Employers and labor-aligned groups are renewing their longstanding arguments on the merits of OSHA’s expanded electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates in response to the Biden administration’s proposal to generally unwind a Trump-era rollback of those requirements, with unions again welcoming the rule while industry calls it unnecessary or dangerous.
November 15, 2026
Seeking to ramp up OSHA enforcement, House appropriators have approved a fiscal year 2023 spending bill for the Labor Department that would raise the agency’s budget by $100 million from current levels, exceeding the White House’s request by over $10 million and turning focus to the Senate, which has yet to begin its appropriations process for the coming year.
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OSHA is formally proposing to grant Massachusetts’ application for OSH Act authority to enforce workplace safety standards for state and local government employees following years of quiet negotiations, clearing a path for the Bay State to become the seventh with state-plan authority only for government workplaces.
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OSHA is floating a wide range of ways to tighten its decades-old lead exposure standards, including stricter medical removal requirements or even strengthening the permissible exposure limit (PEL) that forms the basis for many of the rule’s provisions, and is also asking stakeholders to weigh in on using state-level proposals in California and Washington as models.
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Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), ranking member on the Senate’s environment committee, used a June 22 hearing to warn EPA’s chemicals chief that her office is “drifting” into territory better regulated by OSHA, arguing that it should stay away from addressing personal protective equipment (PPE) and other worker protection measures.
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OSHA intends to issue its long-term healthcare industry standard for preventing COVID-19 infections in September, according to the agency’s newly updated unified agenda of future regulatory actions, while other key rulemakings are being delayed by months or more from their previously announced targets.
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OSHA’s long-delayed call for public input on possible updates to the decades-old lead exposure standard has cleared White House review, teeing up the first step of a rulemaking process the agency says will at least aim to tighten the blood lead levels (BLLs) that trigger medical removal of workers but could be much broader.
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A federal appeals court has rejected meat producers’ bid to revive litigation over Trump-era line-speed waivers for pork plants, holding that the employers should have tried to intervene in the case while it was still active instead of waiting until the Biden administration decided not to appeal a decision scrapping the program over worker-safety concerns.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has taken the rare step of announcing that its current members are deadlocked on a pending petition, unveiling a pair of opinions where the two members are at odds on whether claiming a violation occurred “on or about” a particular day gives OSHA leeway to file a citation more than six months later.
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National Nurses United (NNU) is pointing to the June 1 shootings of three employees and a patient’s spouse at a Tulsa clinic as further proof of the need for an OSHA workplace violence standard, and is urging the Senate to advance a bill that would mandate a final rule in just a year, cutting short what supporters say is the agency’s unacceptably long rulemaking process.
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