On Thursday, May 15, the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections held a hearing titled “Reclaiming OSHA’s Mission: Ensuring Safety Without Overreach.” The hearing highlighted Biden-era Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules that should be rescinded, and other rules, such as a potential Tree Care standard, that should be pursued.
Among the witnesses at the hearing was TCIA’s own Ben Tresselt, President of Arborist Enterprises in Lancaster County, PA, and a longtime member and former Chair of the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA) Board of Directors. Ben also serves as TCIA’s voting representative to the ANSI Z133 Committee and chairs the Z133 Task Group on Cranes and Knucklebooms.
Ben’s testimony focused on the need for a specific OSHA tree care standard, tailored to the industry’s unique hazards, to replace the current patchwork of standards designed for other sectors incorrectly used by the agency to regulate arborists. As he highlighted in his testimony, “[t]ree care is highly technical and high-risk work requiring skilled professionals, specialized equipment, and constant attention to safety… our industry faces an unacceptably high fatality rate—estimated to be 10 to 30 times higher than the national average”. Despite this, OSHA continuously relies on ill-fitting enforcement standards and the catch-all general duty clause for its regulatory enforcement efforts. This creates confusion, imposes unnecessary burdens on employers, and ultimately fails to improve safety. Ben’s testimony asserted that “[a] dedicated standard wouldn’t expand the rulebook—it would clarify it, by replacing outdated, misapplied rules with ones tailored to our work… this is the kind of smart, focused standard OSHA was designed to deliver—one that protects workers, supports responsible businesses, and makes regulation more effective.”
Members of the subcommittee were receptive to the testimony, especially Subcommittee Chair Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA), Chair of the full committee Tim Walberg (R-MI), and Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Kevin Kiley (R-CA), who engaged Ben with follow-up questions and comments in support of the tree care industry and TCIA’s decades of advocacy for a specific OSHA standard. Those exchanges can be viewed by using the embedded links.
Most notably, Rep. Kiley, who does not serve on the Subcommittee, joined the hearing to reiterate his support for a tree care standard, saying, “[w]e did a bipartisan letter on this last year… I would hope that OSHA would move expeditiously to finally make this happen.” Rep. Kiley asked Ben to share his experience serving on OSHA’s 2020 Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) Panel, allowing Ben to highlight the panel’s consensus that the ANSI Z133 standard should serve as the framework for a federal tree care standard. Ben spoke about the real-world implications for the industry, telling Rep. Kiley that “the hazards we face in tree care are tremendous,” and that employers like him “want people to go home at night…to their kids and their families.” He emphasized that “we’ve been fighting for this for 20 years… we aren’t looking to be regulated—we’re looking to be helped, because we want to keep our people safe.” He added, “[w]e want to do the things that are right for our people, and we need OSHA’s help… we’re not asking OSHA to reinvent the tree care wheel, we are asking them to paint it their color, make it something that we can all use to keep people safe.” The full exchange between Rep. Kiley and Ben can be viewed here.
Your Voice in Washington. TCIA advocates Washington on behalf of all our members, and the tree care industry at large. We work to ensure lawmakers understand the unique challenges and risks of our profession, while pushing for industry-specific legislation that supports safety, growth, and operational success. Learn more about TCIA’s advocacy efforts.
