Eight years after proposing it, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has finalized a worker safety rule. The final rule mandates employers pay for worker personal protective equipment (PPE). OSHA published the rule in the Federal Register on Nov. 15, and it is to take effect Feb. 13, 2008.

Currently, 95 percent of worker PPE is paid for by employers, according to OSHA. The new rule would mandate the remaining five percent of covered equipment be paid for by employers. Although the rule would expand employer pay of PPE only marginally, the impacts of the rule will be significant. According to an OSHA assessment, the rule will prevent more than 21,000 injuries. OSHA estimates compliance costs to be $85.7 million annually.

Unions welcomed the rule. In a statement, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, "America's working men and women deserve the proper equipment to keep them safe on the job, each and every day."

Representatives from National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce voiced their opposition to the rule to White House officials. On Oct. 23, officials from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) met with representatives from NAM and the Chamber to discuss the rule while it was being reviewed by OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). According to material submitted to OMB during the meeting, the groups opposed the standard, claiming, "Through employee-employer negotiations, employers already pay for the majority of personal protective equipment used in the workplace. But to mandate that they pay for all of it is pure economic regulation and well beyond the Secretary [of Labor]'s authority."

No official from OSHA or the Department of Labor was present at the meeting. According to Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review, a representative of the issuing agency must be invited to review meetings such as the one OMB held on Oct. 23. On Oct. 29, Reps. George Miller (D-CA) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) wrote to OIRA Administrator Susan Dudley expressing concern with the conduct of the meeting. Since then, OSHA officials have indicated a scheduling conflict prevented them from attending.

In advance of OSHA's announcement of the PPE rule, labor groups and occupational health advocates were critical of the length of time OSHA had spent on the rulemaking. The proposed rule was issued in March 1999. A lawsuit from AFL-CIO and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, filed in January 2007, prompted OSHA to act. Celeste Monforton, an occupational health expert at the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at the George Washington University, said the rule had been in "perpetual limbo" until the unions filed suit. Sweeney, of the AFL-CIO, said, "It is unfortunate that nine years have passed since the rule was proposed."

The delay fit into a pattern of OSHA inaction during the Bush administration. The PPE rule is only the second significant standard issued by OSHA during the Bush administration. (The other concerned exposure to hexavalent chromium.) OSHA has published 25 final rules since Bush took office, most of which have been non-significant.