OSHA Legislation

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The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 contains a few surprises for employers covered by the OSH Act. To date, OSHA’s monetary penalties have not been subject to inflationary increases and, in fact, have been static since 1990. The proposed “Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvement Act of 2015” which applies specifically to the OSH…

Federal OSHA’s Occupational Injury and Illness Recording and Reporting Requirements (effective January 1, 2015) require employers to report in-patient hospitalizations, amputations and loss of an eye within 24 hours. The Virginia Occupational Safety and Health (VOSH) regulation was intended to mirror the federal requirements but a legislative drafting error resulted in the reporting period for…

OSHA’s changes to recordkeeping and reporting requirements became effective January 1, 2015.  

The new changes require employers who are regulated by OSHA to report all work-related fatalities within 8 hours and all work-related inpatient hospitalizations, amputations, and losses of an eye within 24 hours of the incident.  States with their own OSHA approved State Plans …

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) requested a 7 percent budget increase for fiscal year 2016, for a total budget of $592.1 million.

OSHA’s priorities for next year points decidedly towards increased enforcement.  The proposed budget requested a 9 percent increase for federal enforcement and a 3 percent increase for state plan enforcement. …

California Governor Jerry Brown signed A.B. 1634  into law on September 20, 2014, a new bill that significantly changes an employer’s obligations to abate alleged workplace safety and health hazards in California and reduces the ability of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) to make modifications to civil penalties. 

When the new …

President Obama recently issued the Department of Labor’s budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2015.  As part of the budget request to Congress, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is seeking a total budget of $565 million, which is an increase of $12.7 million from the enacted FY 2014 budget.

OSHA is also requesting…

Representative George Miller (D-CA) recently reintroduced a bill (H.R. 1649) that would provide whistleblower protections to certain workers in the offshore oil and gas industry.  The bill was first introduced in 2010 and again in 2011. 

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Continue Reading Offshore Oil and Gas Worker Whistleblower Protection Act of 2013 Introduced Into the House

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) recently reintroduced a bill that would amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The proposed Protecting America’s Workers Act (“PAWA”) (S. 665) would expand coverage to more workers, increase whistleblower protections, significantly enhance the civil and criminal penalties issued against employers for violations, and would provide rights to victims…

OSHA recently issued its long-awaited regulatory agenda.  The agenda is designed to provide stakeholders with notice of what major regulatory initiatives the agency is planning and the projected timetables for those initiatives.

OSHA’s agenda is the first issued in several months by the agency and provides a glimpse into the regulatory priorities – in…