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House lawmakers are encouraging employers to bolster their workplace injury prevention programs to address opioid misuse after a hearing found that the epidemic is a growing safety concern among employers, though conservatives are cautioning against any new OSHA rules as the agency looks to address the epidemic as a workplace issue.

EPA is planning to seek congressional approval to collect industry fees to support the agency's popular Energy STAR program and supplement compliance assistance for facility accident and spill prevention rules, according to its fiscal year 2019 budget request, an effort that aims to offset proposed budget cuts for the programs.

It is not clear how Congress will respond to the proposal but an energy efficiency group is already strongly criticizing agency plans to create a user fee system for the popular Energy STAR product efficiency labeling program.

The Senate labor panel has postponed the confirmation hearing of a Trump administration appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) amid Democrats' concerns that an NLRB member participated in reversing an Obama-era “joint-employer” precedent that had prompted strict OSHA enforcement guidance, despite potentially having a conflict of interest.

As the Senate debates immigration policy, labor unions are renewing their calls to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, saying providing such a path will help protect illegal immigrants from being exploited in unsafe working conditions.

The Trump administration's fiscal year 2019 budget requests renews prior calls to eliminate the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) tasked with investigating industrial facility accidents, just as it did in FY18, while significantly cutting funding and reorganizing NIOSH.

The Trump administration is proposing to continue funding OSHA in fiscal year 2019 at levels similar to recent years, while doubling-down on an FY18 push to scrap certain agency worker training grants, long opposed by industry as sending money to labor unions, in favor of bolstering the agency's compliance assistance programs.

EPA has issued a proposed a rule allowing the agency to collect industry fees to help defray costs of implementing aspects of the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), claiming to have answered industry calls for fees that are proportional to the agency's costs, though an environmentalist says EPA is underestimating those costs.

Labor advocates are increasingly turning to state officials to do more to protect workers in New York and other states, fearing that Trump administration rollbacks have “decimated” OSHA, leaving many workers inadequately protected.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect more clarity about independent contractor responsibility under the provisions of the OSH Act.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the top Democrat on the Senate labor committee, is seeking bipartisan support to preserve worker safety and other protections that many fear are being eroded by the growing use of “independent contractors” in the gig economy who are generally not covered by such safeguards.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is urging EPA to update its criteria for identifying persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals under the revised toxics law, calling the criteria “outdated”, while environmental groups are opposing that call and pressing EPA to seek OSHA data to better assess exposures.

EPA recently sought public input on uses, exposures and alternatives to five PBT chemicals it is targeting for expedited review under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Democratic lawmakers are urging the Trump administration to adopt recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations for OSHA to bolster inspections of poultry plants, efforts that may have received a boost from the administration's rejecting of a poultry industry request to ease regulatory oversight of their processing facilities.

With online companies dominating the transportation and delivery sectors, the rise of contracting jobs is at an all-time high, though the trend is raising concerns about how OSHA will address the growing number of workers classified as “independent contractors” who are not covered under the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act.

Labor unions are urging EPA to reject a chemical sector call to defer regulation of new chemicals' risks to workers to OSHA, arguing that the plan would violate the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), and that OSHA lacks resources and authority to adequately protect workers.

A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study of occupational respiratory health is arguing that improved monitoring and surveillance of workplace exposures to risk factors for asthma could reduce worker deaths, underscoring a recent National Academies of Sciences (NAS) call for greater OSHA surveillance of workplace hazards.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is criticizing President Donald Trump's rollback of certain OSHA worker safety and other labor protections during his first year in office, teeing up potential issues Democrats plan to raise as the 2018 midterm elections loom.

As companies prepare to comply with a looming Feb. 1 deadline for internally posting their annual work-related injury and illness summaries, an attorney is urging them to delay early compliance with a July 1 deadline for electronically submitting the reports to OSHA as the administration is expected to overhaul the requirements before then.

A Houston-based drilling company with a lengthy record of OSHA violations and dubbed as one of the “worst safety violators in the nation” in a 2008 Senate report, could be the first to be subject to an OSHA enforcement program aimed at severe violators in the oil and gas industry after a fatal rig explosion in Oklahoma, Jordan Barab, a former Obama OSHA official says.

Despite high hopes that the administration would follow through on President Donald Trump's promises to cut so many regulations “it will make your head spin,” industry attorneys are are now tempering their expectations on the extent of any deregulatory efforts at OSHA, saying the impact may be minimal.

Environmentalists have quietly sued to block the Trump administration's framework for reviewing new chemicals under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), clearing the way for a legal test on whether the administration can proceed with its plan to drop the use of enforcement orders as an interim step in regulating the substances.

Labor groups are criticizing a Trump administration plan to allow faster line speeds at swine processing plants, charging it will increase workplace risks and underscoring their concerns that officials may soon move to finalize a similar plan for poultry processors.