Top Democrats on the House Education and Labor Committee are attacking OSHA’s recent guidance on reporting worker hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 as a move to “eliminate, for all practical purposes” mandatory reporting of workplace infections, and demanding details on how the agency crafted the policy.
California lawmakers are urging the state OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to speed up its investigations of potential COVID-19 workplace safety violations, and to focus its efforts on the highly vulnerable sectors of health care, food processing, agriculture and warehousing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) new guidance finding potential for COVID-19 to spread through the air -- separate from the short-range droplets believed to be the virus’ primary mode of travel -- could force employers to update their infection-control measures in order to comply with OSHA standards.
The collapse of bipartisan talks on COVID-19 relief and President Donald Trump’s vow not to field any new offers until after the election all but kills GOP plans to insert employee liability waivers in the bill and Democrats’ hopes of using the legislation as a vehicle to force OSHA to issue an emergency virus safety standard.
OSHA is promising “enforcement discretion” to employers who cannot perform otherwise mandatory fit tests on powered respirators because of ongoing test equipment shortages, as long as the businesses make “good-faith efforts” to obtain the required supplies and reduce workers’ need to use respiratory protection gear.
OSHA has announced citations against an additional 28 employers for violations related to the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating its pace of enforcement -- especially against health care and nursing home facilities -- amid accusations that the agency is not doing enough to address workplace exposures to the disease.
OSHA has narrowed its guidance on when employers must report COVID-19 hospitalizations to the agency as “work-related,” setting a requirement that a case is only reportable when it comes within 24 hours of a workplace exposure to the virus despite the disease’s long incubation time that means infections take a week or more to manifest.
Oregon has released an updated draft of its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) that extends to all employers the requirement to craft exposure risk assessments for the virus but removes mandatory paid leave for workers subject to medical quarantine orders, among other changes to the rule slated to take effect Oct. 12.
Democrats have unveiled a scaled-back version of their COVID-19 relief package in what could be their final effort to restart negotiations with the White House ahead of the November elections, but even the more limited bill maintains the demand for an OSHA standard to address the virus, potentially dooming it in the Senate.
California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is citing more health care and other facilities for allegedly not protecting employees from COVID-19, most recently acting against six hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and a police department with more than $100,000 in proposed fines.