OSHA's key advisory panel on construction safety and health plans to tackle two major subjects -- preventing backover injuries and fatalities, and safety around reinforcing steel -- as new items in meetings this week in Washington. The agency says it brought the issues to the panel's attention because they were recently added to the regulatory agenda, and OSHA wants the committee to provide recommendations on them. Both are in prerule stages.
September 16, 2026
An OSHA official says construction will likely be covered by its planned injury and illness prevention program rule (I2P2), clarifying an issue the agency has left as an open question though stakeholders have long anticipated the inclusion of builders along with general industry. But it still remains unclear if the agency will also attempt to develop a construction-specific rule, as it has done with other standards.
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OSHA plans to issue soon a compliance directive that would provide instruction to field operations on how to enforce OSH Act requirements to deal with workplace violence, sources told Inside OSHA Online, but details about the content of the draft document are not yet available. An OSHA spokesperson confirmed that the directive is in final clearance and said there is not a definite date on when it will be issued.
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OSHA and the European Union should work together more to advance global occupational safety and health goals, agency chief David Michaels told international leaders during a visit to Brussels in mid-July. Such collaborative approaches could help OSHA make headway in several areas, including updates to permissible exposure limits (PELs), one of Michaels' regulatory priorities, sources say.
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A major occupational safety group commended calls from a federal agency for Florida leaders to establish a state OSHA plan that covers public sector employees, following years of lobbying by the group to gain coverage for the state's government employees across the state, county and municipal levels.
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House Democrats renewed their pressure on the company that took over West Virginia's Upper Big Branch coal mine to get behind mine safety reform legislation, taking full advantage of a written exchange between lawmakers and the company's top executive to urge support for the long-sought measures.
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A simultaneous effort by hotel housekeepers in five states calling attention to alleged ergonomic hazards and seeking enforcement of federal and state occupational safety requirements to address the complaints has not yet resulted in any ergonomic citations against the hotels, sources say, but Cal/OSHA hinted at possible future enforcement. Cal/OSHA, which has a repetitive motion injury (RMI) standard, has issued warnings to two properties suggesting that if two or more qualifying injuries are reported within a year, they could be cited under state OSHA regulations.
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Florida leaders are coming under harsh criticism from U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) officials who want the state to establish a public-sector occupational safety and health plan that meets OSHA requirements, in response to a 2006 accident at a wastewater treatment plant that killed two city workers and seriously burned a third.
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The upcoming rule updating OSHA's hazard communication standard is estimated to create annualized savings for employers of at least $585 million, the agency says.
OSHA plans to issue a final rule -- which aligns the hazcom requirements with the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals -- in September, just a month after an earlier deadline for the rule in the regulatory agenda. An OSHA official said the standard is delayed for a few weeks due to “extensive review.”
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A key senator engaged in government-wide efforts to study the benefits, as well as potential health and safety drawbacks, of nanotechnology said Thursday he fully expects Congress to renew the inter-agency initiative, which is up shortly for reauthorization. Congress has failed to reauthorize NNI in recent years, but since the program is funded through numerous agency budgets, the lack of a renewal has not hampered the initiative.
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Congressional Democrats are eying a Republican-backed bid to codify voluntary protection programs (VPP) as a possible legislative vehicle to get at least a few of their long-sought OSHA reforms through the divided Congress, the ranking member of the House workforce protections subcommittee told Inside OSHA Online in an exclusive interview.
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A cluster of House Democrats are pushing a bill that would make it easier for OSHA to assert concurrent jurisdiction over a state plan but also provide a formal window of opportunity for states to correct program gaps identified by federal OSHA before the agency steps in, as it has considered doing recently with Hawaii.
A source said the bill, which has six Democratic cosponsors, provides an interim step where states can make immediate improvements to avert OSHA asserting concurrent jurisdiction.
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The new owners of the Upper Big Branch coal mine -- where a deadly explosion last year spurred a renewed push for mine safety measures and with it pressure from some congressional Democrats to roll sweeping OSHA reform into the same legislative package -- signaled they are willing to work with lawmakers on a mine safety measure, but apparently stopped short of endorsing any specific changes proposed on Capitol Hill.
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OSHA says it delayed the start of a small business review process for its lead regulatory initiative -- injury and illness prevention programs (I2P2) -- because the agency needed to gather more stakeholder input as well as complete economic and feasibility analyses of the planned rule. But OSHA maintains that the process, which was to begin in June, will get under way shortly.
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OSHA's new regulatory agenda slightly slips the timetable for key rulemaking efforts -- including a short delay in issuing a new hazard communication standard set for final publication in the next few months -- but says others, such as the controversial injury and illness prevention programs (I2P2), remain on track as earlier scheduled.
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OSHA has scrapped its bid to seize authority from the Hawaii state OSHA plan, dropping a proposal conceived last year to exercise a rarely invoked power to assert limited concurrent enforcement jurisdiction over state plans. OSHA cited assurances by the state's new governor that substantial improvements to the program are under way, deferring to the state's own blueprint for addressing performance gaps outlined by the federal agency in critical audit findings.
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Six demonstration projects spearheaded by NIOSH researchers have found examples of how ergonomically designed manual materials handling equipment could be used to reduce the physical burden of manual lifting in wholesale and retail jobs, agency officials said.
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Three occupational safety and health advocacy groups are joining forces to create a new center dedicated to advancing the role of OSH efforts in global sustainability and social responsibility efforts -- a collaboration that is expected not only to focus on research but to provide input on government policies and regulations.
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Construction employers are asking the Obama administration to split apart a proposed rule updating OSHA's crystalline silica standard so it would exempt construction, arguing that the fluid nature of the construction industry requires more time to evaluate how to address silica exposure in that sector. The employers would like to see OSHA issue a new standard applicable only to general industry for the time being, and formally proposed the idea to the White House after meeting with the Office of Management and Budget, OSHA and Small Business Administration (SBA).
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Key advisers to OSHA are staking out a broad position backing initiatives to increase both the volume of data on occupational injuries and illnesses recorded and reported to the agency, as well as employer compliance with recordkeeping mandates, in a sweeping set of recommendations to OSHA.
The move to pressure the agency on recordkeeping comes just as OSHA has published a proposed rule mandating stricter reporting requirements for worker hospitalizations and amputations, as well as making major changes to the classification of industry sectors to which recordkeeping rules apply.
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