Daily News

South Carolina is defending its latest challenge to OSHA’s mandate for states to match annual increases to federal minimum and maximum OSH Act penalties, arguing courts should not force it to “bet the farm” by provoking an enforcement action before suing over the policy, and that time spent on a prior case should not count against the statute of limitations.

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) has issued a new rule governing its internal operations that curtails the power an individual board member can exercise as the only Senate-confirmed member of the panel, in an apparent effort to avoid a repeat of the period in 2020-21 when a single appointee operated as a “quorum of one.”

Correction Appended

EPA is proposing new workplace exposure limits for the solvent perchloroethylene (PCE) in several sectors that would be over 100 times stricter than OSHA’s current standard, but would allow employers in some sectors to continue using it indefinitely, including those who use the chemical to manufacture alternatives to climate-warming refrigerants.

OSHA is asking employers, workers and their advocates to weigh in on how it can help cement workplace safety and health as a “core value” at businesses nationwide, in what agency standards and guidance chief Andrew Levinson says will be a major focus over the coming years.

A federal appeals court has rejected an Ohio construction company’s claims that OSHA unfairly cited it for safety and training violations after a 2018 incident where a crane arm fell and struck a worker, holding that the agency’s allegations were supported by “substantial evidence” and that the employer had “fair notice” of the claims against it.

EPA is poised to propose its TSCA rule governing the solvent perchloroethylene (PCE or perc) after a draft version cleared White House review on June 1, an action that comes less than two months after the agency released its methylene chloride plan and could show how broadly it intends to apply that rule’s strict approach to worker protections.

The California state Senate has passed a controversial bill to require employers to include workplace violence-prevention measures in their existing employee-safety plans -- an effort driven by dissatisfaction with the pace of California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) rulemaking to establish a first-time workplace violence prevention standard for sectors outside healthcare.

Andy Levinson, head of OSHA’s directorate of standards and guidance, told a May 31 National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) meeting that the agency is “on the cusp” of initiating a Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) consultation for its nationwide heat standard, just hours before the panel approved its own recommendations on the rulemaking.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials are facing pressure from labor unions, worker-safety advocates and some of the agency’s standards board members to tighten proposed first-time employee-safety rules for heat illness prevention at indoor worksites, primarily by lowering the temperature thresholds that trigger several worker-protection requirements.

But agency staff are indicating they may reject those changes because revising the rules could significantly extend the time it takes for the board to approve them, and for the new policy to take effect.

Officials with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) say EPA failed to fully consider either less-burdensome alternatives to its proposed rule aimed at protecting workers from the toxic solvent methylene chloride or the true economic costs of a widespread phaseout, including the range of employers that could be forced to under a total ban.

A federal district court has approved a consent decree in a quiet, years-long trademark dispute between OSHA and an Illinois training and consulting company called “Global Occupational Health and Safety Academy,” or Global OSHA -- barring the firm from using what the agency alleged is a deceptively similar name to its own.

The Department of Labor (DOL) first filed a complaint against Global OSHA in 2021, claiming that its use of the name in commerce infringed on and diluted OSHA’s trademark for its acronym and logo.

OSHA is asking a federal district court to dismiss South Carolina’s latest challenge to the agency’s yet-unenforced requirement for states to raise their maximum penalties for workplace health and safety violations to match federal levels, saying the case was filed too late and fails to show any harm from the policy, among other flaws.

OSHA is rejecting construction-sector criticism of its National Emphasis Program (NEP) on heat-related illness that said the initiative risks creating unclear mandates worker protection, with the agency arguing that its initiative merely seeks to enforce the OSH Act’s general duty clause (GDC) and vowing to continue providing compliance assistance to employers.

Public-health groups are renewing litigation seeking to revive OSHA’s Obama-era electronic reporting rule even as a final rule expected to reinstate many or all of its requirements is awaiting White House approval, arguing that a federal court should scrap the 2018 rollback of those mandates immediately as their absence is causing ongoing harm.

OSHA is seeking stakeholder feedback on “leading indicators” that can help workers and regulatory identify potential hazards before an injury or other incident, such as low workplace training rates or infrequent equipment maintenance, as it prepares to develop a resource for tracking those factors.

Industry attorneys are questioning OSHA’s plan to soon issue an interim final rule (IFR) that the agency says will provide “clarity” on its use of subpoenas but which one attorney says may include major changes to the process without a notice and comment period.

OSHA is urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to uphold a trench-safety citation over violations that a Texas contracting firm claims were the result of “unpreventable employee misconduct,” arguing that the employer has failed to show it uses effective safety monitoring or enforcement and thus should be barred from invoking that defense.

Correction Appended

An employer-focused attorney says OSHA’s recent enforcement action against Amazon over a failure to provide “adequate medical treatment” to warehouse workers signals that the agency could more broadly use medical management of workplace injuries as a way around its lack of a formal standard on workplace ergonomics.

EPA has submitted its proposed TSCA carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), teeing up renewed battles over industry groups’ bids to exempt “critical uses” of the solvent from restrictions, as well as arguments that the Trump-era risk evaluation used a deeply flawed approach to model workplace exposures.

Groups representing employers, industries, labor unions and worker-safety advocates are gearing up for what are expected to be highly contentious deliberations by California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) on its proposed first-time worker-safety rules for heat illness prevention at indoor worksites -- an effort that could also help shape standards at the federal level.