Rulemaking

Labor unions are urging Oregon’s worker-safety agency to strengthen its recently proposed permanent heat illness prevention standard by eliminating several key exemptions they say provide businesses with too much flexibility over worker conditions, while at the same time federal OSHA has begun weighing feedback on its own national heat stress rulemaking.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has released a slew of new research on the effectiveness of workplace COVID-19 controls, including those related to masking and distancing, with advice that could bolster the case for tough new safety measures in OSHA’s permanent COVID-19 standard for the healthcare sector.

OSHA head Doug Parker says the agency is not formally withdrawing its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector but will not enforce the rule while a union-led lawsuit plays out, spurring outrage from labor advocates who are urging the agency to ramp up protections and implement a permanent standard for healthcare workers.

OSHA’s deputy director of standards and guidance says the agency’s push to promulgate a final COVID-19 standard for the healthcare sector in “six to nine months” will likely alter the timeline for some related rulemakings it outlined in the fall unified agenda, including both its proposed workplace violence and infectious disease standards for the industry.

Environmentalists are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to “act now” to expand its chemical facility safety rule, particularly to include ammonium nitrate, arguing that a recent fire at a North Carolina fertilizer plant serves as a “wake up call” for the need to bolster protections against future disasters.

OSHA is proposing the first update since 1998 to its safety standard for industrial powered trucks, aiming to align design and manufacturing requirements with modern consensus standards as part of a broader effort to revamp a slew of outdated regulations, including a provision that would allow it to use guidance rather than rulemaking for future updates.

Oregon’s worker safety agency has released its long-awaited proposal for a permanent heat illness prevention standard as part of a broader state effort to mitigate the impacts of climate change that also includes a workplace standard for wildfire smoke exposure, just as OSHA is conducting its own outreach for a nationwide heat stress rulemaking.

Worker safety advocates and Democratic state attorneys are pushing OSHA to adopt a broad, environmental-justice focused heat stress standard that would require employers to adopt dual environmental and physiological heat monitoring programs, comprehensive mitigation methods and new recordkeeping requirements.

Labor groups suing to reinstate OSHA’s COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) for the healthcare sector are claiming that the agency offered “no cognizable rationale” for allowing the rule to expire, ignored a key procedural step in that process, and bucked its own precedents when it dropped the ETS without a permanent standard to replace it.

Manufacturing and food safety groups are urging OSHA to consider a narrow heat-illness prevention standard limited to outdoor work settings that provides employers “flexibility” to conduct individualized heat hazard assessments based on regional climate and worksite conditions, and in light of available monitoring technology.