President Donald Trump intends to nominate former OSHA Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission (OSHRC) member Cynthia Attwood to rejoin the panel that decides challenges to citations or penalties resulting from agency inspections of workplaces, a position that she has first held starting in February 2010.
President Donald Trump has announced his intent to nominate Amanda Laihow, chief counsel of OSHA’s Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), to become a member of the review panel through April 2023, touting her long-running work on labor issues related to health, safety and anti-discrimination laws.
A staffing firm executive told House lawmakers at a recent hearing that the trend toward greater use of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace could bolster worker safety through a combination of new data-driven safeguards and shifting repetitive or weight-bearing tasks away from humans.
A House Energy and Commerce Committee panel has advanced on a primarily partisan basis a bill to ban all uses of asbestos and a package of 13 bills to deal with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), although the asbestos legislation could ultimately drive chlorine producers to use PFAS as a replacement to asbestos.
Senators in a 53-44 vote on Sept. 26 confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominee Eugene Scalia to head the Department of Labor (DOL), clearing the path for him to be sworn in and pursue an agenda that Democrats fear will advance the administration’s deregulatory agenda at OSHA with rule rollbacks that increase risks to worker safety.
The Senate environment panel has approved President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), clearing the path for her Senate confirmation, though a key GOP senator continues to urge the White House to fill other current and pending vacancies to ensure CSB can continue its incident investigation and other functions.
Eugene Scalia, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Labor Department (DOL), moved closer to a Senate confirmation vote as soon as this week after the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee approved his nomination on a party-line vote.
OSHA and other agencies appear headed for a continuing resolution (CR) to fund their operations when fiscal year 2020 begins next month after the Senate earlier this week failed to debate the agency’s FY20 spending bill and the House overwhelmingly approved a CR that will fund the government until shortly before Thanksgiving.
Eugene Scalia, the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the Labor Department (DOL), drew strong criticism from Democratic senators during his Sept. 19 confirmation hearing over his record targeting OSHA and other DOL rules though he stopped short of committing to senators’ requests for new safety and other measures they are seeking.
House lawmakers still appear divided on legislation that would reauthorize and strengthen the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) chemical facility safety program as the House Energy and Commerce Committee takes up the issue, though they are pledging to continue working towards an agreement.