The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in just-released figures on annual workplace injuries and illnesses shows 2.8 million nonfatal incidents in 2018, the same level as 2017 and the first year since 2012 that the total rate did not decline.
OSHA’s launch of a new approach to weighting and measuring enforcement expands from the prior approach of focusing on the number of inspections to include other factors such as types of hazards, which a law firm says will put the agency’s inspection focus on high hazard areas and cases in line with OSHA’s enforcement priorities.
James Sullivan, the chairman and lone member of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), is optimistic that Congress will swiftly approve two nominations to join the panel so that it can once again have a quorum to resume its work reviewing contested OSHA workplace citations and penalties.
President Donald Trump intends to nominate former OSHA Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission (OSHRC) member Cynthia Attwood to rejoin the panel that decides challenges to citations or penalties resulting from agency inspections of workplaces, a position that she has first held starting in February 2010.
President Donald Trump has announced his intent to nominate Amanda Laihow, chief counsel of OSHA’s Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), to become a member of the review panel through April 2023, touting her long-running work on labor issues related to health, safety and anti-discrimination laws.
Nearly a dozen Democratic senators are stepping up pressure on the Trump administration to address allegations of workplace violence at McDonalds, putting pressure on OSHA to toughen its scrutiny of the company even as they struggle to advance legislation requiring the agency to quickly set a standard for the health sector.
A labor union attorney says environmental statutes' citizen suit provisions could give workers a powerful tool in their fight to reduce their exposures to hazardous chemicals, because laws such as the Clean Air Act impose much greater penalties for violations that increase exposures compared to workplace safety statutes.
The Labor Department (DOL) has begun implementing a recently enacted data management law that requires agencies to better share and manage data, a move that observers say will allow OSHA and other agencies to bolster inspections and enforcement to target employers who have multiple violations across the different agencies.
A just-issued analysis of new OSHA data from a labor group shows a drop in the agency's “complicated and high-impact inspections” and a “historic low” number of inspectors even as workplace fatalities increased, suggesting a road map for lawmakers as they weigh the agency's budget request to hire nearly three dozen new inspectors and other personnel.
Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC), incoming chairwoman of the House subcommittee overseeing worker safety is aiming to ensure vigorous OSHA enforcement, block Trump administration rollback of worker safety rules and reduce opioid abuse among construction workers but says boosting the minimum wage is her top priority.