Daily News

House Republicans are advancing legislation that seeks to require OSHA and other agencies to ease public access to their “significant” guidance documents as part of a broader regulatory review effort targeting such informal policies, but are stopping short of acting on industry calls to subject guidance to formal notice-and-comment requirements.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a new report is urging the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to push OSHA, EPA and other agencies to avoid rushing rules into effect, especially late in a president's term, in order to ensure compliance with the Congressional Review Act (CRA), though OMB doubts that there is more it can do.

Government watchdog groups are pressing Congress to consolidate and strengthen OSHA's authorities governing private sector whistleblowers, citing in part a recent case where a Labor Department (DOL) board found that EPA officials wrongfully fired an agency whistleblower who was entitled to protections.

Citing inadequate OSHA rules, labor unions are urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess and strictly regulate chemicals that pose risks to workers, pushing back against industry efforts to require the agency to defer to OSHA to regulate those exposures.

Industry attorneys say they expect that employers will increasingly challenge future OSHA citations after a federal appellate court found that the agency does not have a binding look-back period for determining whether an employer repeatedly violated standards, which can carry fines 10 times higher than an initial penalty.

“People will assume the next time there is a repeat violation, it will be worth an attack to see if there’s a chance to rewrite the policy,” says Lawrence Halprin of the firm Keller and Heckman, LLP, which represents employers.

A top House Democrat is working with NIOSH to identify “credible workplace exposure data” on various abrasive blasting materials that could be subject to the Obama OSHA's beryllium rule, suggesting policymakers are seeking to evaluate a controversial industry split over whether certain abrasive materials are subject to the rule.

House Republicans are urging their Senate counterparts to advance pending regulatory reform legislation that would raise the bar for OSHA and other agencies to craft new rules, charging the measure is needed to ensure agencies actually account for rules' impacts on small businesses.

As they struggle to get OSHA and others to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, Democrats are pushing Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to reinstate an Obama-era ban on federal contractors using forced arbitration proceedings, saying its secret process facilitates harassment.

As reports of sexual harassment dominate public discussion, labor groups and Democrats are stepping up their calls for OSHA and other federal agencies, as well as employers, to do more to prevent such harassment as a workplace safety issue.

Many observers say that the agency's current approach of using its “general duty” authority to address harassment is inadequate and that it needs a specific standard governing harassment and other workplace violence.

A senior OSHA official is downplaying the prospect of significant consultation with EPA on chemical risks to workers under the revised toxics law as some industry groups have sought, calling the extent of such collaboration “hard to predict” and suggesting it is often unnecessary.

The Office of Management & Budget (OMB) has again found that the benefits of OSHA, EPA and other agencies' rules vastly exceed their costs, but the draft report issued late last week also indicates that the Trump administration is considering revising its accounting methods for rules in ways that could trim their estimated benefits in the future.

And a former top regulatory review official in the Bush administration is also downplaying the report's findings, noting they are based on agencies' regulatory analyses that were conducted during the Obama administration.

OSHA's Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), which reviews administrative decisions, has found that inspectors with expired credentials still have the authority to cite employers for alleged violations and that it is the employers' responsibility to examine the officer's card before the inspection to ensure that they are “appropriate credentials."

A House hearing on Trump administration calls to prioritize collaborative approaches with industry at OSHA highlighted a sharp divide on the issue, with Republicans and industry seeking to simplify regulatory requirements and ease enforcement while Democrats called for strict enforcement to deter bad actors and promoted a bill to bolster protections under the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act.

In the wake of an ethics controversy, the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) has reinstated its strict Obama-era standard defining when contractors, franchisers and other entities are considered “joint employers,” though the move is unlikely to result in new enforcement of related OSHA guidance as conservatives and Trump administration officials have long opposed the standard.

A federal district judge has rejected a legal challenge brought by public interest groups to President Donald Trump's executive order (EO) directing OSHA, EPA and other agencies to identify two existing rules for potential repeal in exchange for every new rule they issue, saying the plaintiffs failed to prove harm from the order -- but stopping short of dismissing the case entirely.

House lawmakers are holding a Feb. 27 hearing where they plan to explore ways to bolster Trump administration calls to increase OSHA's focus on collaborative compliance-focused approaches with industry, an effort intended to avoid the Obama-era's focus on strict enforcement but which Democrats say jeopardizes worker protections.

The House Education and the Workforce Committee's subcommittee on workforce protections will hold a hearing on "A More Effective and Collaborative OSHA: A View from Stakeholders.”

Industry officials are raising significant hurdles to the Trump administration's proposal to charge fees to assist facilities in complying with the agency's accident and spill prevention rules, arguing such a program is unnecessary or that companies will need liability waivers or other incentives to participate.

The Supreme Court has unanimously rejected a request from a financial sector whistleblower to win protections from retaliation under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules, prompting concern from whistleblower advocates that the ruling will set a precedent that could undermine similar protections under other laws that OSHA enforces.

Democratic lawmakers are renewing their calls for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to revisit its recent decision reversing an Obama-era “joint-employer” precedent that had prompted strict OSHA enforcement guidance, citing conflict of interest concerns with one of the board's GOP members that were recently confirmed by an internal inspector general (IG) report.

In a surprise to some industry observers, EPA appears to be downplaying prospects that it will appeal a recent precedential ruling that rejected its efforts to limit litigation over its denial of a citizen petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to the administrative record, saying the agency will fight the litigation "on the merits."