June 8, 2012. At the invitation of U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), IPC President Dr. John W. Mitchell outlined existing and proposed regulations that negatively impact the electronics manufacturing industry. In a letter to Chairman Issa, dated June 1, IPC identified four issues that significantly burden the industry, further contributing to the continued decline of U.S. employment in the electronics manufacturing sector.
Proposed regulations on conflict minerals being developed by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) under Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act could impose burdensome reporting requirements on manufacturers that use tin, gold, tantalum, and tungsten in their products, IPC says, adding that although IPC supports the underlying goal of Section 1502, which is to address the grave human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), it is concerned that the SEC’s draft regulations place a great burden on the private sector with little regard for the impact they will have on small businesses and the relief they will offer the people of the DRC.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule, which replaced the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Inventory Update Reporting (IUR) rule, is another burdensome regulation with little benefit, IPC says, adding that it penalizes manufacturers for doing what the EPA and other environmentally conscious non-governmental organizations would normally consider laudable—recycling. By requiring all manufacturers that recycle byproducts to report those byproducts as “new chemicals,” the EPA creates burdensome, costly, and unnecessary regulatory requirements that discourage recycling. In addition, the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR)/IUR rule results in duplicate, and in some cases triplicate, annual reporting of many of these byproducts, which are already reported under the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program and under Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) biennial reporting.
IPC also cited its members’ increasing concerns that OSHA is stretching the boundaries of its authority to support expansive interpretation and enforcement of OSHA regulations. Two recent court decisions to overturn unwarranted citations and penalties, Caterpillar Logistics Services, Inc. v. Sec’y of Labor, No. 11-2958 (7th Cir., Mar. 20, 2012), and AKM LLC dba Volks Constructors v. Secretary of Labor, Civ. No. 11-1106, are indicative of these issues.