Labor unions intend to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to order OSHA to expand its healthcare-specific COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) to either all employers or specifically to the meatpacking and food-processing sectors, according to a new court filing.
September 17, 2026
Incoming OSHA chief Doug Parker could seek to tighten the agency’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) following his expected confirmation, an employer attorney said during a July 22 webinar, based on his record of strict regulation as California’s top safety official and the spike in infections due to the virus’s “Delta” variant.
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OSHA has broadened the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector’s waiver from the agency’s process safety management (PSM) standard, holding that the rule does not apply to facilities subject to Transportation Department (DOT) pipeline safety rules while also revoking a narrower Clinton-era policy that exempted only “fire and explosion” dangers.
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White House officials have completed their review of OSHA’s long-delayed request for information designed to shape its first-ever update to the safety standard for mechanical power presses -- a rule that dates to 1971, and which the agency sought unsuccessfully to rework during the George W. Bush administration.
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An environmental group is urging EPA to tighten worker protections in a slate of proposed rules governing “significant” new uses of 32 chemicals, claiming they fall short of Trump-era enforcement orders and must be reworked to follow the hierarchy of controls (HOC) rather than focusing on protective gear.
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OSHA is extending the deadline for public comments on its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) from July 21 to Aug. 20, giving stakeholders more time to craft comments that could inform both potential changes to the short-term standard and any permanent rulemaking the agency chooses to craft based on it.
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Environmental, labor and other groups are pushing to overhaul the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) by rebuilding its investigative capacity to better protect workers and by making reform of OSHA’s process safety rule and EPA chemical facility regulations its “top advocacy priority,” among other measures.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has granted EPA’s request to remand without vacatur the Trump-era risk evaluation of methylene chloride, rejecting objections from unions, states and environmental groups that the agency’s plan to rework its analysis of the toxic solvent will not address several elements they claim are unlawful.
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The House Appropriations Committee is pushing OSHA to impose higher penalties for safety violations, update its standard for workplace noise and quickly craft a rule to protect workers from heat illness, arguing that those and other steps are needed to undo long-term “erosion” of the agency’s enforcement program.
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A new draft guide from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says key data needed to set exposure limits for engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) remains scarce despite an EPA reporting requirement, while touting several agencies’ assessments of the substances as models for workplace protections.
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House appropriators voted July 12 to advance a fiscal year 2022 Labor Department spending bill that includes $692 million for OSHA -- $100 million more than current levels and $27 million more than the Biden administration requested, though with few details on how the committee would allocate that money among the agency’s programs.
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Environmentalists and industry groups are starting to draw battle lines over how or whether the Biden administration should revise the Trump-era rule governing chemical facility-safety requirements, with environmentalists urging officials to restore and strengthen the Obama-era rule while industry is arguing for retaining the Trump rule.
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Oregon’s worker safety agency has issued an emergency heat illness standard in response to June’s record-breaking heat wave, in a possible sign that the regional “heat dome” event already linked to more than 100 deaths in the Beaver State alone could boost OSHA’s newly-announced plans to enact a similar standard nationwide.
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The labor union National Nurses United (NNU) has dropped its court challenge to OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) without explanation, leaving a challenge by the AFL-CIO and United Food and Commercial Workers International (UFCW) as apparently the only active litigation over the medical-sector rule.
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OSHA has published its first handbook for compliance officers to enforce the COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) just as the rule’s first wave of employer mandates are going into effect, with guidelines for both remote and in-person inspections at healthcare facilities as well as criteria for applying the rule’s site-specific exemptions.
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Four staff scientists at EPA’s chemical safety office are asking the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to review their claims of long-running “fraud and corruption” in the TSCA program, saying managers and political officials across multiple administrations intervened in a host of cases to ease chemical risk findings, workplace safety mandates and other aspects of their risk evaluations.
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The Agriculture Department (USDA) has let pass the deadline for appealing or seeking a stay of a federal judge’s ruling that scrapped its line-speed waiver program for pork plants over worker safety concerns, reinstating stricter caps on production speeds even as several firms are seeking permission to file their own appeals.
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EPA chemicals chief Michal Freedhoff says the agency could begin to finalize new versions of at least seven of the 10 chemical evaluations issued by the Trump administration starting in spring 2022, while three of the documents have been deemed “likely sufficient” in their current forms and will drive proposed management rules.
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OSHA plans to make a heat-illness standard one of its top priorities early in the Biden administration, touting California’s heat standard as a potential model and warning that without a new federal rule, Trump-era judicial precedent will block use of the OSH Act’s general duty clause to combat heat dangers.
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Labor unions are suing the Biden OSHA over its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS), setting the stage for a ruling on whether regulators and the White House lawfully found that only medical workers face “grave danger” from the pandemic, just as newly released draft materials show officials originally sought an economy-wide ETS.
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