The Biden Administration nominated the current chief of Cal/OSHA to act as the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Labor in charge of OSHA.
Douglas Parker, the current head of Cal/OSHA and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at MSHA under the Obama Administration, is President Joe Biden’s nominee to head OSHA.
Before his Cal/OSHA stint, which began in 2019, Parker was executive director of Worksafe, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting workers, according to a White House news release.
Safety experts were happy with the pick, according to Politico, finding that his track record in California for policing COVID-19 in the workplace spoke for itself.
Debbie Berkowitz, an adviser at OSHA under the Obama administration pointed out to Politico that Cal/OSHA conducted “almost as much enforcement in one state in 2020 as the federal OSHA did altogether.”
If confirmed by the Senate, Parker would join Marty Walsh, recently confirmed as the head of the U.S. Department of Labor, and potentially California’s Labor Secretary, Julie Su, who would serve as Walsh’s second-in-command if the Senate confirms her nomination.