Daily News

A new decision from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) largely affirms an OSHA citation stemming from a 2018 shipyard explosion that killed three workers, agreeing with the agency that a salvage firm failed to train its employees on safety measures for confined spaces but rejecting its claim that the violation was “willful.”

California lawmakers are advancing a controversial bill to require California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to expeditiously require workplace violence-prevention measures in employers’ existing employee-safety plans, with supporters saying that while the agency is already working on such rules for non-healthcare facilities it is taking too long to finalize them.

EPA is proposing new measures that would significantly strengthen regulatory oversight of emissions of the solvent ethylene oxide (EtO) from sterilization facilities and other settings, unveiling plans to set strict new workplace safety standards under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) as well as air emissions limits to mitigate high cancer risks.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has completed its review of EPA’s draft TSCA risk management rule for the solvent methylene chloride, teeing up formal release of a proposal that a top official has said will signal how the agency plans to regulate other substances and tailor chemical-safety rules to protect workers from occupational exposures.

The White House has started interagency review of OSHA’s draft final rule expected to undo a Trump-era rollback of Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting requirements for workplace health and safety data, just as a federal appeals court is preparing to resume long-stayed litigation over the loosened rule.

The Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued modified waivers of statutory line speed limits for all 10 poultry processing facilities that were at the center of unions’ lawsuit over a Trump-era waiver program, opening the door for that suit to potentially resume after a stay of over a year.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) officials have released first-time proposed worker-safety rules for heat illness prevention at indoor worksites, a move expected to spark intense debate between labor groups and employers ahead of a meeting of the agency’s standards board in May.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has finished its review of OSHA’s proposed rule that the agency says will “clarify” specific personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements for construction workers, a move that could enhance protections against toxic chemical exposure and has been in development for almost four years.

According to OMB’s website, it approved the draft rule on April 4, meaning OSHA could sign and release its proposal at any time.

OSHA leaders say the agency has begun certifying two types of visas for workers who were victims of human trafficking, forced labor and other crimes, it announced, nearly two months after officials announced plans to issue the documents in order to protect workers who are undocumented immigrants or subject to time-limited visas during investigations.

Deputy OSHA chief Jim Frederick announced at a March 31 press conference that the agency would begin signing off on so-called U visas and T visas that day.

Correction Appended

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has upheld OSHA’s citation against a roofing company over an employee’s failure to use fall protection while briefly assessing the positioning of a crane director, refusing to apply what it says is a narrow exception in the standard for activity before the “actual start of construction work.”

A new decision from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) underscores what the panel says is the higher standard OSHA must meet to show safety violations by a “controlling” employer at a multi-company workplace, scrapping an administrative law judge’s (ALJ) decision that upheld the agency’s citations in one such case.

California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has narrowly rejected setting up a process to amend its workforce-safety rules for farming equipment to allow automated tractors and other machines to operate independently in the field, with several panel members arguing that more research data is needed before the agency begins investigating a rule.

The Asbestos Disease Organization (ADAO) is asking EPA to expand the window to comment on newly published worker-safety data related to its proposed ban on current uses of chrysotile asbestos, even as it warns the agency against letting its review of those comments delay a final asbestos rule from its non-binding October target.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) is taking up a novel case testing whether a “religious, agricultural, communal colony” in South Dakota is an “employer” subject to the OSH Act, after a member of the group died in a 2020 accident while working in its grain bin.

OSHA has granted final approval to Maine’s application to administer workplace health and safety standards as they apply to state and local government employees, after the state completed a last round of revisions for the OSH Act state plan that it first submitted a decade ago.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is issuing 18 citations to a medical device sterilization company for allegedly failing to protect its employees from overexposure to the toxic solvent ethylene oxide (EtO), amid a growing battle over EPA-crafted risk levels for the carcinogen that industry has argued are unreasonably strict.

South Carolina is again challenging OSHA’s mandate for states to match federal minimum and maximum penalties for OSH Act violations, targeting the 2016 federal rule that first announced the policy after a federal court rejected its earlier suit that focused on language restating the mandate in the agency’s annual rules adjusting penalties for inflation.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission’s (OSHRC) two recent rulings that rejected OSHA heat-stress citations applying the general duty clause could motivate the agency to more quickly enact its long-promised safety standard specifically governing heat hazards, an employer attorney says.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has begun reviewing the final version of the Biden administration’s rule imposing a one-time mandate on companies to report their recent uses of asbestos, a measure that health advocates have sought to expand as they hope it will inform future assessment and regulation of the mineral’s uses but which industry is seeking to narrow.

The rule, which EPA is slated to promulgate in May, was submitted to OMB on March 20.

A Texas contracting company is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to broadly apply the OSH Act’s “unpreventable employee misconduct” defense, saying an administrative law judge (ALJ) set an unreasonably high bar for invoking it when he upheld an OSHA citation for trench-safety violations against the firm.