Daily News

Labor unions and the group Public Citizen are asking a federal district court to scrap the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) program that allows poultry slaughterhouses to raise their line speeds above regulatory maximums, saying it violates a 2014 rule for the sector that the Trump administration never withdrew or amended.

Democrats and Republicans are taking hard lines on the employer liability waiver in the GOP’s newly unveiled COVID-19 relief bill, posing the risk of a stalemate on the next virus economic relief bill as Democrats say the waiver is a “non-starter” while the GOP counters that it must be included in the legislation.

Employer representatives are objecting to differences between California OSHA’s requirements for companies to record and report COVID-19 cases among employees and federal OSHA requirements, and urging the state to align its rules more closely with OSHA -- but California appears to be broadly rejecting the request.

Critics of the state’s approach have pressed Cal/OSHA officials to clarify and change a “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) guidance on the department’s website, among other changes.

Workers at a Pennsylvania meat-packing plant are suing OSHA for what they say is the agency’s unlawful failure to respond to complaints of “imminent” danger of COVID-19 infection at the facility, arguing that the OSH Act gives the agency no choice but to quickly inspect the facility or to formally reject the complaint as unwarranted.

A bipartisan group of Midwest and coal state House members is pushing legislation that would force the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to develop new workplace COVID-19 protections for miners, in a sign that the partisan gridlock over broader OSHA standards might not extend to sector-specific policies.

The bill, known as the “COVID-19 Mine Worker Protection Act,” would force MSHA to craft an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to strengthen pandemic protections in the sector within a week, and set a two-year deadline for a permanent COVID-19 standard.

A federal district judge is refusing a request from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to halt litigation over its rule allowing higher line speeds at swine slaughterhouses so the agency can reconsider the policy, backing unions who have argued that the rule jeopardizes worker safety and should be scrapped entirely.

Democratic senators say President Donald Trump is failing to adequately coordinate and fund personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and other “front-line” employees during the COVID-19 crisis, urging aggressive action to deliver the equipment regardless of any PPE provisions in the next pandemic response bill.

OSHA is citing a health care company over inadequate worker protections for COVID-19 at odds with requirements in its existing respiratory protection standards, in what appears to be the agency’s first major enforcement action against an employer for not implementing sufficient protections against the virus.

A new federal appellate court ruling is building on a prior denial of labor unions’ suit that sought an OSHA emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19, rejecting a similar case that applied to the mining industry specifically and further underscoring the importance of lawmakers’ negotiations on an imminent stimulus bill.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a new decision is rejecting OSHA’s broad reading of the universe of facilities subject to its safety standards for commercial diving, holding that the agency cannot apply the rule to aquarium divers because they fall under an exemption for “scientific” workers.

Virginia has approved its first-in-the-nation workplace standard for COVID-19 protections in a marker for other states weighing similar rules in response to OSHA’s refusal to craft a nationwide policy, even as congressional Democrats are renewing their push to force the agency to pursue a rulemaking in the next stimulus bill.

A federal appellate court is backing OSHA’s interpretation of its process safety management (PSM) standard against a poultry plant’s argument that the agency is applying an overbroad definition of “process” equipment subject to the rule, and is requiring more testing than “reasonable” engineering practices dictate.

House appropriators have released a report on their fiscal year 2021 OSHA funding bill that seeks to boost the agency’s enforcement budget by $10 million while calling for the agency to issue both a worker protection standard for COVID-19 and its workplace violence standard for health care, though it stops short of legally mandating either rule.

OSHA is finalizing its rule to “clarify” key elements of the 2017 general-industry exposure standards for beryllium including a new definition of “work areas” that won support from unions as a way to ease compliance with the standards and thus bolster worker protections, even as litigation over the underlying policy continues.

Labor unions say the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) rule allowing swine slaughterhouses to raise line-speed limits regardless of worker safety impacts must be vacated, citing a recent Supreme Court decision they say shows that the agency’s refusal to consider safety data in the rulemaking is too fundamental a flaw to fix on remand.

Amazon.com employees say a federal district court can hear their suit seeking COVID-19 employee safeguards at a New York warehouse despite OSHA’s general authority over workplace safety, arguing that the agency’s “minimal steps” to address the pandemic give courts more room to act.

Amazon.com is asking a federal district court to reject a suit over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as an infringement on OSHA’s “primary jurisdiction” over workplace safety issues, arguing that allowing lawsuits to enforce state-level coronavirus policies would create “an inconsistent patchwork” of contradictory judicial orders.

House Democrats’ fiscal year 2021 funding bill for the Department of Labor would boost OSHA’s budget by $12 million from current levels, rejecting President Donald Trump’s requested cuts while maintaining a training grant program that the administration is seeking to end despite OSHA touting the grants as “success stories.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is voicing support for another COVID-19 stimulus measure in response to the nationwide rise in infections, teeing up a battle over employer liability waivers that he says will be a GOP requirement in any pandemic bill but which Democrats and labor groups have opposed just as strongly.

OSHA’s newly updated Unified Agenda of pending rulemaking actions adds only a few new items to its docket while delaying a host of previously planned proposals and final rules to summer or later, sparking fresh criticism from safety advocates who say the agency has slowed its regulatory work to a crawl.