A group of congressional Republicans is threatening to block a stop-gap government funding bill unless it blocks OSHA’s and other agencies’ COVID-19 vaccine policies, potentially undermining a newly announced bipartisan spending agreement and all but guaranteeing another clash on the subject at the next deadline.
The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) will review a case that could set a new precedent for how it deals with situations where an employer “disregards” deadlines to participate in an appeal, while the Senate labor committee is poised to vote on President Joe Biden’s nominee to the panel as soon as Dec. 2.
House and Senate Republicans are readying several measures to force votes on OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 vaccines, including a Congressional Review Act (CRA) repeal measure and a threat to block any new bills to fund the federal government unless they include language scrapping the rule.
EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s annual report on management challenges facing the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) once again finds that the panel cannot function properly with just one Senate-confirmed member, even after reworking its governing rules to better fit the current “quorum of one."
Stakeholders on all sides say Democrats’ proposal to raise the OSH Act’s cap on penalties to $700,000 per violation would reshape OSHA enforcement, with labor and safety groups praising the bill as a much-needed boost to deterrence while employers’ attorneys are predicting a “big” increase in legal challenges to individual fines.
House members used recent hearings on COVID-19 issues to raise competing claims on OSHA’s impending vaccination standard, with Republicans arguing that the rule could exacerbate supply chain shortages and other economic fallout from the pandemic while Democrats said the agency must take a strict approach to protect workers.
Just-released legislative text that House Democratic leaders say implements a deal between President Joe Biden and Senate moderates for a $1.75 trillion social spending package maintains the previously announced proposal to raise statutory penalties for OSH Act violations by a factor of 10, along with $707 million in funding for OSHA itself.
The Senate has confirmed Doug Parker as the first permanent head of OSHA since the Obama era in a mostly party-line Oct. 25 vote that puts the former California work-safety chief in control of the agency just as it is poised to implement a much-anticipated COVID-19 vaccine standard and a host of the administration’s other priorities.
Senate leaders are teeing up two long-awaited steps for OSHA, scheduling a floor vote for Oct. 25 on former California safety chief Doug Parker’s nomination to lead the agency and proposing a fiscal year 2022 appropriations bill that includes a $74.1 million funding boost largely focused on its enforcement work.
Katherine Lemos, chair and sole member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), told a House committee Sept. 29 that she plans to introduce new approaches for its incident investigations and reports that would take less time to complete, in order to address a years-long slowdown in CSB’s work.