A brief overview of occupaional safety and health administration (OSHA)

While there is debate over OSHA"s contribution to the substantial improvement of workplace safety in the United States, there is no doubt that its work has contributed to raising awareness of workplace safety and assisting the private sector in creating safe environments for its workers. As this brief overview will show, while OSHA"s mission to protect American workers has remained the same, its structure and operations have changed substantially over the past 35 years. One of the most important lessons of OSHA"s experience is that, while the Administration has established itself as a leader in promoting occupational safety, it still has many internal and organizational issues of its own and must continually reinvent itself to better serve the needs of businesses and workers. OSHA"s experience and experimentation with different philosophies and operations thus contains several lessons for the Armenian Labor Inspectorate as it also attempts to create standards and improve enforcement in the area of health and safety. (Author abstract)