Stakeholders are warning that OSHA faces a wave of impending whistleblower complaints about unsafe workplaces as businesses in some states begin to reopen after months of limited operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they are urging the agency to devote more resources to processing virus-related complaints.
November 15, 2026
House Democrats plan to make another push for an OSHA emergency infectious disease standard in their next round of COVID-19 legislation, with the top lawmaker on the labor committee arguing that a binding standard is necessary for states to responsibly reopen nonessential businesses.
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OSHA is promising to exercise “discretion in enforcement” if employers are unable to comply with various testing, training, inspection and other safety mandates due to the COVID-19 pandemic, writing in a new memo that there will be no penalties for those violations as long as businesses make “good faith” attempts to comply.
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The Obama-era head of OSHA is calling for the agency to quickly issue an emergency infectious disease standard and cite employers who “egregiously” ignore Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance on airborne diseases in order to protect health and other works from the coronavirus.
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The Supreme Court’s June 2019 decision curtailing judicial deference to agencies’ regulatory interpretations could make OSHA efforts to reverse prior policies through new guidance vulnerable to court challenges because judges interpret it as bolstering limits on imposing an “unfair surprise” to stakeholders, attorneys say.
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A federal district judge says in a new order that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) appears to have “engaged in arbitrary decision-making” by not addressing worker safety concerns in its rule revising swine slaughterhouse line speeds, allowing worker advocates to proceed with their challenge to the policy.
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Construction and contracting firms are urging OSHA to soften its guidance on how the sector should record workplace absences due to COVID-19 during the current pandemic, warning that the current requirement to determine if an infection is “work-related” will put employers “in an almost impossible position.”
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State attorneys general (AGs) and employment lawyers are opposing the White House Office of Management & Budget’s (OMB) call for input on potentially tightening due process protections in civil enforcement actions at OSHA and elsewhere, arguing that there is no rational or legal basis for any such reforms.
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OSHA has reworked weeks-old guidance for waste companies where workers could handle material contaminated by COVID-19 to say that the virus “does not require special precautions” other than those usually needed for waste handling, reinforcing claims by waste firms that their workers are already protected.
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The Trump administration has blocked language in Democrats’ proposed coronavirus response bill that would force OSHA to set a temporary “emergency” standard to supply healthcare workers with protective gear, and the hospital industry is warning that the gear is not available in the quantities an OSHA rule would require.
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