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With eight months in office now under his belt, President Donald Trump has had the chance to turn talk into walk, signing a number of orders and establishing budget priorities that roll back regulations on business.

It’s not surprising many unions and activists are unhappy with the changes, but not all builders are excited, either. Some are keeping their in-house policies, especially those relating to employee safety, at Obama-era levels.

“At this point, going backward is unthinkable,” said Dan Mehls, general manager of Mortenson Construction‘s Portland office.

Though businesses are generally in favor of deregulation, some in the local construction industry feel that gains related to safety and environment should stay in place.

Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt attorney Stephanie Holmberg, who leads the firm’s construction services team, said she’s heard some in-house counsels are advising clients in the construction industry to keep their higher standards in place regardless of what the president does.

“It’s a new world now, and that’s how a lot of business owners see it,” she said.

PLAYING IT SAFE

Construction companies have discovered there’s money to be made from fewer accidents, said attorney Jeremy Vermilyea.

“The reason it makes sense to me is, it’s smart business, in a lot of respects,” he said. “What contractors have figured out is there’s a lot of profit to be squeezed out of safety, and that, as a matter of business, safety pays.”

It used to be that everyone in the industry hated the notion of spending money on safety and training, holding safety meetings and putting together a good safety program, Vermilyea said. But contractors have figured out there’s lots of money on the back end to be made, in the form of reduced insurance rates and other benefits. SAIF Corp., for example, recently announced a retro return of $10 million for participating members of Associated General Contractors.

Three years ago the industry pushed back against rules dictating at which height ironworkers must tie off. Builders took the position that there were too many restrictions on business and voiced concerns that satisfying so many requirements would lead to lost profit. But what they’ve found is that the regulations save them money in the long haul through fewer accidents, lower workers compensation rates, and other opportunities.

What contractors value most is predictability and consistency, Vermilyea said. So despite generally favoring fewer rules, contractors might oppose changing laws after they’d had a chance to get used to them.

“If every business changed what they’re doing on the basis of a presidential order or directive from a public agency being rolled back, you’d have chaos and inconsistency,” Vermilyea said.

Another reason builders are wary of further deregulation where safety and environment are concerned is many Obama-era contracts are already in place and many have clean water or air conditions. So irrespective of what happens at the federal level, those contracts will remain in place.

“If you’re a contractor and you’re required to do something for one job, you want to be able to say you’ve got one set of rules across the company or the state. You don’t want to do one thing on one job and another thing on another job,” Vermilyea said.

The Obama administration produced a number of influential workplace safety and health regulations. They include OSHA requirements such as a new beryllium standard, which went into effect this year. A new standard limiting employee exposure to silica dust has drawn forceful pushback from builders and other businesses. OSHA will also institute new injury reporting and anti-retaliation requirements strongly supported by unions.

A number of other rule-changes were in-progress when Trump took over in January, including OSHA requirements relating to combustible dust and infectious disease.

Trump and the Republican-majority Congress have also moved to slash the budgets of various regulatory agencies and oversight bodies. For one, the Department of Labor, which operates worker safety and health programs, was proposed to be cut by 21 percent. Budget proposals call for the elimination of the Chemical Safety Board and cut job safety research by $100 million.

A TWO-FOR-ONE TRADE

One of Trump’s first actions as president was an executive order freezing in-progress final rules not yet in place. There’s also the “two-for-one” order he signed in his first days in office, which directed that for every new business regulation passed, two existing ones had to be eliminated. Unions and advocates for workers worry anti-bullying campaigns and workplace violence and immigrant training programs will be axed in budget negotiations.

Mike Salsgiver, executive director of AGC’s Oregon-Columbia chapter, said he’s generally in favor of eliminating onerous requirements on businesses, the passage of which increased during Obama’s tenure.

But a bright line for Associated General Contractors is worker safety, he said, though he hasn’t seen anything passed so far that would cause him to want to fight the White House.

“We would strongly oppose anything that would weaken an employer’s ability to provide workers safety,” Salsgiver said.

One issue he and his counterparts at other AGC chapters around the country have experienced this year is a shortage of government appointees in critical positions. For this reason it’s still too soon to assess the impact of the Trump administration on business, he said.

“Believe it or not, it’s still too early to tell. There are still so many unfilled positions in the administration, we still often don’t know who we’re supposed to be dealing with,” Salsgiver said.

Though there aren’t many contractors that perform federal work, federal grant money regularly has strings attached. However, not much has been approved by the current Congress. Much about construction’s view of the Trump administration will come down to how Trump delivers on promises to enable infrastructure construction.

“That’s a proposal that has all of us in construction understandably very excited,” Salsgiver said.