OSHA’S TOP REGULATORY PRIORITIES… OTHER THAN COVID-19

Eric J Conn, chair of law firm Conn Maciel Carey’s OSHA Workplace Safety Group, looks at recent changes The us Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been quite busy the last few months on the rulemaking front, and it does not seem to be slowing down. Despite the fact that COVID-19 still sucks most of the air out of the room, over the last six months, OSHA still managed to: publish a new proposed regulation to dramatically expand the requirements of its Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses Rule1; aka, the Electronic Recordkeeping Rule initiate an enforcement National Emphasis Program (NEP)2 addressing outdoor and indoor heat illness prevention; and launch a rulemaking for a heat illness prevention standard. Below is an analysis of these major OSHA regulatory developments.   OSHA’S RULEMAKING TO EXPAND THE E-RECORDKEEPING RULE OSHA’s E-Recordkeeping Rule has had a long and tortured history3. In 2016, US president Barack Obama’s OSHA enacted the E-Recordkeeping Rule, requiring hundreds of thousands of workplaces to electronically submit injury and illness data to OSHA. In 2019, the Trump administration amended the rule to...