Enforcement

OSHA has reached a settlement with Amazon over working conditions at its warehouses nationwide, requiring ergonomics improvements across the e-commerce giant’s operations following a years-long enforcement push by the agency -- and just days after Senate Democrats accused the company of unlawfully concealing injuries at the facilities.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is touting what it says is the state’s first citation for a “willful” violation of outdoor heat safety standards, targeting a landscape maintenance company with a fine of more than $276,000 and underscoring the agency’s renewed commitment to bolster enforcement efforts.

Employer-focused attorneys are saying they expect California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) inspectors to focus primarily on “enterprise-wide” and less on “egregious” violations as part of an agency initiative to toughen enforcement policies by establishing those new categories of citations as required by a 2021 state law.

OSHA and the steel company claiming that Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) review of enforcement actions is unconstitutional have agreed to push the agency’s deadline to answer the novel litigation until February, leaving it to the incoming Trump administration to decide how -- or whether -- the government will contest those arguments.

OSHA is touting recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data showing decreases in nonfatal injury and illness rates in 2023 as well as its own findings of a decline in fatal injuries that year as evidence its enforcement programs and collaboration with labor and industry are succeeding -- even as the incoming Trump administration could soon upend those policies.

The Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) will launch audits of OSHA’s oft-criticized COVID-19 pandemic response oversight program and its efforts to prevent workplace violence in the coming months, according to a newly released audit plan for fiscal year 2025.

The Mine Safety and Health Review Commission (MSHRC) is declining to participate in a pair of D.C. Circuit appeals where both the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and mining companies hope to overturn its decisions that the agency lacks “unfettered” authority to drop already-issued citations in favor of settlement agreements.

OSHA has replaced its long-standing enforcement guidance for poultry facilities with one that covers all animal slaughtering and meat processing sites -- a move it says will tighten its oversight of the sector in order to better target disproportionately high injury and illness rates for workers.

A Missouri agriculture firm is appealing to federal circuit court an enforcement case where it argued OSHA lacks jurisdiction over fall-prevention in train loading -- an argument that an administrative law judge (ALJ) said is at odds with a nearly 30-year-old policy balancing the agency’s authority against that of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is weighing an enforcement appeal about the bar employers must clear to show compliance with OSHA’s machine-guarding standard, including whether they can rely on evidence that their safety practices are in line with “industry custom” -- a claim that an attorney for the agency said at oral argument could “eviscerate the OSH Act” if judges back it.