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Enforcement will continue to be a major part of OSHA’s activities during the second Trump administration, even with a renewed emphasis on compliance assistance, though budget and staffing constraints are affecting the types of inspections conducted and citations issued, legal experts say.

Enforcement will continue to be a major part of OSHA’s activities during the second Trump administration, even with a renewed emphasis on compliance assistance, though budget and staffing constraints are affecting the types of inspections conducted and citations issued, legal experts say.

OSHA is asking a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit to reconsider its landmark ruling that found the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) preempts OSHA from regulating worker safety around railcars, arguing the preemption issue was not before the court, and even if it was, the judges made several other errors in their ruling.

OSHA is asking a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit to reconsider its landmark ruling that found the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) preempts OSHA from regulating worker safety around railcars, arguing the preemption issue was not before the court, and even if it was, the judges made several other errors in their ruling.

Business groups are seeking to boost the chemical industry’s legal arguments that TSCA is intended to be a “gap-filling” statute between OSHA’s authority and other environmental and public health laws, arguing in a recently filed amicus brief that the Biden-era rule phasing out most ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos improperly shifted that balance.

Petroleum refiners and chemical manufacturers are urging OSHA to ease compliance in a pending proposal to amend 2016 updates to the agency’s fall-protection requirements, asking OSHA to either repeal requirements for personal fall protection systems or grandfather in the use of cages or wells on existing fixed ladders.

Petroleum refiners and chemical manufacturers are urging OSHA to ease compliance in a pending proposal to amend 2016 updates to the agency’s fall-protection requirements, asking OSHA to either repeal requirements for personal fall protection systems or grandfather in the use of cages or wells on existing fixed ladders.

A federal district court in West Virginia has stayed a challenge by a pair of coal miners to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) layoffs of most of the staff at a key worker-safety agency last year, after the miners and HHS jointly asked for a pause in the litigation because HHS has now rescinded all the layoff notices.

Employer and industry groups are pressing California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to scale back certain provisions of a long-overdue rule to update the agency’s first-aid kit requirements for general industry and construction companies, including requirements for additional protections for unique hazards and a new 3-4-minute time limit for employees to access kits.

The AFL-CIO is urging key members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reject a Republican draft discussion bill aimed at making numerous industry-requested changes to TSCA, arguing the legislation as written “would put American workers, their children, spouses and neighbors in danger.”