A federal appeals court has rejected meat producers’ bid to revive litigation over Trump-era line-speed waivers for pork plants, holding that the employers should have tried to intervene in the case while it was still active instead of waiting until the Biden administration decided not to appeal a decision scrapping the program over worker-safety concerns.
September 17, 2026
The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has taken the rare step of announcing that its current members are deadlocked on a pending petition, unveiling a pair of opinions where the two members are at odds on whether claiming a violation occurred “on or about” a particular day gives OSHA leeway to file a citation more than six months later.
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National Nurses United (NNU) is pointing to the June 1 shootings of three employees and a patient’s spouse at a Tulsa clinic as further proof of the need for an OSHA workplace violence standard, and is urging the Senate to advance a bill that would mandate a final rule in just a year, cutting short what supporters say is the agency’s unacceptably long rulemaking process.
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Unions, environmentalists and a slew of academics and former OSHA officials are urging EPA to stand behind its reversals of Trump-era TSCA policies governing evaluation of workplace chemical exposures, arguing that an industry call to unwind the new stances is based on “myths” about existing worker-safety rules and voluntary protections.
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Agriculture groups are raising new claims that EPA’s draft hazard assessment of formaldehyde downplayed or even ignored the ubiquitous chemical’s use in “animal industries,” and failed to gather input from the Agriculture Department (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the two agencies most familiar with those sectors.
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OSHA says it has secured a settlement agreement with several subsidiaries of the food-processing giant JBS Foods that will mandate infection-control plans at seven plants across six states, after COVID-19 outbreaks at two of the facilities in 2020 led to seven worker deaths and hundreds of confirmed infections.
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A new study from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) warns that there are major data gaps on risks posed by indoor exposures to a variety of chemicals and mixtures in part because even well-studied contaminants can behave differently in indoor environments, potentially boosting recent calls for OSHA to develop indoor air safety standards.
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An OSHA oversight hearing by a House labor subcommittee highlighted the gulf between Republicans and Democrats on the agency’s regulatory plans and its requested funding for fiscal year 2023, underscoring both continued tensions over the Biden administration’s COVID-19 rules and the high bar any budget increase will face in the current Congress.
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OSHA is giving stakeholders an extra 30 days, until June 30, to file comments on its proposal to reinstate Obama-era electronic recordkeeping and reporting mandates for workplace injury and illness data, following requests from employers and unions alike for more time to consider and respond to the plan.
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Unions and employers used the final round of written comments on OSHA’s planned long-term COVID-19 standard for healthcare facilities to renew and supplement their arguments on the scope of the rule, with labor groups offering an array of claims to support strict mandates while industry focused on responding to specific questions raised by officials.
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Oregon OSHA has finalized what it says are the nation’s “most protective” work-safety rules for heat danger and wildfire smoke, largely maintaining proposed versions issued earlier this year but with some revisions, as Gov. Kate Brown (D) is touting the rules as a “national model” for other safeguards -- such as OSHA’s pending federal heat rule.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is imposing a combined $1.75 million in fines against an oil refinery and three contractors for “serious” violations following a fatal 2021 incident, concluding that several of the companies failed to determine acceptable “entry conditions” for a confined chamber where a worker suffocated due to high argon levels.
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OSHA officials used a recent whistleblower stakeholder meeting targeting the healthcare sector to tout what they said has been a major expansion of the program’s enforcement staff and resources during the Biden administration, even as speakers from labor and safety groups urged officials to pursue much more aggressive policy reforms.
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Democrats have introduced their latest bill seeking to ban all uses of asbestos, but its prospects appear uncertain at best as it is even stricter than a 2019 version that collapsed without a vote, including a phaseout schedule mirroring EPA’s proposed TSCA rule that industry opposes and a definition of commercial “asbestos” similar to what has divided supporters of past legislation.
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The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is seeking comments on a strategy to bolster personal protective technology (PPT) for healthcare workers, saying the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to support not only protective gear in the sector but technology supporting it like fit-testing and materials research.
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A federal appeals court has denied a Kentucky mining firm’s bid to narrow or even scrap as unconstitutional the statutory ban on warning employers or workers of imminent safety inspections, rejecting the company’s argument that the restriction -- which appears in both the Mine Safety and Health Act and the OSH Act -- violates its free-speech rights.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has rejected a Florida contracting firm’s argument that the multi-employer doctrine that allows OSHA to cite several companies at the same worksite for a single hazard conflicts with precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, even as it overturned the citation at the heart of the dispute.
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Industry and business groups are rejecting as inadequate amendments to a pending California bill that would prohibit employers from taking any “adverse action” against employees who either leave or refuse to report to a job site if they feel “unsafe” due to an “emergency” situation, saying the revised legislation remains “very subjective” and overbroad.
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Senate Democrats have unveiled their counterpart to a House bill that would give OSHA a one-year deadline to craft a long-sought workplace violence standard, after it passed the lower chamber by a bipartisan margin in 2021, giving supporters hope that it could overcome a filibuster in this Congress although so far it has no Republican co-sponsors.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is posting new fact sheets and updated frequently asked question (FAQ) documents for the recently adopted third revision to its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS), highlighting changes to key definitions and requirements for testing, quarantining, face masking and more.
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