OSHA says it has secured a settlement agreement with several subsidiaries of the food-processing giant JBS Foods that will mandate infection-control plans at seven plants across six states, after COVID-19 outbreaks at two of the facilities in 2020 led to seven worker deaths and hundreds of confirmed infections.
November 15, 2026
An OSHA oversight hearing by a House labor subcommittee highlighted the gulf between Republicans and Democrats on the agency’s regulatory plans and its requested funding for fiscal year 2023, underscoring both continued tensions over the Biden administration’s COVID-19 rules and the high bar any budget increase will face in the current Congress.
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OSHA is giving stakeholders an extra 30 days, until June 30, to file comments on its proposal to reinstate Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates for workplace injury and illness data, following requests from employers and unions alike for more time to consider and respond to the plan.
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Unions and employers used the final round of written comments on OSHA’s planned long-term COVID-19 standard for healthcare facilities to renew and supplement their arguments on the scope of the rule, with labor groups offering an array of claims to support strict mandates while industry focused on responding to specific questions raised by officials.
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Oregon OSHA has finalized what it says are the nation’s “most protective” work-safety rules for heat danger and wildfire smoke, largely maintaining proposed versions issued earlier this year but with some revisions, as Gov. Kate Brown (D) is touting the rules as a “national model” for other safeguards -- such as OSHA’s pending federal heat rule.
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OSHA officials used a recent whistleblower stakeholder meeting targeting the healthcare sector to tout what they said has been a major expansion of the program’s enforcement staff and resources during the Biden administration, even as speakers from labor and safety groups urged officials to pursue much more aggressive policy reforms.
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The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is seeking comments on a strategy to bolster personal protective technology (PPT) for healthcare workers, saying the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to support not only protective gear in the sector but technology supporting it like fit-testing and materials research.
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A federal appeals court has denied a Kentucky mining firm’s bid to narrow or even scrap as unconstitutional the statutory ban on warning employers or workers of imminent safety inspections, rejecting the company’s argument that the restriction -- which appears in both the Mine Safety and Health Act and the OSH Act -- violates its free-speech rights.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has rejected a Florida contracting firm’s argument that the multi-employer doctrine that allows OSHA to cite several companies at the same worksite for a single hazard conflicts with precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, even as it overturned the citation at the heart of the dispute.
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Senate Democrats have unveiled their counterpart to a House bill that would give OSHA a one-year deadline to craft a long-sought workplace violence standard, after it passed the lower chamber by a bipartisan margin in 2021, giving supporters hope that it could overcome a filibuster in this Congress although so far it has no Republican co-sponsors.
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