Daily News

OSHA officials used the public hearing on a forthcoming permanent COVID-19 rule for healthcare facilities to press union representatives for more data and testimony to support the groups’ arguments that a stringent regulation is needed to protect workers, asking questions on workplace infections, cost management and a host of other issues.

Labor unions and safety groups are urging OSHA to reject employers’ calls to defer to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in any permanent COVID-19 safety standard for healthcare workers, saying that agency’s statutory mission and procedures are distinct from -- and less stringent than -- the OSH Act’s mandate to ensure safe workplaces.

President Joe Biden has withdrawn his nomination of attorney and former Obama Department of Labor deputy solicitor Susan Harthill to serve on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), leaving the normally three-member panel to continue with two commissioners for the foreseeable future.

The White House announced the move as part of an April 25 slate of 18 new nominations and three withdrawals, but did not provide its reasoning for scrapping any of the previously announced nominees.

Some employers are warning OSHA that any move to revive the emergency temporary standard (ETS) would be illegal while others are urging the agency to link any long-term COVID-19 safety standard for the healthcare sector with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance in order to ensure flexibility in response to new research on the disease.

California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has approved a revised COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) despite ongoing opposition to certain provisions by employer representatives and uncertainty about whether the state will pursue a permanent COVID worker-safety regulation or a broader infectious-disease rulemaking in the months to come.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has largely upheld an enforcement citation stemming from a 2018 construction accident, holding that OSHA’s safety standard for cranes and derricks requires strict adherence to equipment manuals and rejecting the employer’s argument that its use of “similar” safety measures was sufficient.

OSHA is formally proposing to withdraw Arizona’s state plan authority under the OSH Act, pointing not only to the state’s failure to adopt a counterpart to the COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare workers but a longer “history of shortcomings” on fall protections and overall enforcement dating back to 2012.

A group of 31 House and Senate Democrats is stepping up pressure on EPA to consider climate change impacts in its upcoming risk management plan (RMP) facility safety rule, arguing that hazards such as more frequent extreme weather will act as a “threat multiplier” for chemical releases and other disasters the rule is meant to prevent or mitigate.

The chemical industry is praising what it says are recent moves by EPA to consult OSHA and other work-safety agencies to bolster the TSCA office’s approach to occupational exposure and risk analysis, while pursuing its own efforts to harmonize approaches to that discipline used by the toxics program, industrial hygienists and occupational regulators.

EPA’s draft finding that formaldehyde exposures can lead to leukemia drew a range of reactions from other federal entities that reviewed a pre-release draft with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) leading praise of the cancer analysis while others warned that they see evidence of that link as more tenuous than the agency is claiming.

EPA’s just-released draft risk assessment of formaldehyde links the chemical to myeloid leukemia based on a controversial study of workplace exposures, but does not use that finding in its cancer risk estimate due to modeling data uncertainty, resulting in a risk value that is an order of magnitude less strict than in 2010 and very close to its last final review in 1991.

OSHA is formally launching its National Emphasis Program (NEP) for heat danger, directing its enforcement office to “proactively initiate inspections” and outreach targeted at workplaces in more than 70 industries deemed “high-risk” while expanding inspections of all industries to cover heat-related hazards and safeguards.

Under the new policy, OSHA will conduct those inspections at worksites subject to National Weather Service heat warnings or advisories and offer compliance assistance on “heat priority days” -- defined as those where the heat index is 80 degrees or above.

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy is touting its efforts to limit the scope of OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare as the most significant victory in its fiscal year 2021 agenda, saying its single-sector focus led to almost 98 percent of the office’s regulatory cost savings for the year.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is floating new revisions to its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) that would drop several requirements and instead require employers to follow frequently updated guidance from the state’s health department, though employers’ attorneys say some provisions of the new rule are still too stringent.

A new Office of Inspector General (OIG) report says OSHA took few steps to address possible COVID-19 infection dangers to workers at other federal agencies since 2020, including a finding that it “neither tracked nor analyzed” data that could have provided insight into pandemic-related hazards facing those agencies’ staffs or workers at large.

A new report from the California state government Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) lays out a case that climate change will increase worker injuries, illnesses and fatalities from a wide range of causes, warning lawmakers that they may need to take a more aggressive approach to ensure work-safety standards fully protect employees in the years ahead.

OSHA is starting a new enforcement initiative targeting employers who have failed to submit annual “Form 300A” summaries of their annual injury and illness data through the agency’s online disclosure tool, just as it is proposing to reestablish broad electronic reporting requirements that would expand the mandate to also cover records of individual incidents.

EPA is proposing to ban all ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos in its most aggressive use yet of the reformed TSCA, based on its Trump-era findings that the chemical poses “unreasonable risks” to workers in the chlor-alkali and other sectors as well the public, but industry is already arguing that the rule is based on a flawed understanding of OSHA safeguards.

The three federal appellate judges who will rule on labor unions’ bid to reinstate OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector raised doubts during oral argument both on the legal status of the rule and whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit would have jurisdiction to force OSHA to bring it back into effect.

As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit prepares to hear labor unions’ suit that would force OSHA to revive its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector, employers’ attorneys are now warning that the agency is advancing overly broad plans for a permanent rule based on the ETS.