Cal/OSHA officials are determining whether to bolster workplace safety enforcement and education efforts to address rising workplace-related fatalities, especially for “high-hazard work” and Latino employees, after recently reporting that 422 Californians died on the job in 2018, an increase over prior years.
September 16, 2026
Acting OSHA chief Loren Sweatt is touting the agency’s efforts to ramp up inspections while also pursuing “innovative” outreach efforts to employers to inform them about compliance with agency rules, saying that overall enforcement at the agency is “headed in the right direction.”
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New OSHA data shows a slight uptick in total inspections in fiscal year 2019, but a former top Obama official is faulting the agency for declining inspection levels compared to the end of the previous administration, saying that even though inspections rose to 33,401 compared to 32,023 in FY18, overall inspection levels have plunged during the Trump administration.
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Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) plans a “hard” push next year to advance in the Senate just-passed House legislation that would force OSHA to issue workplace violence standards for the healthcare and social service sectors, saying the more than 30 Republicans backing the House bill suggest it could attract similar bipartisan support in the Senate.
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The House appears poised to approve legislation that would force OSHA to quickly issue workplace violence standards for the healthcare and social service sectors, with Democratic and GOP lawmakers discussing potential compromises to bolster the bill’s support, even as the measure faces a White House veto threat.
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The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in just-released figures on annual workplace injuries and illnesses shows 2.8 million nonfatal incidents in 2018, the same level as 2017 and the first year since 2012 that the total rate did not decline.
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OSHA’s launch of a new approach to weighting and measuring enforcement expands from the prior approach of focusing on the number of inspections to include other factors such as types of hazards, which a law firm says will put the agency’s inspection focus on high hazard areas and cases in line with OSHA’s enforcement priorities.
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James Sullivan, the chairman and lone member of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), is optimistic that Congress will swiftly approve two nominations to join the panel so that it can once again have a quorum to resume its work reviewing contested OSHA workplace citations and penalties.
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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.
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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.
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