Without a public announcement, OSHA has updated its nearly 30-year-old enforcement handbook for the process safety management (PSM) standard, adding dozens of interpretations the agency previously set out in responses to stakeholders’ letters questioning various aspects of the rule’s meaning or application.
OSHA has announced its annual inflation adjustments to minimum and maximum OSH Act penalties for violations cited in the coming year, raising both figures by about 3.2 percent and triggering a regulatory mandate for state plans to apply a matching adjustment to their own penalties, amid continuing litigation over whether than requirement is lawful.
The court hearing South Carolina's challenge to the OSHA mandate for states to match inflation adjustments in federal OSH Act penalties is staying the case pending a Supreme Court decision on the Administrative Procedure Act's (APA) statute of limitations, rejecting arguments from the agency that legal issues in the two are largely unrelated.
The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) has published a pair of reports in the space of a week that call for OSHA to craft new safety standards, with one recommending the agency enact a nationwide safety rule for workers who deal with liquid nitrogen and another broadening its past calls for a rulemaking on combustible dust.
OSHA’s latest regulatory agenda says it intends to advance several long-promised rules in either the final days of 2023 or early 2024, including updated safety standards for powered industrial trucks and elevated walking surfaces, even higher-profile rulemakings such as those for heat danger, workplace violence and infectious diseases remain on uncertain timelines.
South Carolina is doubling down on its arguments that a pending Supreme Court case over the Administrative Procedure Act's (APA) statute of limitations could ease its challenge to OSHA's mandate for states to match annual increases to federal OSH Act penalties.
Administrative law experts say they expect the Supreme Court will issue a narrow ruling in litigation seeking to limit agency adjudications via administrative law judges (ALJs), tamping down expectations that the case, focused on the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), could have sweeping implications for OSHA and other agencies.
Conservative justices on the Supreme Court appear sympathetic to claims that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) use of administrative law judges (ALJs) violates the 7th Amendment right to a jury trial, but during Nov. 28 oral argument they wrestled with how to craft a new test for the practice amid fears that a broad ruling could upend review of OSHA and other agencies’ enforcement actions.
OSHA is urging a federal district court to reject any link between South Carolina’s latest suit over the federal mandate for states to match their annual penalty increases to federal OSH Act penalties and a pending Supreme Court case that could greatly extend the Administrative Procedure Act’s (APA) statute of limitations for rule challenges.
The Labor Department (DOL) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has again identified worker safety issues among the top “management challenges” facing the department in its annual report on those high-priority issues, and is recommending a slew of new actions at both OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).