The Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission is back in business as it will soon have a quorum again to decide cases. The Commission plays an important role in mine safety and health law. The Commission establishes precedential case law when it decides appeals of administrative law judge decisions in Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) cases, including citation contests and discrimination cases.
On February 27, 2019, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections held a hearing on House Resolution 1309, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, introduced by Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT).
The year 2018 saw the issuance of several noteworthy federal workplace safety and health decisions.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the government agency responsible for enforcing the whistleblower retaliation provisions of numerous laws protecting workers in a wide-range of industries.
On January 25, 2019, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published in the Federal Register its revisions to its electronic recordkeeping rules.
Here are a few of the recent developments affecting workplace safety and health law in California.
With flu season here and reported incidents of deaths caused by diseases thought to have been eradicated by vaccines on the rise, many healthcare providers are considering mandatory vaccination of employees.
In 2019, general counsels can expect the debate to rage on over the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) proposal to rescind the requirement that large employers electronically submit information from OSHA Forms 300 and 301, which contain individual employees’ private medical history data.
On November 16, 2018, Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT) introduced House Resolution 7141, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act.
Over a decade after California adopted its outdoor heat illness regulations, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) is inching closer to adopting regulations titled “Heat Illness Prevention in Indoor Places of Employment.”
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) is seeking to expand its workplace violence regulations, which currently regulate healthcare facilities, to a general industry standard, which would affect employers in all industries.
On October 9, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld a district court’s order quashing an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection warrant.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) added an anti-retaliation provision to the recordkeeping regulation finalized in May 2016, and it seems as if the workplace safety and health community has not stopped talking about it since.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) officially kicked off its National Emphasis Program (NEP) on Trenching and Excavation on October 1, 2018. With the NEP comes enhanced enforcement, education, and a new OSHA instruction related to OSHA’s trenching and excavation standards in Subpart P of the Construction Standards.
On September 27, 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) published a notice of proposed rulemaking expanding the employment, training, and apprenticeship opportunities for 16- and 17-year-olds in healthcare occupations by removing the prohibition on teen employees operating patient lifts.
On September 28, 2018, the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) agreed with Ogletree Deakins’ argument that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) standard requiring emergency eye-flushing and body-washing facilities on construction sites is invalid.
Tennessee property owners, including employers, are generally authorized to prohibit the possession of weapons by any person at meetings conducted by an employer or on property owned, operated, managed, or under the control of an employer. Tennessee has adopted very specific requirements for how employers and other property owners must notify employees and visitors when they seek to prohibit firearms on their properties.
On July 30, 2018, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register seeking comments on a proposed measure that would partially rescind the 2016 amendments to its recordkeeping rule. The 2016 amendments required establishments with at least 250 employees, or with at least 20 employees in a high-risk industry, to electronically submit their illness and injury records to OSHA annually, beginning in 2017.
In 2016, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) amended its recordkeeping rule to require that certain establishments electronically submit their illness and injury records annually, beginning in 2017. For the first year, covered establishments were only required to submit their OSHA Form 300A.
On June 21, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission that the former practice of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of having its staff employees appoint administrative law judges (ALJs) violated the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Employers that are worried about whether their new or upgraded programs for silica protection will pass regulatory muster under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) general industry standard for respirable crsytalline silica, for which enforcement begins on Saturday, June 23, 2018, can breathe a small sigh of relief.
According to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA), even though California has not adopted its own state rule on the matter, California employers should submit their Form 300A data for 2017 using the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) online portal by July 1, 2018.
For construction employers facing uncertainty on exactly how the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is enforcing the new silica standard in Construction, we now have a little bit of data that helps shed some light on this mystery.
The decision this week of the Supreme Court of the United States in Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis will likely prove important on issues other than the arbitration of labor disputes.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) authorizes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct inspections at worksites within its jurisdiction to enforce the safety and health laws promulgated pursuant to the OSH Act.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently had the opportunity to remind employers not to ignore training employees on safety.
With the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) silica standard already in effect for the construction industry and about to go into effect in June of 2018 for general industry, many employers are anxious about whether their programs will pass muster with federal and state OSHA officials.
On March 23, 2018, the last day before a potential government shutdown, Congress passed and the president is expected to sign a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill to fund the federal government through fiscal year (FY) 2018.
On February 12, 2018, the White House released its fiscal year 2019 (FY 2019) budget plan and sent it to Capitol Hill just a week after signing a two-year budget deal lifting the spending caps for 2018 and reopening the federal government, which had been temporarily shut down. For that reason, the budget cuts in the FY 2019 proposal have little chance of enactment by Congress which is loath to give back money already approved. So, while the proposed 2019 cuts are needed to fund higher spending for the military, as well as to fund the construction of a border wall and infrastructure repairs—and the administration now has more money to spend—there were few surprises in the FY 2019 budget plan for cutting the budgets of federal labor and employment agencies. Every labor and employment agency was cut, but not as drastically as expected.
If you’ve ever wondered what a process safety standard drafted by a union would look like, the State of Washington’s recent draft Process Safety Requirements for Petroleum Refineries provides a glimpse. Using California’s 2017 Process Safety Management for Petroleum Refineries as its baseline, Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries released a draft of a process safety management standard that would apply to the state’s 5 petroleum refineries.
