate to take the following actions in the FY2027 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act:

1. Fund OSHA at no less than the FY2026 enacted level of $629.3 million, preserving the baseline capacity Congress established as appropriate last year.
2. Restore OSHA Federal Enforcement to no less than $243 million, consistent with the FY2025 and FY2026 enacted levels, to sustain inspection rates sufficient to deter noncompliance and protect workers in high-hazard industries.
3.  Fund OSHA Safety & Health Standards at no less than the FY2026 enacted levels of $18.5 million, sufficient to support a meaningful rulemaking staff capable of completing the Heat Injury and Illness Prevention Standard rulemaking and other active proceedings.
4. Restore and fully fund the Susan Harwood Training Grant Program at $12.8 million, consistent with all prior enacted appropriations and Congress’s recognition that this program is vital for the nation’s most vulnerable workers; and
5. Include report language directing OSHA to maintain dedicated staffing and resources for the Heat Injury and Illness Prevention Standard rulemaking throughout FY2027, to ensure the agency does not deprioritize or delay this critical rule that will protect 36 million workers.

American workers cannot protect themselves from hazards they cannot see, control, or refuse without legal consequence.  The federal worker-safety system exists because the labor market, without government oversight, has never adequately priced the risk of death or serious injury at work.  The proposed budget cuts OSHA to funding levels that cannot fulfill the statutory mandate Congress gave it more than 50 years ago.

We are grateful for the Committee’s continued leadership on worker health and safety, and we remain available to provide additional information, data, or testimony in support of the appropriations process.

Sincerely,

Aishah Johnson, MPH
Workers’ Health and Safety Advocate
Public Citizen