Members of the California legislature have introduced a bill that would reimburse employers’ costs for complying with the state OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) COVID-19 worker-safety standard in 2023 and 2024 through a new tax credit, with support from agriculture groups that have attacked the standard as unnecessary, overly burdensome and costly.
Healthcare employers and trade groups representing an array of other, overlapping sectors are continuing to push OSHA to either drop its plan for a final COVID-19 safety standard in healthcare workplaces, or tie it strictly to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance, as the White House advances its review of the rule.
Labor groups are urging the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to tighten OSHA’s final safety standard for COVID-19 exposure in healthcare workplaces beyond the emergency requirements the agency imposed in 2021, focusing in particular on calls to exceed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for the pandemic.
A top official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce used a recent White House meeting to reiterate claims that OSHA is violating the law by crafting a final COVID-19 safety standard for healthcare facilities based on its expired emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the sector, in a preview of possible legal challenges facing the imminent rule.
California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board has approved final COVID-19 worker-safety rules, despite ongoing unease among key stakeholder groups -- including labor representatives unhappy that an “exclusion pay” requirement was left out of the standard, and employers who fear that mandate will return in a future rule for general infectious diseases.
OSHA has sent its long-term COVID-19 safety standard for healthcare facilities to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review, moving the rule to the final stage of its administrative process after months of delay -- though the timeline for final action remains unclear at best.
California OSHA’s (Cal/OSHA) standards board members are grudgingly accepting that the agency will not restore “exclusion pay” requirements in its long-term COVID-19 worker-safety standard, after staffers told them inserting the benefit would delay the rule by at least seven months -- which would leave no coronavirus standard in place as of Jan. 1.
Employer attorneys are touting what they say are California’s extensive worker pay and job protections in defense of Cal/OSHA’s proposal to drop “exclusion pay” requirements from its final COVID-19 safety standard, after labor groups and their allies -- including members of the agency standards board -- have pushed to restore those mandates.
OSHA is touting a recent district court decision allowing a novel whistleblower enforcement suit over COVID-19 infection risks at a New York healthcare center to proceed despite the employee’s agreement not to sue over the alleged retaliation on her own behalf, calling it a “significant” victory for officials’ authority to prosecute similar cases across the country.
A new report from the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) harshly criticizes OSHA’s enforcement work during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, charging that it “did not sufficiently protect workers from COVID-19 health hazards” and floating five recommendations for policy fixes to address those failures.