| This study is about government regulation and its reform. Beginning in 1979, the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (CAL/OSHA) tested a new regulatory policy, the Cooperative Compliance Program (CCP), at seven large-scale construction projects. The CCP is a three-way arrangement involving CAL/OSHA, construction unions, and construction companies with exemplary in-house safety programs. The CCP's key feature is a jobsite labor-management safety committee that assumes many regulatory responsibilities, thus allowing CAL/OSHA to cease routine compliance inspections. The program's keynote is self-regulation.; First, the study focuses on the policymaking level to determine the CCP's origins--what made regulatory reform happen. The analysis gives special attention to OSHA's administrative development, including the role played by industrial and construction unions in that development, especially their contrasting approaches to occupational safety regulation and its reform. Second, the study examines what it takes to effectively assume responsibility for occupational safety, and participate in the CCP, by detailing the development of two corporate safety programs regarded as among the very best in the construction industry. In doing so, the analysis considers the evolution and interplay of law (the Occupational Safety and Health Act), economic incentives (the workers' compensation system), and professionalism (safety engineering). Finally, the study focuses on the CCP's implementation, which, by all accounts, has been a success. Analyzing why, the study examines the labor-management safety committees operation at the seven jobsites as well as CAL/OSHA's role in monitoring the program. |
