Employer attorneys are raising alarms on OSHA’s quiet announcement that it plans to reinstate a controversial Obama-era policy known as the “Fairfax Memo” that allowed third parties such as union representatives to accompany OSHA officials on inspections -- even of non-union worksites.
September 17, 2026
The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has issued a pair of decisions that affirm OSHA’s approach to identifying heat dangers, scrapping an administrative law judge’s (ALJ) rulings that held its long-standing approach failed to show hazard to workers, but the panel is also setting a high bar for “feasible” abatement methods.
Date:
South Carolina is pointing to OSHA’s latest inflation adjustment to enforcement penalties as fresh justification for its ongoing court challenge to the mandate for states to match those increases each year, saying the rulemaking repeats that directive and is ripe for judicial review.
Date:
Unions, worker-safety groups, environmentalists and tribes are petitioning OSHA to strengthen its injury and illness reporting mandates for oil spill response workers, arguing that the sector should be carved out from broad exclusions for cold and flu to ensure that employers report symptoms of potentially serious chemical exposures that may “mimic” the viruses.
Date:
Members of the California legislature have introduced a bill that would reimburse employers’ costs for complying with the state OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) COVID-19 worker-safety standard in 2023 and 2024 through a new tax credit, with support from agriculture groups that have attacked the standard as unnecessary, overly burdensome and costly.
Date:
Newly introduced California legislation would require the state’s OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to adopt standards requiring employers in “all industries” besides healthcare to draft workplace violence prevention plans as part of existing injury and illness prevention programs, in an effort to accelerate such requirements.
Date:
California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) has missed its target to unveil the final version of a long-pending update to requirements for first-aid kits for general industry and construction companies, triggering a new comment process and drawing criticism from at least one member of the agency’s standards board, along with employer and worker-safety representatives.
Date:
OSHA plans to “modernize” its long-standing Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) that recognize employers for instituting workplace protections above what regulations and consensus standards require, and is seeking input on a range of possible changes -- from incentives for joining to assessment methods and a potential “tiered” approach.
Date:
OSHA is backing off its 2022 proposal to scrap its prior approval allowing Arizona to operate an OSH Act state plan, saying state officials have taken “significant actions to address” concerns that drove the withdrawal push, including tying their employer penalties to federal levels and easing procedures to adopt emergency standards mirroring those the agency issues.
Date:
OSHA is gaining new authority to issue visas to victims of certain alleged crimes including forced labor, obstruction of justice and human trafficking, further expanding the Biden administration’s efforts to protect undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation when they report workplace violations.
Date:
The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) affirmed OSHA’s citation against Walmart for a violation of its safety standard for items stored “in tiers,” after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned an earlier decision where the panel applied a narrower reading of the rule to say it did not apply to the retailer’s facility.
Date:
OSHA has issued an interim final rule detailing new procedures for handling cases of alleged retaliation against whistleblowers who come forward about violations of antitrust law, introducing a process specific to the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act (CAARA) for the first time.
Date:
Democratic attorneys general (AGs) in seven states are petitioning OSHA to issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for occupational heat exposure to take effect on May 1, arguing that workplace heat exacerbated by climate change poses a “grave danger” to tens of millions of employees around the country.
Date:
EPA says its draft risk assessment of formaldehyde will be a model for reforms to the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program, even as employers continue to question its finding that studies of exposed workers show inhaling the chemical can cause leukemia and accuse the agency of misleading peer reviewers on its methods.
Date:
OSHA has issued citations at three more Amazon warehouses claiming it exposed workers to a high risk of injury and delivered hazard alert letters detailing alleged ergonomic hazards at the facilities, further escalating the agency’s recent series of enforcement actions against the retailer and pressing it to develop a “company-wide strategy” to address them.
Date:
Employer law firms say OSHA’s new directives for regional enforcement officials to step up use of “instance-by-instance” citations and avoid “grouping” multiple violations under a single penalty shows that the agency is seeking to tighten enforcement and boost monetary penalties nationwide, with one calling the moves a “game changer.”
Date:
Environmental groups used a flurry of recent meetings with the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to renew their calls for a strict rule banning all use of the solvent methylene chloride, highlighting research they say shows both its acute toxicity and ongoing worker deaths even under OSHA’s current safety standards.
Date:
Unions, Democratic-led states and pro-regulatory groups are lining up against a contracting firm’s lawsuit claiming OSHA’s authority to craft and enforce safety standards is unconstitutional, calling the company’s claims untethered from the law and warning that granting its request would “hobble” workplace safeguards nationwide.
Date:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit is backing OSHA’s narrow reading of a little-used provision in the OSH Act allowing workers to sue the agency when it fails to address an “imminent danger” of workplace harm, agreeing that such suits face the same six-month statute of limitations as federal enforcement action under the law.
Date:
Oregon logging and forestry groups will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to let them challenge the state’s workplace safety rules in federal court on the theory that state plans are effectively agents of OSHA rather than their own state governments -- an approach that would open the door to bifurcated litigation on a host of issues.
Date: