Congress

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank that aims to bolster protections for “low- and middle-income workers,” is urging Congress to step up fiscal year 2022 funding for OSHA as part of a broader push to boost resources for “worker protection agencies,” just as the Senate is ramping up debate on its FY22 appropriations bills.

An alliance of worker groups, environmentalists and others is petitioning OSHA to craft an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for heat illness even though the agency has begun to craft a permanent rule on the subject, arguing that the years-long regulatory process is too slow to protect workers from heat waves driven by climate change.

The House has passed, largely along party lines, a sweeping fiscal year 2022 spending bill that includes a $100 million budget increase for OSHA, setting the stage for Democrats to seek common ground with Senate Republicans on a bill that can clear the filibuster before current funding levels expire at the end of September.

Republican senators at a July 29 hearing suggested President Joe Biden’s three nominees to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) appear to lack the qualifications to investigate chemical industrial accidents, echoing industry concerns that they have no specific experience in the field and potentially foreshadowing a confirmation battle.

The House Appropriations Committee is pushing OSHA to impose higher penalties for safety violations, update its standard for workplace noise and quickly craft a rule to protect workers from heat illness, arguing that those and other steps are needed to undo long-term “erosion” of the agency’s enforcement program.

House appropriators voted July 12 to advance a fiscal year 2022 Labor Department spending bill that includes $692 million for OSHA -- $100 million more than current levels and $27 million more than the Biden administration requested, though with few details on how the committee would allocate that money among the agency’s programs.

Four staff scientists at EPA’s chemical safety office are asking the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to review their claims of long-running “fraud and corruption” in the TSCA program, saying managers and political officials across multiple administrations intervened in a host of cases to ease chemical risk findings, workplace safety mandates and other aspects of their risk evaluations.

The Senate labor committee backed Doug Parker’s nomination as the next head of OSHA on a mostly party-line vote June 16, setting the stage for his likely confirmation by the full Senate later this summer, just as the agency is laying out its first rulemaking agenda in the Biden era following its release of the long-awaited COVID-19 standard.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh says OSHA will release June 10 a COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) that applies only to the medical sector, rejecting arguments from unions and safety groups that a general-industry standard is still needed despite widespread vaccinations.

The White House is proposing a $64 million boost to OSHA’s budget including 362 new full-time equivalent (FTE) staff positions, in what would be an across-the-board boost to the agency’s capacity for rulemaking, enforcement and outreach that the Biden administration says is needed to “reassert its position” in national safety policy.