Burgess Owens: “I am here to protest, first of all, the package, the packaging process, the rules process. Lumping five bills together…”

“I am here to protest, first of all, the package, the packaging process, the rules process. Lumping five bills together, four of them dealing with OSHA matters, there is an effort to trivialize, to minimize and to make invisible this particular, very serious action being taken against working families and organized labor. Working families need the protection of the government in the workplace. They are vulnerable and they are often victimized. The overwhelming number of business people in America are fair-minded, the small business people as well as corporations, but there is a percentage, which is far too large, that is greedy, selfish and always seeking to get more profits by exploiting workers. The highest cost of most of these businesses is the labor costs. To drive down the labor costs they will do almost anything. It is not enlightened self-interest, because they are really making profits, but they want more and more. This package that is being presented on OSHA I call the 'more injuries and more deaths package' because the end product of chipping away at OSHA provisions is to create a situation where more workers out there are left vulnerable to injuries and to death.”