President Donald Trump is ordering OSHA and other agencies to launch a new deregulatory push to help drive an economic recovery following the coronavirus pandemic, issuing an executive order that urges agency heads to scale back existing rules, make permanent temporary waivers, and take other steps that may bolster employment and recovery.
OSHA is vowing to increase in-person inspections as states move to loosen restrictions on business operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, replacing its interim guidance on investigating claims of workplace violations related to the disease with a plan to ramp up its enforcement actions as local conditions allow.
The AFL-CIO is seeking a court order for OSHA to swiftly craft an emergency temporary standard (ETS) for protecting workers from COVID-19 infections, arguing that the agency’s decision to rely on non-binding guidance and existing rules rather than crafting a new coronavirus policy is an “abdication of statutory responsibility.”
State attorneys general (AGs) from 19 states and the District of Columbia are urging OSHA to tighten and make binding its guidance for how to reduce COVID-19 exposure risks at meatpacking plants, warning President Donald Trump that his order to keep the facilities open will boost infections without stricter mandatory requirements.
Stakeholders are warning that OSHA faces a wave of impending whistleblower complaints about unsafe workplaces as businesses in some states begin to reopen after months of limited operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they are urging the agency to devote more resources to processing virus-related complaints.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is rejecting calls by Republicans and the business community to give employers liability protection from suits stemming from harmful workplace exposures to COVID-19 while renewing efforts to enact new OSHA requirements, which she says will provide liability protection if employers comply.
House Democrats plan to make another push for an OSHA emergency infectious disease standard in their next round of COVID-19 legislation, with the top lawmaker on the labor committee arguing that a binding standard is necessary for states to responsibly reopen nonessential businesses.
A federal district court judge has dismissed a lawsuit by worker safety advocates aiming to require a meatpacking plant to apply OSHA guidance for reducing exposures to COVID-19, but advocates are already pursuing a formal rulemaking petition seeking to force the agency to issue an emergency standard for such facilities.
OSHA is ramping up its issuance of sector-specific guidelines for how a host of businesses including dentists, food and beverage providers, meatpacking plants and others can tackle workplace risks of COVID-19, though agency critics continue to push for binding emergency standards they say would better help reduce those risks.
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia is rejecting the AFL-CIO’s criticism that OSHA is “missing in action” on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic because it has not issued an emergency temporary standard to protect health care workers and several other measures, with Scalia defending a host of voluntary OSHA responses to the crisis.