Statement by Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX). Re: OSHA's Teleworker Advisory Opinion. Date: January 5, 2000. Source: Office of Rep. Frank Wolf. This document was created by scanning a paper copy, and converting to HTML.

Office of the House Majority Leader

ARMEY: Working Americans Don't Need OSHA Inspectors in Their Homes

House Majority Leader Dick Armey made the following comments about new federal regulations applying OSHA to workers who do any part of their job from home:

This is an outrageous extension of the Washington bureaucracy into the lives of working men and women across America. If a father goes home to care for a sick child and calls into the office a few times, does the OSHA inspector show up on his doorstep the next day? If a worker gets paged in the evening and answers the page from her home phone, does she have to let the OSHA inspector into her house? How many men and women who work at home a few hours a week to spend more time with their children will now have to fund time to attend a long training session somewhere to learn how to make their homes OSHA-compliant?

Parents working at home already have the greatest possible incentive for making their homes healthy and safe: the welfare of their own children. Its an insult to working Americans to assert that only the federal government can ensure that their homes are safe for themselves and their families.