Daily News

The Senate labor committee backed Doug Parker’s nomination as the next head of OSHA on a mostly party-line vote June 16, setting the stage for his likely confirmation by the full Senate later this summer, just as the agency is laying out its first rulemaking agenda in the Biden era following its release of the long-awaited COVID-19 standard.

OSHA plans to propose in December a rule to restore Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates that the Trump administration largely rolled back in 2019, according to its newly released Unified Agenda of regulatory actions that also targets December for proposing a long-delayed infectious-disease standard.

California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has scrapped its contentious revision to the state’s COVID-19 standards that drew fire from employers and others for what critics said were overly strict masking and distancing requirements, and is proposing a more lenient update that it could adopt as soon as June 17.

Unions and their allies are pushing back on OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19, arguing that limiting the rule to healthcare workers leaves at-risk workers in other industries unprotected, even as employers’ attorneys are warning that the agency could soon tighten enforcement across all industry sectors.

OSHA has released its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare employers, alongside new general-industry guidance for the pandemic that focuses on vaccination and recommends infection-control measures only for workplaces where some employees are not yet vaccinated.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh says OSHA will release June 10 a COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) that applies only to the medical sector, rejecting arguments from unions and safety groups that a general-industry standard is still needed despite widespread vaccinations.

Anonymous workers at a Pennsylvania meat plant who sued OSHA over its decision not to take enforcement action over what they said was an “imminent danger” of COVID-19 infections there are appealing a federal district judge’s dismissal of the case, setting up a rare precedential decision on whether the OSH Act allows such suits.

The Department of Labor (DOL) is suing a New York healthcare center over allegations that it fired a whistleblower who raised alarms over potential COVID-19 exposures at the business -- the first time it has announced opening a lawsuit over whistleblower claims related to the pandemic.

Employers and industry groups hope to fast-track further changes to California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) after the agency’s regulatory body adopted new requirements in “bizarre” fashion on June 4, drawing charges that the new mandates clash with federal guidance and the state’s reopening plan.

OSHA has named five new members to its Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health (ACCSH) and renewed another 10 for new two-year terms, including an official with North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU) who will serve as chair, in the Biden administration’s first round of appointments to an agency panel.

The Trump administration opened a call for nominees to ACCSH on Dec. 9 but did not act on the input prior to President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, leaving OSHA’s new leadership to select the members -- a decision it announced in a May 27 press release.

The White House is proposing a $64 million boost to OSHA’s budget including 362 new full-time equivalent (FTE) staff positions, in what would be an across-the-board boost to the agency’s capacity for rulemaking, enforcement and outreach that the Biden administration says is needed to “reassert its position” in national safety policy.

Employer and industry attorneys are criticizing the California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) draft revised COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) as not appropriately relaxed to conform with new physical distancing guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ahead of a key June 3 vote by the agency’s standards board.

OSHA and four companies that sued over the Obama-era beryllium exposure regulation have reached a settlement to expand the list of “abrasive blasting materials” the agency says in guidance are subject to the rule, potentially resolving a long-running conflict among industry on which materials the policy should cover.

Republicans on the Senate labor committee are calling on Doug Parker, President Joe Biden’s nominee as the next OSHA chief, to withdraw the agency’s planned COVID-19 standard (ETS), telling Parker during his May 27 confirmation hearing that vaccinations have eliminated the need for a pandemic worker safety rule.

Democrats generally focused their attention on the other two nominees at the hearing -- Taryn Mackenzie Williams, nominated as assistant secretary of labor for disability employment policy, and Rajesh Nayak, nominated as assistant secretary of labor for policy.

The Biden EPA is seeking a court’s permission to revisit its Trump-era findings on risks posed by workers’ uses of the solvent methylene chloride, including what level of personal protective equipment (PPE) use would mitigate those dangers, in the first step of what could be a sweeping move to bolster protections for workplace chemical exposures.

OSHA has released four new regulatory interpretation letters that aim to clarify several recordkeeping and reporting requirements, including new guidance for workers’ newly discovered chemical sensitivities, accidents during a commute, injuries related to both on- and off-the-job activity, and mandatory training at a third-party site.

OSHA is walking back its guidance for employers to treat adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccination as “work-related” for recordkeeping and reporting purposes if the vaccine was “required” for workers, promising not to enforce that mandate until at least 2022 in order to avoid “any appearance of discouraging” vaccination.

Democratic and Republican leaders on the House Energy & Commerce Committee are questioning the lone member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Assessment Board (CSB) on a range of issues, from the “quorum of one” to possible conflicts of interest among staff, that the lawmakers say “may be undermining” the board’s work.

Industry groups are urging OSHA to loosen its proposed labeling rule for hazardous chemicals and other substances, arguing that key provisions conflict with EPA policy and require companies to gather “vast” new data on risks posed by downstream chemical uses, while California says the agency should scrap the rulemaking altogether.

OSHA is proposing a second set of revisions to its 2016 fall-prevention standard to address what it says were unclear provisions and typographical errors in the Obama-era rule governing elevated “walking-working surfaces,” including a formatting mistake that left out key language on guardrails for staircases.