A California lawmaker is advancing a bill to expand the state’s existing job-security protections for employees who refuse to perform “hazardous” tasks by providing such protection in cases where an employee “has a reasonable apprehension” that the task would result in injury or illness, and requiring full pay during the period of inactivity.
OSHA is seeking to renew an information collection request (ICR) related to COVID-19 reporting and recordkeeping requirements for healthcare employees to ensure compliance with Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) mandates even as the agency has stopped enforcing the requirements and plans to withdraw them through a rulemaking.
ExxonMobil is asking the 5th Circuit to vacate an administrative law judge’s (ALJ) findings of improper recordkeeping for failing to properly log work-related mental illnesses following a 2021 accident at the company's Texas facility, in a case that could test OSHA policies governing which medical professionals are qualified to make such determinations.
The Trump EPA is signaling plans to scale back Biden-era approaches for evaluating -- and thus regulating -- worker and other risks under TSCA, asking a federal appellate court to remand the so-called “framework” rule so that officials can reconsider it “in its entirety,” Nancy Beck, EPA’s newly appointed deputy chemicals chief, told the court.
A coalition of safety organizations is urging OSHA and employers to go beyond legal requirements and implement robust environmental, health and safety (EHS) practices, emphasizing that proactive risk mitigation not only enhances worker safety but also boosts productivity and contributes to economic growth.
Debra Lee, who has been serving as California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) acting chief for the past eight months, told state lawmakers during her March 5 confirmation hearing that her priorities include aggressively working to hire new staff to fill a substantial number of vacancies and ensuring that a new program to protect agricultural workers becomes fully operational soon.
Senate Democrats are raising concerns over whether the Trump administration will provide adequate funding for OSHA, given prior Republican lawmakers’ attempts to slash the agency’s budget, pressing Keith Sonderling on the issue at his confirmation hearing to be Labor Department (DOL) deputy secretary.
The Trump EPA is indicating its plans to initiate a new rulemaking to reconsider the Biden administration’s Risk Management Program (RMP) final rule, voicing support for industry and GOP state efforts to put into abeyance their ongoing legal challenges to the Biden rule.
Several members of California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board and labor representatives are strongly criticizing a bill pending in Congress that would eliminate federal OSHA, charging such a move would be disastrous for workers across the country and weaken state protections even in states that have their own regulatory programs such as the Golden State.
Chemical distributors are urging the Labor Department to roll back two Biden-era OSHA regulations and drop plans for finalizing two proposed rules, arguing they impose excessive compliance costs without improving worker safety and meet the requirements in a recent executive order aimed at reducing regulatory burdens.
Chemical industry groups are suing to overturn the Biden EPA’s rejection of their petition to reconsider its 2024 Risk Management Program (RMP) rule, part of a multi-pronged push by industry groups to rescind the facility-safety regulation.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is retaining two EPA chemical assessment programs on its “high risk list” of programs susceptible to waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse, finding that its combined ratings of the programs that include assessments of chemical risks to workers remain “unchanged” from 2023.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has approved President Donald Trump’s nomination of former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) to head the Labor Department (DOL), clearing the way for a floor vote as other nominees that will oversee OSHA await their Senate reviews.
House Democrats are pressing the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) for details on staffing cuts and funding holds at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to evaluate how these cuts may affect the agency’s role in supporting worker safety and compensation programs.
Environmentalists are warning that the second Trump EPA’s expected rollback of the Biden-era Risk Management Program (RMP) rule may be vulnerable to a new round of litigation, much as it was in the president’s first term, because the administration is again “quite likely” to conduct a predetermined rulemaking process.
Following the recent expiration of California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) COVID worker-safety standard, a state lawmaker is introducing a bill that would continue prohibiting employers from preventing workers from wearing masks or respirators if it is safe.
A newly published article by former OSHA official David Michaels highlights how newly available OSHA injury data can identify predictable risks, offering opportunities to improve safety standards, reduce workplace injuries, and prevent future harm by implementing more targeted and effective injury prevention strategies.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Labor Department (DOL), is pledging to review a host of OSHA rules, including a Biden-era proposal setting safety standards for emergency responders as well as a plan to address workplace violence in healthcare settings.
President Donald Trump is instructing OSHA and other agencies to develop a list of existing regulations that could be targeted for repeal if they meet one of over half a dozen criteria defined as inconsistent with administration policy, while also directing officials to use “enforcement discretion” not to implement many of those rules in the meantime.
A coalition of environmental groups is again petitioning EPA to ban the use of hydrogen fluoride (HF) in refineries under TSCA, the latest in a series of so-far unsuccessful calls from environmentalists and federal investigators for EPA and OSHA to clamp down on the highly toxic substance that is used at dozens of facilities across the United States.