Congress

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Mine Health and Safety Administration (MSHA) is defending its decision not to craft an enforceable COVID-19 safety standard to protect mine workers, reinforcing the department’s broad policy of using guidance instead of binding rules to guide employers’ responses to the pandemic.

Industry attorneys say the Senate GOP caucus sees Democrats’ sudden push to block budget and service cuts at the Postal Service as a fresh opportunity to negotiate on the next COVID-19 response bill, circulating a “skinny” relief bill detailing Republicans’ preferred provisions including employer liability waivers.

The halt in Congress’ negotiations over a coronavirus response bill means supporters of either a legislative mandate for either OSHA issuing a standard for worker COVID-19 protections or employer virus liability waivers are unlikely to quickly see progress at the federal level, turning focus to states’ rules addressing the pandemic.

The House has approved its fiscal year 2021 budget for OSHA with amendments that would boost the agency’s whistleblower programs and require issuance of a binding workplace standard for COVID-19, setting up an eventual clash with the Senate although that chamber has yet to release its own slate of funding bills.

Democrats and Republicans are taking hard lines on the employer liability waiver in the GOP’s newly unveiled COVID-19 relief bill, posing the risk of a stalemate on the next virus economic relief bill as Democrats say the waiver is a “non-starter” while the GOP counters that it must be included in the legislation.

A bipartisan group of Midwest and coal state House members is pushing legislation that would force the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to develop new workplace COVID-19 protections for miners, in a sign that the partisan gridlock over broader OSHA standards might not extend to sector-specific policies.

Democratic senators say President Donald Trump is failing to adequately coordinate and fund personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and other “front-line” employees during the COVID-19 crisis, urging aggressive action to deliver the equipment regardless of any PPE provisions in the next pandemic response bill.

A new federal appellate court ruling is building on a prior denial of labor unions’ suit that sought an OSHA emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19, rejecting a similar case that applied to the mining industry specifically and further underscoring the importance of lawmakers’ negotiations on an imminent stimulus bill.

Virginia has approved its first-in-the-nation workplace standard for COVID-19 protections in a marker for other states weighing similar rules in response to OSHA’s refusal to craft a nationwide policy, even as congressional Democrats are renewing their push to force the agency to pursue a rulemaking in the next stimulus bill.

House appropriators have released a report on their fiscal year 2021 OSHA funding bill that seeks to boost the agency’s enforcement budget by $10 million while calling for the agency to issue both a worker protection standard for COVID-19 and its workplace violence standard for health care, though it stops short of legally mandating either rule.