Daily News

An OSHA oversight hearing by a House labor subcommittee highlighted the gulf between Republicans and Democrats on the agency’s regulatory plans and its requested funding for fiscal year 2023, underscoring both continued tensions over the Biden administration’s COVID-19 rules and the high bar any budget increase will face in the current Congress.

OSHA is giving stakeholders an extra 30 days, until June 30, to file comments on its proposal to reinstate Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates for workplace injury and illness data, following requests from employers and unions alike for more time to consider and respond to the plan.

Unions and employers used the final round of written comments on OSHA’s planned long-term COVID-19 standard for healthcare facilities to renew and supplement their arguments on the scope of the rule, with labor groups offering an array of claims to support strict mandates while industry focused on responding to specific questions raised by officials.

Oregon OSHA has finalized what it says are the nation’s “most protective” work-safety rules for heat danger and wildfire smoke, largely maintaining proposed versions issued earlier this year but with some revisions, as Gov. Kate Brown (D) is touting the rules as a “national model” for other safeguards -- such as OSHA’s pending federal heat rule.

Update Appended

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is imposing a combined $1.75 million in fines against an oil refinery and three contractors for “serious” violations following a fatal 2021 incident, concluding that several of the companies failed to determine acceptable “entry conditions” for a confined chamber where a worker suffocated due to high argon levels.

OSHA officials used a recent whistleblower stakeholder meeting targeting the healthcare sector to tout what they said has been a major expansion of the program’s enforcement staff and resources during the Biden administration, even as speakers from labor and safety groups urged officials to pursue much more aggressive policy reforms.

Democrats have introduced their latest bill seeking to ban all uses of asbestos, but its prospects appear uncertain at best as it is even stricter than a 2019 version that collapsed without a vote, including a phaseout schedule mirroring EPA’s proposed TSCA rule that industry opposes and a definition of commercial “asbestos” similar to what has divided supporters of past legislation.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is seeking comments on a strategy to bolster personal protective technology (PPT) for healthcare workers, saying the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to support not only protective gear in the sector but technology supporting it like fit-testing and materials research.

A federal appeals court has denied a Kentucky mining firm’s bid to narrow or even scrap as unconstitutional the statutory ban on warning employers or workers of imminent safety inspections, rejecting the company’s argument that the restriction -- which appears in both the Mine Safety and Health Act and the OSH Act -- violates its free-speech rights.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has rejected a Florida contracting firm’s argument that the multi-employer doctrine that allows OSHA to cite several companies at the same worksite for a single hazard conflicts with precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, even as it overturned the citation at the heart of the dispute.

Industry and business groups are rejecting as inadequate amendments to a pending California bill that would prohibit employers from taking any “adverse action” against employees who either leave or refuse to report to a job site if they feel “unsafe” due to an “emergency” situation, saying the revised legislation remains “very subjective” and overbroad.

Senate Democrats have unveiled their counterpart to a House bill that would give OSHA a one-year deadline to craft a long-sought workplace violence standard, after it passed the lower chamber by a bipartisan margin in 2021, giving supporters hope that it could overcome a filibuster in this Congress although so far it has no Republican co-sponsors.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is posting new fact sheets and updated frequently asked question (FAQ) documents for the recently adopted third revision to its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS), highlighting changes to key definitions and requirements for testing, quarantining, face masking and more.

OSHA has published a new round of regulatory interpretation letters, providing new readings of its standards governing permit-required confined spaces (PRCS), storage of compressed-gas cylinders and approved lifting devices for working with electrical transformers, each in response to separate requests for clarification from various employers.

A Massachusetts hospital and its Delaware-based management company are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit to review an OSHA enforcement action that treated the two as a “single employer,” setting up a potentially precedent-setting decision on when the agency can subject firms to higher penalties that stem from such a standard.

Employers are tentatively backing a potential OSHA rule to tighten its decades-old limit for workers’ blood lead levels but are urging the agency to be cautious with any broader revisions to the lead exposure standards, especially if officials intend to model the federal update on strict proposals pending in Washington and California.

Paint and pigment trade groups are saying EPA’s new policy of assuming workers will not use protective gear in TSCA risk evaluations is “illegal” and irrational, charging that the agency has improperly ignored existing workplace practices and OSHA safety standards as well as companies’ general duty to protect their workers from “recognized” dangers.

OSHA is urging Amazon and other companies to review their severe-weather emergency procedures and make improvements to further protect workers in such situations, following an investigation in the aftermath of a December tornado in Illinois that killed six contractors with the retail giant.

Worker-safety advocates had hoped the agency would take broader action, such as promulgating a disaster-response standard to ensure that employers are prepared for extreme weather-related events.

Industry lawyers are raising broad concerns that strict worker safety standards and other provisions in EPA’s recently proposed TSCA ban on chrysotile asbestos uses signals the agency is take a tougher approach than OSHA and other federal agencies, raising questions about which agency has primacy over workplace safety.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has begun formal interagency review of the Biden administration’s draft Risk Management Program (RMP) rule governing chemical facility safety, a measure that officials have said will strengthen a Trump-era version of the rule in part to account for climate and environmental justice (EJ) risks.

OMB received the proposed RMP rule on “Accidental Release Prevention Requirements” April 27. OMB oversees interagency review of rules, which typically takes about 90 days, although it can take shorter or longer depending on the rule.