Maintaining the Failure of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration: State–Corporate Crime Through Tolerance and Permission

Abstract

This research explores the failures of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to effectively protect workers in the United States. Utilizing a secondary analysis of OSHA records, OSHA regulations, and scholarly and journalistic accounts of occupational violence, this research highlights the role of the state in creating and recreating the structure within which work-related health and safety regulations are routinely violated. Although we acknowledge that regimes of permission emerge from state–corporate symbiosis, our purpose here is not to explore the symbiotic nature of the relationship between the state and corporations which has led to the failure to protect workers. Instead, this research seeks to expose the consequences of the symbiosis, a regime of permission that allows corporations to maximize capital accumulation by ignoring health and safety regulations.