Organized labor points to newly culled data on occupational fatalities among Latino workers in the United States as particularly alarming given their contrast to much lower rates in the general worker population, exacerbating worries that Latinos are lagging behind in safety and health protections as well as in knowing about worker rights.
Industry advocates are voicing strong support for a measure put forth by Rep. Vickly Hartzler (R-MO) to alter OSHA enforcement by letting employers sidestep citations for non-serious regulatory violations as long as the alleged hazards are abated during a “grace period,” but there is also concern that the bill if enacted might discourage employers from contesting citations they believe are flawed.
A cluster of congressional Democrats is urging the White House to disclose the administration's estimated time frame for allowing publication of OSHA's draft proposed rule tackling beryllium health hazards -- as the planned regulations, which had been expected out last year, remain stuck in the review process at the Office of Management and Budget.
OSHA has quietly issued a policy directive that clarifies investigative standards for the agency's Whistleblower Protection Program (WPP) to reflect OSHA's legal position that reasonable cause, as opposed to preponderance of evidence, is the only threshold to issue a merit finding that calls for further probes into a whistleblower claim.
Democrats on Capitol Hill, strongly backed by organized labor leaders, are pushing to restart debate over legislative efforts to make sweeping changes to the OSH Act with the aim of making it more effective, but face renewed backlash from industry over the proposed revisions and a GOP majority in both houses largely hostile to exploring the issue.
OSHA says regulators have taken into account numerous new technologies available to building industries as it rolls out a rule adding a subpart to its construction standards to tackle confined space hazards much like the general industry regulations designed to ensure protections for workers in enclosed areas, but the rule differs in significant ways from the existing standards.
A major nurses group has floated wide-ranging recommendations for health care employers to prevent incidence of “incivility” and “bullying” in the workplace, alongside measures to stop workplace violence, perhaps breaking new ground in a policy debate over the extent to which OSHA can exercise its enforcement authority to prevent occupational injuries stemming from such problems.
OSHA continues to hone its enforcement and regulatory emphasis on fatalities and severe injuries in communication tower building and maintenance, with Deputy Assistant Secretary Jordan Barab on Tuesday saying the agency has observed “an alarming increase” in fatalities in the fast-growing industry and assuring safety advocates that OSHA has become deeply engaged in the issue.
OSHA will “very soon” publish in the Federal Register a final rule tackling confined spaces in construction, a senior agency official tells Inside OSHA Online, signaling that the long-sought regulatory action to align general industry confined spaces standards with requirements in building activities is on the verge of being completed.
A Republican congresswoman, acting upon what she says are numerous complaints from constituents that OSHA is going into work sites and citing up to the maximum possible penalties for “very minor” alleged regulatory violations, has filed a bill that effectively would bar OSHA from issuing such penalties before employers have a chance to fix problems identified by compliance officers.
A House Democrat from the Houston area has re-introduced legislation mandating that OSHA require logs of workplace injuries across the entirety of multi-employer work sites, regardless of whether a contractor or other type of temporary staffing company directly employs the workers as opposed to the site-controlling employer.
A national umbrella group of worker advocacy organizations on Thursday (April 23) urged federal and state law enforcement officials -- including the Justice Department working in concert with OSHA officials -- to increase the number of criminal prosecutions brought in severe safety and health cases, particularly ones involving fatalities and alleged willful violations of the OSH Act.
NIOSH's recent Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) of a poultry plant in Maryland found “significant problems” related to musculoskeletal disorders, according to OSHA, which lauds the research agency's evaluation program in general and indicates that results of its probes would broadly benefit stakeholders, though without saying whether such findings could be used specifically for enforcement or rulemaking activity.
OSHA's recent citations against a New York supplier of plastic balls used in hydraulic fracturing, alleging process safety management (PSM) violations and other hazards, appears to underscore the agency's heightened attention to safety in the large-scale use of chemicals, with one OSHA official lodging concern about the storage or use of more than 1,000 pounds of formaldehyde.
The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public input on whether sufficient scientific evidence exists to back its proposal to add 1-bromopropane -- a chemical that occupational health advocates have long urged OSHA to regulate in the workplace through exposure limits -- to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for reporting of chemical releases, a move EPA is justifying based on research suggesting the substance is a carcinogen worthy of tracking on TRI.
OSHA is pushing ahead with an effort to refocus scarce investigative resources toward priority areas through a data-driven system the agency calls “inspection weighting,” which uses historical data to allocate “enforcement units” for carrying out labor-intensive inspections -- an approach some in industry consider a creative approach to ensuring the agency sets aside resources for complex probes instead of simply racking up inspection numbers.
OSHA and NIOSH are working jointly to address the potential for nicotine poisoning among tobacco workers, in another sign the agencies are ramping up their collaboration to tackle health effects in the workplace from exposures both to green tobacco and cigarette smoke and vapor, including concern about as-yet-unclear impacts from the emissions of electronic cigarettes.
OSHA is moving forward on the next steps toward a possible eventual rule that would address high rates of injuries and fatalities in the fast-growing communication tower industry, with the agency pointing to data showing 13 communication tower worker deaths in 2013, the deadliest year for tower workers since 2006.
OSHA's recent assertion in a published report that workplace injuries and illnesses, along with deficiencies in the workers' compensation system, are closely tied to U.S. income inequality has opened a new policy debate, with industry sharply criticizing the agency for not offering new recommendations to help remedy the economic costs of workplace accidents and for wading into state worker compensation issues that fall outside OSHA's jurisdiction.
House lawmakers are floating draft bipartisan legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that significantly scales back preemption of state chemicals programs compared to an alternative pending Senate bill, opening a gap between the two chambers over the issue of preemption that has long hindered approval of a bill.