Government watchdog groups are pressing Congress to consolidate and strengthen OSHA's authorities governing private sector whistleblowers, citing in part a recent case where a Labor Department (DOL) board found that EPA officials wrongfully fired an agency whistleblower who was entitled to protections.

Citing inadequate OSHA rules, labor unions are urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess and strictly regulate chemicals that pose risks to workers, pushing back against industry efforts to require the agency to defer to OSHA to regulate those exposures.

Industry attorneys say they expect that employers will increasingly challenge future OSHA citations after a federal appellate court found that the agency does not have a binding look-back period for determining whether an employer repeatedly violated standards, which can carry fines 10 times higher than an initial penalty.

A top House Democrat is working with NIOSH to identify “credible workplace exposure data” on various abrasive blasting materials that could be subject to the Obama OSHA's beryllium rule, suggesting policymakers are seeking to evaluate a controversial industry split over whether certain abrasive materials are subject to the rule.

A top House Democrat is working with NIOSH to identify “credible workplace exposure data” on various abrasive blasting materials that could be subject to the Obama OSHA's beryllium rule, suggesting policymakers are seeking to evaluate a controversial industry split over whether certain abrasive materials are subject to the rule.

House Republicans are urging their Senate counterparts to advance pending regulatory reform legislation that would raise the bar for OSHA and other agencies to craft new rules, charging the measure is needed to ensure agencies actually account for rules' impacts on small businesses.

As they struggle to get OSHA and others to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, Democrats are pushing Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to reinstate an Obama-era ban on federal contractors using forced arbitration proceedings, saying its secret process facilitates harassment.

As reports of sexual harassment dominate public discussion, labor groups and Democrats are stepping up their calls for OSHA and other federal agencies, as well as employers, to do more to prevent such harassment as a workplace safety issue.

A senior OSHA official is downplaying the prospect of significant consultation with EPA on chemical risks to workers under the revised toxics law as some industry groups have sought, calling the extent of such collaboration “hard to predict” and suggesting it is often unnecessary.

The Office of Management & Budget (OMB) has again found that the benefits of OSHA, EPA and other agencies' rules vastly exceed their costs, but the draft report issued late last week also indicates that the Trump administration is considering revising its accounting methods for rules in ways that could trim their estimated benefits in the future.