California employers and their attorneys are looking to a pending advisory panel to secure eased mandates in an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to protect workers from COVID-19 recently adopted by the state’s OSHA (Cal/OSHA) standards board, arguing that numerous provisions appear impossible to comply with and potentially illegal.
November 13, 2026
The California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) standards board is poised to adopt an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to protect workers from COVID-19 amid 11th-hour calls by employer and industry groups to ease some requirements, and as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is ratcheting up restrictions on the public and businesses in response to soaring infections.
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California Chamber of Commerce representatives are raising concerns over the state OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) plan to adopt next month an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19, charging that regulators will release the proposed text of the rule for public review only five days before the standards board votes on it.
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The California Chamber of Commerce is warning its members the state’s newly enacted law mandating notices and other responses to workplace COVID-19 infections will be onerous and confusing to implement, while revealing that “cleanup” legislation is in the works to address what the group says are some of its most problematic provisions.
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Speakers at an Oct. 13 OSHA stakeholder meeting on its whistleblower program urged the agency to bolster outreach to employers and workers alike on how it operates, rework several of its rules on the subject and bolster its resources as complaints related to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to swell.
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California lawmakers are urging the state OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to speed up its investigations of potential COVID-19 workplace safety violations, and to focus its efforts on the highly vulnerable sectors of health care, food processing, agriculture and warehousing.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is citing more health care and other facilities for allegedly not protecting employees from COVID-19, most recently acting against six hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and a police department with more than $100,000 in proposed fines.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) has recently fined more than a dozen companies a total of over $500,000 for allegedly failing to protect workers from COVID-19, with the bulk being levied on a frozen food manufacturer and the temporary employment firm it uses at more than $200,000 each.
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California lawmakers have approved a controversial labor-backed bill to create an extensive list of notices that employers would have to provide to employees and others if a worker is exposed to COVID-19 and would authorize the state’s OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to shut down facilities if they are an “imminent hazard” to workers due to the virus.
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The California Chamber of Commerce is leading a push for California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) administration to intervene in a Cal/OSHA policy that would mandate companies to equip employees with N95 respirator masks to protect against wildfire smoke, saying it might be impossible to comply because of mask shortages due to COVID-19.
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