Space Occupational Safety & Health Administration / SPOSHA

Origins: The Need for Workplace Reform in a Post-Messer ‘Verse

During the rule of the Messers, workers of the Empire were often denied their rights to safe and healthful working conditions by unscrupulous employers and corrupt government officials. The push for rapid – and often reckless – expansion and growth led to cut corners and oversights, and countless workers suffered accident, injury, and death due to unsafe practices and a lack of care for workers’ well being.

After the fall of the Messer regime in the Revolution of 2792, workers once silenced by fear began to speak openly about the terrible working conditions that existed in the Empire. This cry for reform eventually reached the ears of the new government, and although powerful lobbyists opposed its creation for years, after much debate (and a few compromises) the UEE Senate finally passed the Space Occupational Safety and Health Act of 2807 and created the Space Occupational Safety and Health Administration (SPOSHA).

2807–2860s: The Consequences of Political Compromise

SPOSHA, unlike its namesake from Earth’s ancient history, was not given power to actually enforce its standards, but only the power to promote voluntary adoption. Though some senators claimed this restriction was due to legitimate concerns about the potential for government overreach and corruption, citing the late Messers’ tendencies, it was later revealed that lobbying corporations had blocked the bill from passing until a compromise was reached and the enforcement powers were removed.

In spite of that compromise, and for over sixty years, SPOSHA was able to achieve good success in advancing and ensuring workers’ rights to safe and healthful working conditions through educational media campaigns, outreach to corporations and other organizations to provide education and training, and persuading like-minded industry leaders to use their own influence to sway others.

As time wore on, however, unethical practices began to creep back into employer’s playbooks as they grew comfortable with SPOSHA’s inability to enforce its standards through fines or other punitive action. The trend of dismissal continued, and by the late 2860s, only those organizations that genuinely cared about workers’ safety paid SPOSHA any mind.

2860s–2900s: The Challenges of Constant Change

A second difficulty to SPOSHA’s mission became evident around that time: SPOSHA’s inability to update its standards quick enough to match the rapid pace of change in the ‘verse. Over the years, as various directors implemented one initiative or other, SPOSHA’s organizational structure grew to be cumbersome and slow-to-react, and the methods for setting and updating standards overly complicated, such that SPOSHA could no longer maintain constant relevance. The introduction of safety information and standards lagged so far behind the introduction of new technologies and methods that what was published one year may become dangerously outdated by the next, or even by the next quarter.

By the 2870s, even those organizations that had had a real commitment to workplace safety began to disregard SPOSHA’s too-often irrelevant standards, preferring to self-regulate according to their own knowledge and by watching the good practices of others.

At the turn of the century, in 2900, SPOSHA possessed little to no influence. By 2950, SPOSHA had long since quietly sunk from irrelevance to obscurity.

2950–The Present: New Leadership and a New Direction for the Future

After Laylani Addison’s ascension to Imperator in 2950, she directed her administration to audit every regulatory body in the UEE government in preparation for her promised relaxing of regulations on AI research. The Addison administration’s audit eventually reached SPOSHA by 2951, and, upon seeing its utterly wasteful state, promptly fired the entire staff and began looking for a new director – one with the right qualifications, skills, and experience to handle the daunting task of essentially rebuilding SPOSHA from scratch.

After over a year of fruitless searching, by late 2952 the administration finally gave up on finding a qualified replacement and simply picked a name at random out of their mobiGlass contacts. The one chosen to be the new Director of SPOSHA was Nick Rolept, a junior staffer who happened to working at the Senate for an unpaid summer internship. What he lacked in any kind of actual qualifications or skills, he made up for by having a silly-sounding name – he often went by the nickname theNecrolept to reference how often he would suddenly and inexplicably die while playing his favorite still-in-alpha video game, Space Resident™ – and by having a real vision for achieving what SPOSHA could really do, and indeed, was founded to do:

To ensure safe and healthful working conditions for workers of the ‘verse by setting and maintaining standards; promoting and certifying their voluntary adoption; and providing training, outreach, and educational media.

Now, going forward into the future, SPOSHA is poised to reclaim its former glory, once again become a shining beacon of hope, and lead the ‘verse in protecting the rights of workers everywhere to enjoy a high degree of occupational safety and health.