OSHA, in its latest national outreach effort to warn employers about the dangers of heat-related illness, is citing the success of a similar initiative by Cal/OSHA. The agency, which is forming a partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on weather service alerts for workers, says it has “worked closely” with the California program to adapt materials from what it described as the state’s “successful outreach campaign” on heat illness for use in the national effort.
September 16, 2026
OSHA's top enforcement and field operations official says a “huge restructuring” of OSHA's Office of Whistleblower Protection Programs (OWPP) is under way to address what may be gaps in the program as the agency works to enforce the numerous anti-retaliation statutes that the Labor Department has delegated to the office over the years.
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OSHA continues to peg ergonomics as one of the agency's leading enforcement priorities even in the absence of a specific standard to address musculoskeletal disorders, agency chief David Michaels has signaled, reiterating OSHA's intent to use the OSH Act's general duty clause to cite ergonomic hazards. He also identified infectious diseases and workplace violence as two broad areas that merit increased attention.
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A key Senate Democrat on worker protection issues is lauding her home state of Washington for enacting a law requiring a process of hazard abatement during appeal of occupational safety and health violations, and calling for a similar law to be enacted on the federal level. The state's OSHA chief, who had urged the legislature to pass the measure, told Inside OSHA Online that the law fixes a decades-old gap in federal worker safety protections.
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Industry is taking its legal challenge to OSHA's policy on so-called continuing violations of its injury and illness recordkeeping requirements to the next level by filing an appeal in federal court for the D.C. Circuit after the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) issued a split decision siding with the Labor Department's legal stance. At issue is OSHA's position that it can issue recordkeeping citations more than six months after the initial violation occurred under certain circumstances.
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Cal/OSHA can be expected to re-evaluate its approach to serious workplace hazards to target the agency's resources toward industries with the most “flagrant abuses and violations,” while also reviewing the state OSHA plan with an eye toward eventual full federal approval, Ellen Widess, the new appointee to head the agency, told Inside OSHA Online in an exclusive interview.
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OSHA has not determined whether the 27 state OSHA plans under its purview have met the required standard of “at least as effective” as the federal program in improving worker safety and health, the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) found in a recent sweeping audit of OSHA’s monitoring of state plans.
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OSHA contends that activity and performance measures are key to evaluating the effectiveness of state plans, but that exclusive reliance on outcome or impact measures would be “extremely problematic” in monitoring the states, in a detailed response to a recent Labor Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) report finding significant gaps in the agency's ability to audit state plans using such measures.
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Roofing employers are turning their attention to working closely with OSHA to ensure compliance following an appeals court decision that will allow the agency to move forward with a new enforcement directive ending a longstanding policy of blanket exemptions to fall protection rules for some residential contractors.
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A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate and House filed legislation Wednesday to make OSHA's voluntary protection programs (VPP) a permanent part of the agency's mission, reviving efforts on the Hill from a year ago to shield the programs from now-abandoned administration plans to shift funding to enforcement instead.
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Key Democrats on workplace health and safety issues on both sides of Capitol Hill are urging the White House to reconsider two NIOSH program cuts as part of spending reductions sought in President Obama's proposed fiscal year 2012 budget. But program advocates concede that it will be an uphill climb to save the funding given the lack of administration support.
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OSHA no longer faces the prospect of a huge funding cut for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, as the new spending blueprint to fund agencies through the rest of the fiscal year maintains OSHA's fiscal 2010 funding level of $558.6 million. House Republicans unveiled the spending plan early Tuesday, formalizing the deal reached over the weekend among congressional and White House negotiators.
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NIOSH could be required to conduct a study of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) rates as one piece of a legislative package to expand awareness and access to orthopaedic services, a bill that gained bipartisan backing in the last Congress and may be introduced again this year. The push for additional government research comes as OSHA renews its contentious regulatory efforts to gather more MSD data from work sites around the country.
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Washington state lawmakers are directing the state's OSHA plan to issue new rules adopting NIOSH guidelines on safe drug handling in hospitals and health care settings, in what amounts to an unusual move by a legislature to compel use of the federal research agency's recommendations within state occupational safety and health regulations.
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OSHA officials said the controversial proposal to reestablish a column on injury and illness recordkeeping logs to designate work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) would help identify specific work sites that are experiencing patterns of MSD problems, and reiterated their stance that employers would simply be required to record injuries that they already track under existing reporting rules.
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Most OSHA inspections, probably except for imminent danger and fatality investigations, would grind to a halt nationwide in the event of a shutdown of the federal government, according to sources familiar with the last shutdown in 1995. The impact on state plan grant funding would also be left in doubt, causing a wide ripple effect across many states and making even a short-term funding stoppage of great concern, a union official said. The agency might also hasten to issue citations in cases where it may run out of time under the statute, an industry lawyer predicted.
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Several business groups named OSHA's planned regulation of combustible dust hazards as one of five major concerns about the agency's regulatory and enforcement agenda that they want to see House Republicans tackle through regulatory oversight, expressing broad concerns about the scope of the proposal, while one union closely watching the issue expressed surprise that the rulemaking has generated so much controversy early on.
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OSHA's decision to contact city building inspection departments in all 10 of its regions in a bid to arrange partnerships and train inspectors on potential OSHA violations could help expand the agency's reach into the construction industry and build referral data. But industry is voicing skepticism about the possible costs and legal responsibilities of localities that get involved in the effort, sources say.
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California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has tapped Berkeley health and safety consultant Ellen Widess as the new chief of Cal/OSHA as part of a shakeup at the Division of Industrial Relations (DIR), but Widess still requires Senate confirmation for the job. Christine Baker, of Berkeley, has been appointed chief deputy director of the DIR, and Art Carter, of San Francisco, has been appointed member and chair of the Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board.
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Hawaii's new governor is pushing back against federal OSHA efforts to assert concurrent jurisdiction over the state OSHA plan, telling federal OSHA he will put more resources into the program and touting aspects of the state program's standards that he contends go beyond federal rules in protecting worker safety and health. Meanwhile the state's newly appointed director of labor and industrial relations told Inside OSHA Online that the state is “strongly committed” to rebuilding the program.
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