Oregon’s worker safety agency has released its long-awaited proposal for a permanent heat illness prevention standard as part of a broader state effort to mitigate the impacts of climate change that also includes a workplace standard for wildfire smoke exposure, just as OSHA is conducting its own outreach for a nationwide heat stress rulemaking.
Worker safety advocates and Democratic state attorneys are pushing OSHA to adopt a broad, environmental-justice focused heat stress standard that would require employers to adopt dual environmental and physiological heat monitoring programs, comprehensive mitigation methods and new recordkeeping requirements.
Labor groups suing to reinstate OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector are claiming that the agency offered “no cognizable rationale” for allowing the rule to expire, ignored a key procedural step in that process, and bucked its own precedents when it dropped the ETS without a permanent standard to replace it.
Manufacturing and food safety groups are urging OSHA to consider a narrow heat-illness prevention standard limited to outdoor work settings that provides employers “flexibility” to conduct individualized heat hazard assessments based on regional climate and worksite conditions, and in light of available monitoring technology.
OSHA says it is renewing work on a permanent COVID-19 standard for the healthcare sector in light of the Supreme Court ruling that blocked its economy-wide vaccination rule, but warns that a final rule is still “six to nine months” away in a new legal filing opposing unions’ bid for a court order seeking a permanent standard within 30 days.
Attorneys say the Supreme Court’s stay of OSHA’s COVID-19 vaccine standard both forces the agency to use the general duty clause as its primary tool to enforce pandemic safety measures, and creates new hurdles for those efforts -- though it could also open the door to a separate rule based on the emergency temporary standard (ETS) for healthcare workers.
Labor groups and House Democrats are urging OSHA to issue a final rule based on its temporary COVID-19 vaccine standard but are split on how to approach that task, with some seeking comprehensive guidelines while others, including the lawmakers, favor a narrower rule that reflects the Supreme Court’s decision blocking the emergency standard.
Environmentalists and work-safety groups are ramping up pressure on OSHA to expedite a heat exposure standard, including through a new study that says high heat conditions, exacerbated by climate change, could lead to as much as $55.4 billion in lost wages annually by 2065 without new workplace protections or greenhouse gas reductions.
OSHA is raising its civil penalties for violations of the OSH Act and regulatory standards by 6.2 percent to account for inflation -- the largest such adjustment in recent memory and one industry attorneys are warning could lead to an even sharper spike in total fines as the agency looks to step up enforcement action across the board.
OSHA has quietly resumed development of an emergency response standard intended to bolster protections for first responders after pausing the process late in the Obama administration, but stakeholders are warning that the eventual rule may exclude much of the sector as it is dominated by public-sector and volunteer workers outside OSHA’s purview.