Enforcement

The Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) plans to launch a discretionary audit in fiscal year 2024 to determine whether OSHA has remedied what the watchdog office said were deep flaws in its pandemic-era enforcement program in a report issued less than a year ago.

The Department of Justice is touting new jury convictions and guilty pleas under both the OSH Act and Clean Air Act in its years-long prosecution of a Wisconsin milling company and several of the employer’s current and former officials over a 2017 explosion that killed five workers.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is accepting a slew of recommendations from the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) based on an audit faulting many areas of its inspection and enforcement work, agreeing to increase reporting transparency, update mine status criteria and inspection tools and improve system controls.

A workplace safety lawyer says OSHA could seek to cite employers for failing to comply with EPA's planned TSCA workplace exposure limits for several chemicals given the "very clear" intersection of the two agencies' missions, but will face several key legal questions if it tries to invoke "reach-over" authority to directly enforce TSCA mandates.

A broad coalition of employers and trade groups is raising yet more objections to OSHA’s proposal to allow compliance officers inspecting a workplace to bring worker representatives on walkarounds even if they are not affiliated with that firm, saying the rule will conflict with other agencies’ authority while also creating major difficulties for inspections.

OSHA is clashing with the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) after it found the agency needs to do more to mitigate high injury and illness rates among warehouse workers, refusing to directly respond to recommendations and slamming OIG’s methodologies for the audit instead.

OSHA chief Doug Parker used a Sept. 27 House hearing to warn lawmakers against an increasingly-likely government shutdown, arguing that a lapse in appropriations will hamstring the agency’s enforcement work including a new silica initiative, while also seeking to defend its regulatory agenda against attacks by Republican panel members.

Two attorneys are warning that both employers and OSHA itself face an “incredible burden” from the agency’s proposal that would allow third parties to accompany compliance officers on inspections even when they do not work for the company -- particularly when deciding who qualifies as an “authorized representative” of non-union employees.

Trade groups, congressional Republicans and attorneys are outlining arguments against OSHA’s proposal allowing third parties to accompany compliance officers on inspections even when they do not work for the company involved, ranging from claims that it is legally invalid to calling it the result of “regulatory voodoo.”

OSHA has reached a company-wide enforcement settlement with the discount-retail giant Dollar Tree that includes regular inspections of its stores and an immediate $1.35 million penalty, following a years-long series of citations for what the agency repeatedly said was a persistent pattern of safety violations across the company.