OSHA is touting its latest in a series of enforcement actions against Dollar General over allegations of widespread unsafe conditions, such as faulty emergency exits at the retailer’s stores, even after the agency agreed to drop a court action designed to enforce what it said was an “informal settlement” stemming from an earlier round of citations.
OSHA is urging a federal appeals court to reject a Texas construction firm’s argument that its safety standards for crane assembly and disassembly do not cover preparatory steps, arguing that the rule is “unambiguous” and that even if its scope is unclear judges should defer to the agency’s reasonable interpretation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit is weighing competing briefs from OSHA and two subsidiaries of the healthcare giant UHS in an appeal testing when the agency can treat legally distinct companies as a “single employer,” as each side claims the other is trying to overturn foundational precedent on that question.
California lawmakers signaled at a recent hearing that they are open to new legislation that would speed up worker-safety rulemakings and bolster enforcement at the state’s OSHA (Cal/OSHA), after labor representatives complained that several critical safety standards are taking years to complete and enforcement is lacking at best in many key sectors.
Employer attorneys are highlighting a recent decision by an Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) judge as a rare signal of the agency’s burden to show workers should be considered employees and not contractors under the OSH Act, just as the Labor Department is weighing a new rulemaking to define those categories.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit is weighing OSHA’s leeway to amend claims in its enforcement citations during the administrative appeal process, as an Ohio employer seeks to overturn a citation for a 2018 crane accident where it says a mid-litigation revision deprived it of “fair notice” of the agency’s allegations.
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.
OSHA is again attacking South Carolina’s lawsuit targeting the requirement for OSH Act state plans to match the federal agency’s maximum penalty amounts, arguing ahead of a Nov. 16 hearing that the state’s arguments against that mandate are untethered from the “four corners” of its case and thus should be summarily rejected.
OSHA is ordering ExxonMobil to reinstate two former employees who the agency says were illegally fired in retaliation for potentially leaking information to the press, and to pay them over $800,000 in back wages, compensatory damages and interest, in its second high-profile whistleblower enforcement action of recent months.
A Texas construction firm is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to narrow OSHA’s reading of its safety standard for assembling or disassembling cranes and other large equipment, arguing in a new brief that the agency was wrong to cite it under that rule for an accident involving preparatory steps before the disassembly process.