OSHA is ramping up its issuance of sector-specific guidelines for how a host of businesses including dentists, food and beverage providers, meatpacking plants and others can tackle workplace risks of COVID-19, though agency critics continue to push for binding emergency standards they say would better help reduce those risks.
November 15, 2026
Anthony Lacey
Anthony Lacey was the Managing Editor of Inside EPA and Environment Next until April 2021. He joined Inside Washington Publishers in 2004 as an associate editor on Clean Air Report, and previously covered a wide range of news for the regional Hull Daily Mail newspaper in his home country of England. He grew up in the northeast of England and earned a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of London, and a higher education certificate in newspaper writing from the NCFE awarding organization.
Archived Articles
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia is rejecting the AFL-CIO’s criticism that OSHA is “missing in action” on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic because it has not issued an emergency temporary standard to protect health care workers and several other measures, with Scalia defending a host of voluntary OSHA responses to the crisis.
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President Donald Trump’s executive order (EO) using the Defense Production Act to keep meat and poultry processors operating to maintain food supplies during the coronavirus pandemic is prompting legal and political pressure to enforce OSHA’s voluntary guidelines for protecting workers at the facilities who are at high risk of exposure.
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OSHA has issued guidance for how meatpacking facilities -- a major new source of coronavirus infections -- can help protect workers from exposure, including screening employees and using social distancing in the workplace, but critics say the guide is just the latest non-binding advice the administration is providing in lieu of necessary rules.
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OSHA has issued a non-binding “hazard bulletin” for grease traps that details how companies should protect workers against trap-related accidents, falling short of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) call for the agency to issue strict new rules for the traps after a child fell through a fast food venue’s grease trap cover and drowned.
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House and Senate Democrats have introduced companion bills that would force OSHA to quickly issue an emergency temporary standard mandating infectious disease exposure control plans in all workplaces to protect against COVID-19, expanding on an earlier bill that sought to establish the swift standard primarily for healthcare workers.
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OSHA, former Vice President Joe Biden and worker advocates are floating separate efforts to protect delivery workers from the threat of coronavirus, including new “tips” from OSHA to protect such workers and Biden calling for new agency policies to better protect delivery workers in addition to health care employees.
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Former Obama OSHA officials, House Democrats and others who have criticized the Trump administration for not issuing a temporary emergency standard to protect health care workers from the coronavirus pandemic are welcoming OSHA’s interim response plan to reduce such risks, but they are renewing calls for the agency to set a binding standard.
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A panel of three appellate judges is grappling with what remedy they could give OSHA if they side with the agency in a suit challenging a finding by OSHA’s independent review panel that raised the bar for citing companies for “repeat” workplace safety rule violations, as well as trying to resolve whether the lawsuit is moot.
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OSHA is aiming to ease healthcare workers’ access to respirators during the coronavirus pandemic by issuing two memos offering enforcement discretion of its respiratory protection standard for employers who must otherwise use NIOSH-approved respirators or devices from other countries.
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