Daily News

Workers at a Pennsylvania meat-packing plant are asking a federal appeals court to take up their potentially precedent-setting suit against OSHA over its failure to cite their employer for what they say were inadequate COVID-19 protections, arguing that the case remains relevant over a year after they first brought the claims.

Worker safety advocates and Democratic state attorneys are pushing OSHA to adopt a broad, environmental-justice focused heat stress standard that would require employers to adopt dual environmental and physiological heat monitoring programs, comprehensive mitigation methods and new recordkeeping requirements.

Katherine Lemos, chair of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), said at a recent meeting that she would delay votes on “the mounting number of recommendations” before the board until its two new members who won Senate confirmation in December are formally sworn in -- a step she said could come as soon as this week.

Labor groups suing to reinstate OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector are claiming that the agency offered “no cognizable rationale” for allowing the rule to expire, ignored a key procedural step in that process, and bucked its own precedents when it dropped the ETS without a permanent standard to replace it.

Manufacturing and food safety groups are urging OSHA to consider a narrow heat-illness prevention standard limited to outdoor work settings that provides employers “flexibility” to conduct individualized heat hazard assessments based on regional climate and worksite conditions, and in light of available monitoring technology.

A chemical industry group says it expects OSHA to finalize an updated Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) as early as the fall but is warning that the rule as proposed could exacerbate current supply chain issues in part because its new requirements for data on risks posed by downstream chemical uses are “impossible to comply with.”

OSHA is withdrawing its COVID-19 vaccine emergency temporary standard (ETS) in light of the Supreme Court order blocking its implementation, but says it will continue developing a permanent standard using the emergency rule as a proposal, just days after it told a federal court it is prioritizing a long-term COVID-19 rule for healthcare workers.

OSHA says it is renewing work on a permanent COVID-19 standard for the healthcare sector in light of the Supreme Court ruling that blocked its economy-wide vaccination rule, but warns that a final rule is still “six to nine months” away in a new legal filing opposing unions’ bid for a court order seeking a permanent standard within 30 days.

Attorneys say the Supreme Court’s stay of OSHA’s COVID-19 vaccine standard both forces the agency to use the general duty clause as its primary tool to enforce pandemic safety measures, and creates new hurdles for those efforts -- though it could also open the door to a separate rule based on the emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare workers.

Labor groups and House Democrats are urging OSHA to issue a final rule based on its temporary COVID-19 vaccine standard but are split on how to approach that task, with some seeking comprehensive guidelines while others, including the lawmakers, favor a narrower rule that reflects the Supreme Court’s decision blocking the emergency standard.

Environmentalists and work-safety groups are ramping up pressure on OSHA to expedite a heat exposure standard, including through a new study that says high heat conditions, exacerbated by climate change, could lead to as much as $55.4 billion in lost wages annually by 2065 without new workplace protections or greenhouse gas reductions.

Observers say the Supreme Court decision blocking OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) could chill the future development of safety standards and ease challenges to its rulemakings, especially if the agency attempts to craft "holistic" policies for new dangers.

OSHA is raising its civil penalties for violations of the OSH Act and regulatory standards by 6.2 percent to account for inflation -- the largest such adjustment in recent memory and one industry attorneys are warning could lead to an even sharper spike in total fines as the agency looks to step up enforcement action across the board.

The Supreme Court’s Jan. 13 order blocking enforcement of the OSHA emergency temporary standard for COVID-19 vaccination is drawing strident responses from all political corners.

Opponents of OSHA’s rule are praising the decision, which held that the rule overstepped the agency’s authority to regulate only “occupational” dangers rather than public-health matters, as a necessary one to combat executive overreach and avoid mass resignations by unvaccinated workers.

The Supreme Court’s decision blocking implementation of OSHA’s COVID-19 vaccine-or-test emergency temporary standard (ETS) holds that the economy-wide rule is too broad to fit within the agency’s authority to regulate “occupational safety,” but also provides a roadmap for more targeted limits that could survive judicial review.

The Supreme Court has reinstated a nationwide stay of OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 vaccination, holding that challengers to the rule are “likely to succeed on the merits” of their claims because the rule is broad enough to qualify as a “public health” mandate rather than an occupational standard.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) appears to be raising the bar for rejecting employers’ appeals of OSHA enforcement actions when they miss litigation deadlines or otherwise fail to follow required procedures, holding in a new order that appellants must be allowed to show a “good faith effort” at participating in proceedings.

Observers on all sides expect the Supreme Court to stay implementation of OSHA’s COVID-19 vaccine-or-testing standard in the coming days, leaving many employers uncertain on how to move forward after its first compliance deadline arrived on Jan. 10, especially as OSHA has yet to act on requests for extensions -- including from the Postal Service.

OSHA has quietly resumed development of an emergency response standard intended to bolster protections for first responders after pausing the process late in the Obama administration, but stakeholders are warning that the eventual rule may exclude much of the sector as it is dominated by public-sector and volunteer workers outside OSHA’s purview.

Conservative Supreme Court justices appeared to doubt OSHA’s authority to issue its COVID-19 vaccine-or-testing emergency temporary standard (ETS), with several questioning whether Congress could have foreseen situations like the current pandemic when it wrote the OSH Act, and others asking if the standard is truly necessary to fight the coronavirus.