The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit has found that OSHA properly treated two subsidiaries of Universal Health Services (UHS) as a “single employer” in a citation for workplace violence at a Massachusetts facility, rejecting the firm’s claim that doing so would render the test “near-boundless” -- but also classifying its decision as non-precedential.
September 17, 2026
An employer attorney says Amazon’s challenge to Washington State’s requirement for firms to abate alleged safety violations before administrative review of their citations is “ripe for an appeal” after a federal district court rejected the suit, holding out hope that further litigation could scrap the policy, though he warned that the retailer’s own arguments undercut its claims.
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The head of workplace safety practice at the law firm Conn Maciel Carey called OSHA’s severe violator enforcement program (SVEP) “unconstitutional” during a recent panel on the agency’s recent moves to strengthen it, arguing that it imposes penalties on employers before they can seek judicial review of pending citations, in violation of their due-process rights.
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A new decision from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) largely affirms an OSHA citation stemming from a 2018 shipyard explosion that killed three workers, agreeing with the agency that a salvage firm failed to train its employees on safety measures for confined spaces but rejecting its claim that the violation was “willful.”
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OSHA leaders say the agency has begun certifying two types of visas for workers who were victims of human trafficking, forced labor and other crimes, it announced, nearly two months after officials announced plans to issue the documents in order to protect workers who are undocumented immigrants or subject to time-limited visas during investigations.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) has upheld OSHA’s citation against a roofing company over an employee’s failure to use fall protection while briefly assessing the positioning of a crane director, refusing to apply what it says is a narrow exception in the standard for activity before the “actual start of construction work.”
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A new decision from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) underscores what the panel says is the higher standard OSHA must meet to show safety violations by a “controlling” employer at a multi-company workplace, scrapping an administrative law judge’s (ALJ) decision that upheld the agency’s citations in one such case.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) is taking up a novel case testing whether a “religious, agricultural, communal colony” in South Dakota is an “employer” subject to the OSH Act, after a member of the group died in a 2020 accident while working in its grain bin.
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California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is issuing 18 citations to a medical device sterilization company for allegedly failing to protect its employees from overexposure to the toxic solvent ethylene oxide (EtO), amid a growing battle over EPA-crafted risk levels for the carcinogen that industry has argued are unreasonably strict.
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South Carolina is again challenging OSHA’s mandate for states to match federal minimum and maximum penalties for OSH Act violations, targeting the 2016 federal rule that first announced the policy after a federal court rejected its earlier suit that focused on language restating the mandate in the agency’s annual rules adjusting penalties for inflation.
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