Ensuring Strong Labor Protections with the Stop Corporate Capture Act (H.R. 1507)

March 7, 2024 | Download PDF

Strong labor regulations are the cornerstone of protecting the American workforce. From ensuring safe and healthy jobs to health coverage and unemployment benefits, fair regulations are central to securing hard-fought rights in the workplace. As agencies continue to strengthen and modernize these regulations, workers must have a major voice in the rulemaking process.

The continued advancement of worker safeguards are under significant threat due to decades of neglect and underinvestment in the regulatory system. Public interest groups including labor unions and other worker advocates are consistently underrepresented in the public comment period due to a lack of transparency and the outsized influence of special interest lobbyists. Additional delays and bottlenecks prevent important workplace health and safety standards from being issued in a timely manner and can ultimately sway regulations in favor of big business. The ability of corporate interests to stall lifesaving regulations was evident in OSHA’s nineteen-year effort to protect workers from deadly silica dust, a rule that is now saving an estimated 700 lives annually. During the rule’s lengthy review process, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) met many more times with industry than with health experts and union representatives, stalling the OSHA effort and halting a similar silica rule out of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

To effectively center workers’ voices and overcome the lack of transparency and harmful corporate influence in crafting worker protection standards, the regulatory system must be updated and repaired. The Stop Corporate Capture Act (SCCA) offers a robust roadmap for democratization of the rulemaking process, empowering workers by increasing accountability of government agencies, limiting improper corporate influence, promoting sound science in worker safety and restoring the public’s ability to fully engage in rulemaking proceedings.

SCCA would increase transparency and accountability in the rulemaking process and promote social justice.

SCCA would require improved documentation of any changes made to draft rules after they are submitted to OIRA, including clear attribution of the source of those changes. Additionally, SCCA would establish an Office of the Public Advocate to promote public awareness of new rulemakings. This office would be tasked with researching and assessing the social equity impacts of the rulemaking process.

SCCA would promote scientific integrity and crack down on corporate influence.

Corporations disproportionately dominate the public comment process during new rulemakings, often using flawed and financially influenced studies and reports. SCCA would require disclosure of funding sources for all studies and reports provided in public comments and impose heightened disclosure requirements for studies that have been peer-reviewed. SCCA would also impose civil penalties on corporations that deliberately use false information to influence regulators during the rulemaking process.

SCCA would codify Chevron deference and empower agencies.

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court in Chevron mandated that the judicial branch defer to expert agencies’ statutory interpretation when Congress’ intent is not clear. Because the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is threatening to take that power away from agency officials who are responsive to the public and give it to unelected judges, SCCA would prevent that judicial power grab and center subject matter expertise in cases involving regulations, limiting the potential for political beliefs to influence the outcome of such cases.

For additional information, contact Rachel Weintraub at rweintraub@sensiblesafeguards.org and visit the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards’ page on the Stop Corporate Capture Act: https://sensiblesafeguards.org/issues/scca