ПОНЯТИЕ И ОСОБЕННОСТИ ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬСТВА ОБ ОХРАНЕ ТРУДА США

Abstract

This article reviews topical issues of the US occupational safety legislation. The author highlights the following development stages for the legislative rules on occupation safety in the USA: 1) creation of the US occupational safety legislation in XIX century; 2) the US occupational safety legislation in XX century; 3) the US legislative rules on occupational safety adopted in XXI century. Special attention is paid to international standards on occupational safety and health, constitutional frameworks, federal and regional legislation on occupational safety. The US Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is analyzed in depth: the adoption purpose, its scope, rights and obligations of employees and employers in the occupational safety sphere, responsibility for the violation of the occupational safety standards. The author groups all US states with regard to the legislative regulation on occupational safety relations as follows: 1) states where regional laws apply to the employees of private and state organizations; 2) states where regional acts are adopted only in public sector, while the US Act of 1970 is in effect in private sector; 3) states, where there are no special regional legislative acts and the US Act of 1970 is in force. The methodological framework of the research includes comparative and legislative analysis of the occupation safety legislation, which is one of the most important methods of the juridical science that allows identifying common pattern of legal development of the state for the purpose of theoretical understanding of various legal phenomena, as well as the necessity to resolve practical tasks facing not only national systems, but also the international community. Scientific novelty of the research involves highlighting the system of the US occupational safety legislation, which, being part of a labor legislation, represents a set of legislative acts that regulate the relations on ensuring the employees’ lives and health in the process of engaging in labor activity. At the same time considering the issues on occupational safety legislation of two federal states — the Russian Federation and the United States of America, with reference to each other and in comparison, can allow taking into account and summarizing the experience of the two leading countries in the development and adoption of new regulatory acts that deal with occupational safety both inside the state — on the federal and regional levels, and on various levels of international legal regulation of labor.