OSHA head Doug Parker says the agency is not formally withdrawing its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector but will not enforce the rule while a union-led lawsuit plays out, spurring outrage from labor advocates who are urging the agency to ramp up protections and implement a permanent standard for healthcare workers.
Employers’ attorneys say OSHA’s recent COVID-19 enforcement action against an Ohio auto parts supplier includes several suggested mitigation steps that “should be gravely concerning to employers,” arguing that many safeguards the agency is saying are necessary to avoid citations are either impractical or outside its OSH Act authority to require.
OSHA’s deputy director of standards and guidance says the agency’s push to promulgate a final COVID-19 standard for the healthcare sector in “six to nine months” will likely alter the timeline for some related rulemakings it outlined in the fall unified agenda, including both its proposed workplace violence and infectious disease standards for the industry.
California could become the first state to mandate COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment for all public and private sector workers under a newly proposed bill that its sponsor says aims to fill the gap left by the Supreme Court’s Jan. 13 decision to stay federal OSHA’s vaccine-or-testing emergency standard for large employers.
Attorneys are cautioning employers to maintain workplace COVID-19 protections including masking and social-distancing requirements despite states’ moves to loosen or drop their pandemic regulations, saying federal policy on the pandemic has become a “moving target” with enforcement still likely in response to larger outbreaks.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral argument April 4 in labor groups’ bid to reinstate OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector, setting the stage for what could be a precedent-setting decision on whether the agency has authority -- or even a duty -- to extend such emergency regulations.
Former Department of Labor (DOL) officials are urging a federal appeals court to reverse a district judge’s ruling limiting the circumstances where worker can sue OSHA for failing to take action on an “imminent danger,” saying the decision wrongly interprets the statute and could lead to “irremediable intra-Departmental conflicts.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is convening a three-judge “merits” panel to consider unions’ lawsuit seeking an order that would force OSHA to reinstate its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare workers and quickly release a permanent rule, in a potential sign that the court is taking the case seriously.
Workers at a Pennsylvania meat-packing plant are asking a federal appeals court to take up their potentially precedent-setting suit against OSHA over its failure to cite their employer for what they say were inadequate COVID-19 protections, arguing that the case remains relevant over a year after they first brought the claims.
Worker safety advocates and Democratic state attorneys are pushing OSHA to adopt a broad, environmental-justice focused heat stress standard that would require employers to adopt dual environmental and physiological heat monitoring programs, comprehensive mitigation methods and new recordkeeping requirements.