SBA, Industry Protest General Duty Stance In Slips/Falls Rule

The Small Business Administration is urging OSHA to take seriously industry's concerns that the agency's proposed fall protection standard goes too far by including a “general duty” type enforcement clause, and improperly opens the door to using the standard to address combustible dust. But union officials want OSHA to go a step further and explicitly link the standard to regulation of combustible dust. The stakeholders raised the competing concerns in comments on OSHA's proposed regulation on protections for slips, trips and falls, also commonly called the walking-working surfaces rule. The p