The Nation - News from April 21, 1988

The head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration vehemently denied a Senate committee chairman’s charge that the agency has been on a “retreat from safety” under the Reagan Administration. In responding to the charge by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), OSHA Administrator John Pendergrass, his assistant, Frank White, and Assistant Labor Secretary Michael Baroody also sought to counter two days of previous testimony before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee about delays in issuing new regulations and efforts by some in the Administration to weaken existing ones. Kennedy, who is chairman of the committee, also blamed some of those efforts on Vice President George Bush, saying that “Bush has personally supervised and pushed the effort to roll back health protection for workers.”