OSHA Funding Cuts Would Endanger Workers
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congress should reject the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for FY 27, Public Citizen said in a letter sent to Senate appropriators. The Senate should maintain OSHA funding at no less than the FY 26 enacted level of $629.3 million, because anything less would compromise the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission, Public Citizen said. Republicans are proposing to slash $47 million from the agency.
“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, farmworkers 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,” the letter reads.
The proposed cuts arrive at a moment when American workers are dying at rates that demand greater federal investment, not less. In 2024, more than 5,000 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. In addition, 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, OSHA would take 191 years to inspect every covered workplace once, compared to every 84 years in 1991. The FY 27 budget projects just over 22,000 inspections, one of the lowest annual totals in OSHA’s 55-year history.
“American workers cannot protect themselves from hazards they cannot see, control, or refuse without legal consequence,” said Aishah Johnson, worker health and safety advocate for Public Citizen and author of the letter. “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.”