State Actions

Michigan has enacted the second binding set of state-issued workplace standards in the United States for COVID-19 after the state’s high court struck down Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) executive orders aimed at curbing the pandemic, with the new rule setting broad mandates for employers as well as sector-specific requirements.

The California Chamber of Commerce is warning its members the state’s newly enacted law mandating notices and other responses to workplace COVID-19 infections will be onerous and confusing to implement, while revealing that “cleanup” legislation is in the works to address what the group says are some of its most problematic provisions.

California lawmakers are urging the state OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to speed up its investigations of potential COVID-19 workplace safety violations, and to focus its efforts on the highly vulnerable sectors of health care, food processing, agriculture and warehousing.

Oregon has released an updated draft of its COVID-19 emergency temporary standard (ETS) that extends to all employers the requirement to craft exposure risk assessments for the virus but removes mandatory paid leave for workers subject to medical quarantine orders, among other changes to the rule slated to take effect Oct. 12.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) is citing more health care and other facilities for allegedly not protecting employees from COVID-19, most recently acting against six hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and a police department with more than $100,000 in proposed fines.

Critics of Virginia’s first-in-the-nation emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 are challenging the policy in court, arguing that it infringes on a host of constitutional rights and that the state bypassed its own rulemaking procedures to enact the policy.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) plans to enact the country’s third emergency temporary standard (ETS) for COVID-19 after its standards board voted Sept. 17 to accept unions’ petition for a binding rule -- just as the state government approved a bill requiring worker notices and even facility closures in response to workplace coronavirus outbreaks.

California OSHA (Cal/OSHA) has recently fined more than a dozen companies a total of over $500,000 for allegedly failing to protect workers from COVID-19, with the bulk being levied on a frozen food manufacturer and the temporary employment firm it uses at more than $200,000 each.

Several states are starting to use the threat of enforcement to implement non-binding COVID-19 workplace safety measures including guidance documents issued by OSHA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says an attorney who sees the efforts as a move by the states to enforcing voluntary safety steps.

California lawmakers have approved a controversial labor-backed bill to create an extensive list of notices that employers would have to provide to employees and others if a worker is exposed to COVID-19 and would authorize the state’s OSHA (Cal/OSHA) to shut down facilities if they are an “imminent hazard” to workers due to the virus.