President Donald Trump’s executive order (EO) using the Defense Production Act to keep meat and poultry processors operating to maintain food supplies during the coronavirus pandemic is prompting legal and political pressure to enforce OSHA’s voluntary guidelines for protecting workers at the facilities who are at high risk of exposure.
OSHA has issued guidance for how meatpacking facilities -- a major new source of coronavirus infections -- can help protect workers from exposure, including screening employees and using social distancing in the workplace, but critics say the guide is just the latest non-binding advice the administration is providing in lieu of necessary rules.
House and Senate Democrats have introduced companion bills that would force OSHA to quickly issue an emergency temporary standard mandating infectious disease exposure control plans in all workplaces to protect against COVID-19, expanding on an earlier bill that sought to establish the swift standard primarily for healthcare workers.
Attorneys representing employers are warning California businesses to pay special attention to complying with Cal/OSHA rules implicated in the COVID-19 emergency, including those covering injury and illness reporting, “aerosol transmissible disease,” and general reporting, pointing out that the state’s rules often go beyond federal requirements.
OSHA is promising to exercise “discretion in enforcement” if employers are unable to comply with various testing, training, inspection and other safety mandates due to the COVID-19 pandemic, writing in a new memo that there will be no penalties for those violations as long as businesses make “good faith” attempts to comply.
OSHA, former Vice President Joe Biden and worker advocates are floating separate efforts to protect delivery workers from the threat of coronavirus, including new “tips” from OSHA to protect such workers and Biden calling for new agency policies to better protect delivery workers in addition to health care employees.
Former Obama OSHA officials, House Democrats and others who have criticized the Trump administration for not issuing a temporary emergency standard to protect health care workers from the coronavirus pandemic are welcoming OSHA’s interim response plan to reduce such risks, but they are renewing calls for the agency to set a binding standard.
OSHA is aiming to ease healthcare workers’ access to respirators during the coronavirus pandemic by issuing two memos offering enforcement discretion of its respiratory protection standard for employers who must otherwise use NIOSH-approved respirators or devices from other countries.
The Obama-era head of OSHA is calling for the agency to quickly issue an emergency infectious disease standard and cite employers who “egregiously” ignore Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance on airborne diseases in order to protect health and other works from the coronavirus.
Top House Democrats say they will include a mandate that OSHA issue an emergency temporary infectious disease standard to address risks from the coronavirus to healthcare employees and expand protections in other industries in their next bill to address the pandemic after they were forced to drop the mandate from prior measures.