Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) plans a “hard” push next year to advance in the Senate just-passed House legislation that would force OSHA to issue workplace violence standards for the healthcare and social service sectors, saying the more than 30 Republicans backing the House bill suggest it could attract similar bipartisan support in the Senate.
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
The House appears poised to approve legislation that would force OSHA to quickly issue workplace violence standards for the healthcare and social service sectors, with Democratic and GOP lawmakers discussing potential compromises to bolster the bill’s support, even as the measure faces a White House veto threat.
Date:
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in just-released figures on annual workplace injuries and illnesses shows 2.8 million nonfatal incidents in 2018, the same level as 2017 and the first year since 2012 that the total rate did not decline.
Date:
OSHA’s launch of a new approach to weighting and measuring enforcement expands from the prior approach of focusing on the number of inspections to include other factors such as types of hazards, which a law firm says will put the agency’s inspection focus on high hazard areas and cases in line with OSHA’s enforcement priorities.
Date:
The safety advocacy group Food & Water Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) aiming to force release of data underpinning the agency’s final rule easing swine slaughter inspection mandates, a policy that the group has warned poses major risks to workers.
Date:
OSHA is believed to be considering bringing a case testing whether it can cite an employer using a voluntary permissible exposure limits (PELs) for exposures to hazardous substances even when the exposure is below the federal PEL, say legal observers who nevertheless argue companies would have defenses against such a case.
Date:
James Sullivan, the chairman and lone member of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), is optimistic that Congress will swiftly approve two nominations to join the panel so that it can once again have a quorum to resume its work reviewing contested OSHA workplace citations and penalties.
Date:
House Democrats used an Oct. 23 hearing to bolster pending legislation that they say would enhance safety protections for so-called “gig” workers, who are currently identified as independent contractors and not covered by OSHA safety requirements and other federal labor protections that apply to employees.
Date:
President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders (EOs) curtailing OSHA and other agencies’ use of guidance and other policy memos ramp up scrutiny of OSHA’s contentious approach to guidance, which has long drawn criticism, including from the agency’s inspector general (IG).
Date:
OSHA plans to hold a stakeholder meeting next month to hear input from companies on leading indicators used to preemptively address workplace health and safety, planning to use the information it receives to develop additional tools that might assist employers with taking more preventative and predictive steps to protect worker safety.
Date: