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 […]
In a new interpretation letter, OSHA has removed its requirement for “double reporting” a fatality that occurs immediately after a worker hospitalization. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, OSHA started issuing citations if an employer failed to report cases involving an admission to a hospital followed by a fatality, but a recently published interpretation letter indicates […]
A New York-based barge company and several of its management officials have paid $375,000 in restitution to the brother of one of two workers killed in a barge explosion off the coast of Texas. The brother was allegedly fired from the same company, Bouchard Transportation, after he cooperated with investigators and reported safety concerns to […]
The Senate confirmed Marty Walsh as secretary of the Department of Labor (DOL) on Monday with a 68 to 29 vote in favor of the Boston Mayor and former leader at the Laborers’ Union Local 223. As head of the DOL, Walsh will oversee both OSHA and MSHA. “I have been a fighter for the […]
In 2020 OSHA caught some criticism for not doing enough enforcement to prevent workplace spread of the coronavirus. Further impeding the agency’s efforts was a medical records final rule that came out July 31 and may be getting rescinded. “The purported reason for this rule was to preserve worker medical privacy and also to streamline […]
An OSHA COVID-19 emergency temporary standard — which may use Virginia’s permanent final rule for a template — for preventing transmission of the virus in the workplace is a top priority for the Biden administration. But what other goals will the agency have its eye on in the next few years? Attorney and occupational safety […]
Federal OSHA’s top 10 most cited violations accounted for 24,239 violations for fiscal year 2020. The top 10 was released by the National Safety Council during a Feb. 26 webinar, along with the number of violations, most affected industries and what inspectors are seeing other companies getting wrong: 1. Fall protection – General requirements (1926.501), 5,424 […]
The new face of OSHA, Jim Frederick, used to be a union official and Labor Secretary nominee Marty Walsh was known to be pro-union in his time as mayor of Boston. Therefore “the AFL-CIO wish list carries some weight,” said workplace safety attorney Adele Abrams. Abrams explored the union’s list of biggest occupational health and […]
Employers didn’t report injury and illness data for more than 50% of workplaces that met OSHA’s reporting criteria in 2018, according to a new watchdog report. But how can OSHA crack down on this lack of recordkeeping? A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) paints a picture of how it thinks OSHA should […]
