Reforming the Workplace : Study of Self-regulation in Occupational Safety

Government regulatory agencies are too often tangled webs of bureaucracy, fraught with internal politics and in conflict with both industries and individuals. How to instigate and implement the needed reform is a timely issue that is currently being debated. Reforming the Workplace is an account of a successful program that is now a model for nationwide improvements in various regulatory agencies. Joseph Rees's focus is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which in 1982 announced a major shift in policy, from strict government regulation to self-regulation by industries with proven safety records. In California, this resulted in the Cooperative Compliance Program (CCP), an arrangement among labor unions, management, and California OSHA that became responsible for overseeing safety regulations at seven large construction sites throughout the state. In his detailed study of the CCP, Joseph Rees provides important empirical data and assesses the reasons the program succeeded. That success is so important, he demonstrates, because the CCP represents a different approach to reform, self-regulation, that can be extended to and tailored for many troubled agencies. Reforming the Workplace is a comprehensive study that will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of law and social policy in general, and of federal regulation policies in particular.