00:00With that, I yield to my ranking member for an opening statement.
00:04Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for your testimony today.
00:09Over the past hundred days, President Trump and his administration have decimated the very agencies and resources that have kept workers safe and healthy.
00:19Now, committee Republicans are following suit by holding this hearing to attack the work of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
00:27We should all be able to recognize a basic truth.
00:32No job should ever be a death sentence.
00:34Workers deserve to come home to their families at the end of the day, not in pain, not in fear, but alive and well.
00:43To protect that fundamental right, Congress passed landmark safety laws and established important agencies like OSHA, the Mind Safety and Health Administration, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
00:57But all of these three agencies have been chronically underfunded since their inception.
01:03And largely because of that, they have long struggled to robustly defend workers from preventable injuries, illnesses, and death at work.
01:14In the 54 years since it was established, OSHA has made great strides, but it remains hamstrung by an overly complicated regulatory process, persistent underfunding, and the long uphill battle of updating standards to reflect scientific advances.
01:32Despite these constraints, OSHA took action during the Biden administration and proposed common-sense safeguards, like the heat-stress rule, to prevent tragedies in the workplace.
01:44Rather than build on that progress, the Trump administration is now threatening to dismantle any government program or agency that prioritizes workers' health and protects workers on the job.
01:56At one point, DOGE targeted at least 11 OSHA field offices to be permanently shut down, including the only office in Louisiana, located in what is known as Cancer Alley, due to the presence of over 200 chemical plants and the high rates of cancer in the area.
02:18MSHA has at least 30 field offices slated for closure on DOGE's hit list, including an office created in response to the upper-big-branch mine disaster.
02:31And while we face a surge in child labor violations, DOGE is still cutting staff and planning to close 20 wage and hour division offices.
02:41Shutting down field offices will endanger workers' lives by cutting off the public from DOL's most vital services.
02:51This also means severely limiting the geographic coverage of inspectors and investigators, enforcement activities against law-breaking companies, and further restraining an already resource-strapped DOL.
03:03And it doesn't stop here.
03:05On April 1st, nearly the entire NIOSH workforce was placed on leave with the promise of being fired later this summer by HHS Secretary Kennedy.
03:19In one sweeping move, Secretary Kennedy put 50 years of scientific expertise and public health research at risk.
03:27DOGE kicked out NIOSH staffers, paid them to not work,
03:31and then after realizing that effectively eliminating NIOSH was a mistake,
03:37the Trump administration started to reverse course and rehired only some of those staff.
03:44This entire circus is wasteful, expensive and harmful for workers,
03:49a description that could only apply to most of DOGE's actions.
03:54Workers are not expendable.
03:56They are not a statistic.
03:57OSHA and NIOSH do the essential work of keeping workers safe.
04:02We must fund them properly and strengthen the laws that support their mission.
04:06In my own district, we are already feeling the consequences of these cuts.
04:11The University of Minnesota's Midwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety
04:17is one of just 18 NIOSH-funded education and research centers in the nation.
04:23It trains the next generation of workplace safety experts in the region
04:28and helps protect our workers in high-risk industries.
04:33Without NIOSH, the invaluable research and workforce development provided by that center
04:39and others like it across the country will be lost.
04:42That means fewer trained medical and safety professionals,
04:47less research capacity to prevent vital accidents,
04:50and ultimately more injuries, more deaths, and more grieving families.
04:55Democrats are committed to honoring those workers who have been harmed or killed on the job,
05:02not just with words, but with action to change the system.
05:05Recently, Ranking Member Scott, Representative Courtney, and I reintroduced the Protecting Americans Workers Act,
05:14a bill that would make long-overdue improvements to the enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
05:22This bill would expand coverage to millions of workers currently excluded from the law's protections
05:27and strengthen whistleblower protections.
05:29These reforms are critical to preventing the most serious violations that endanger workers' safety.
05:36Democrats are also championing legislation to protect health care and social workers from violence,
05:42to make mining safer, and to prevent illness, injury from extreme heat.
05:47This is what it means to have an agenda to ensure safety.
05:52And with that in mind, I hope that we can have a productive discussion today.
