OSHA is formally launching its National Emphasis Program (NEP) for heat danger, directing its enforcement office to “proactively initiate inspections” and outreach targeted at workplaces in more than 70 industries deemed “high-risk” while expanding inspections of all industries to cover heat-related hazards and safeguards.
November 15, 2026
The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy is touting its efforts to limit the scope of OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare as the most significant victory in its fiscal year 2021 agenda, saying its single-sector focus led to almost 98 percent of the office’s regulatory cost savings for the year.
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A new Office of Inspector General (OIG) report says OSHA took few steps to address possible COVID-19 infection dangers to workers at other federal agencies since 2020, including a finding that it “neither tracked nor analyzed” data that could have provided insight into pandemic-related hazards facing those agencies’ staffs or workers at large.
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OSHA is starting a new enforcement initiative targeting employers who have failed to submit annual “Form 300A” summaries of their annual injury and illness data through the agency’s online disclosure tool, just as it is proposing to reestablish broad electronic reporting requirements that would expand the mandate to also cover records of individual incidents.
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The three federal appellate judges who will rule on labor unions’ bid to reinstate OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector raised doubts during oral argument both on the legal status of the rule and whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit would have jurisdiction to force OSHA to bring it back into effect.
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As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit prepares to hear labor unions’ suit that would force OSHA to revive its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector, employers’ attorneys are now warning that the agency is advancing overly broad plans for a permanent rule based on the ETS.
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OSHA is moving forward with a long-promised update to its lead exposure standard, based on what the agency says are “[r]ecent medical findings” showing that current blood lead level (BLL) limits are not stringent enough to avoid health hazards, just months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tightened its standard for high BLLs.
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The White House is asking Congress to raise OSHA’s budget by nearly $90 million in fiscal year 2023, with more than half of those funds earmarked for enforcement just as the agency is unveiling a new strategic plan calling for a 25 percent increase in workplace health and safety inspections by the end of the calendar year.
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OSHA is formally proposing to revive Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates for employers’ injury and illness data, arguing that the Trump administration’s rollback of that rule in the name of worker privacy is no longer needed because “recent advancements in technology” will allow it to scrub public disclosures of any identifying details.
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Federal district and appellate courts are wrestling with next steps in litigation over Trump-era policies lifting line-speed caps on pork slaughterhouses, even after the Biden administration accepted a decision scrapping that program and replaced it with “time-limited trials” for higher speeds that critics say continue to ignore worker safety and other concerns.
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