President Joe Biden has named three nominees to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) including a former United Auto Workers (UAW) safety official, after labor and industry groups as well as the body’s own inspector general warned that CSB cannot continue to operate with a single member.
November 15, 2026
OSHA is marking the 50th anniversary of its 1971 founding by touting its imminent emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 and its plans to boost enforcement related to the pandemic, while Democratic lawmakers are using the occasion to ready their latest push to overhaul and tighten the OSH Act.
Date:
OSHA has sent its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) rule for White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review, more than six weeks after President Joe Biden’s deadline for the ETS that observers expect will take effect within weeks and could include tiered mandates for specific industries.
Date:
Congress is stepping up its focus on the Biden administration’s worker protection policies, with senators advancing the nomination of Julie Su to be Deputy Labor Secretary while members of a key House subcommittee plan a hearing on OSHA’s development of an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19.
Date:
OSHA says employees’ negative reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine are “work-related” and thus subject to recordkeeping and reporting mandates if an employer “requires” the vaccination, a definition the agency says it will read broadly to include any workplace where unvaccinated workers face “adverse action.”
Date:
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) acting regulatory chief is defending a proposed rule that critics say includes burdensome hazard assessment mandates for industry that could aid EPA’s chemical regulations, saying the new provisions merely codify existing guidance and require industry to take “reasonable” steps.
Date:
Even as OSHA ramps up its COVID-19 enforcement, employers’ attorneys say the more than 300 already filed pandemic citations are facing an extraordinary level of legal push-back, with appeals pending for almost half of the cases -- potentially teeing up pivotal rulings on the agency’s authority to require infection-control measures.
Date:
In the highest-profile enforcement action so far under OSHA’s new COVID-19 national emphasis program (NEP), the agency is proposing to levy $136,532 in penalties, the largest in a pandemic-related case, against a tax preparation firm it says barred employees from taking infection-control measures.
Date:
OSHA is extending the comment period on its proposed hazard communication standard (HCS) update, giving industry critics more time to build legal and policy cases against the rule after one attorney said it appears designed to aid EPA chemical evaluations by forcing many chemical companies to conduct elaborate new hazard analyses.
Date:
The White House is backing House Democrats’ bill that would give OSHA a one-year deadline to craft a workplace violence standard for health care and social services workers, after a long-pending rulemaking process stalled during the Trump administration, though the legislation faces an uncertain path in the Senate.
Date: