A newsletter of workplace safety and labor issues
Today the full Senate Appropriations Committee reported out the FY 2018 Labor-HHS Funding Bill. The bill maintains OSHA, MSHA and NIOSH funding at the FY 2017 levels. That means that there are no cuts from the agencies’ current (FY 2017) budgets. And the most surprising news is that the bill also includes $10.5 million for the…
The House of Representatives continued to wage its never-ending war on working people yesterday when the House Rules Committee voted to add 58 mostly anti-worker amendments to an already un-labor-friendly FY 2018 Labor-HHS Appropriations budget bill. That bill, you may remember, slashed the OSHA and MSHA enforcement budgets and eliminated the Susan Harwood Training Grant…
Following up on its article (and my blog post) on the tragic trench death of DJ Meyer last December, the Kansas City Star has published a strong editorial calling on the Trump administration to “appoint a permanent leader for OSHA without delay. The agency should pursue an aggressive role in adopting workplace safety rules. And Congress should…
There’s an old saying, I’m pretty sure from Confucius: “Take heed. It is always a bad idea to do an unsafe, illegal roofing job next door to an ex-OSHA official.” And yet, what do we have here? Right outside my kitchen window. So, I called my neighbors at work, figuring they could talk to the…
EPA Suffers From Shortage of Common Sense: Attorneys General from 11 states — New York, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington – have filed a lawsuit claiming that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s proposed two-year delay of the Accidental Release Prevention Requirements for Risk Management Programs is illegal under…
The House of Representatives has released the details on worker safety and health funding in the FY 2018 Labor-HHS appropriations bill and it’s very bad news for American workers whose lives and health depend on the ability of OSHA and MSHA to enforce the laws that protect workers. The House committee bill cuts OSHA’s enforcement…
You thought Trump’s budget proposal was bad for OSHA? Well, our Republican friends in the House of Representatives have issued a bill that’s even worse, although we don’t have all of the details yet. The subcommittee’s mark-up session doesn’t start until 4:30 this afternoon, and we still may not know the details until the full…
Good news! The House Appropriations Committee released its FY 2018 Interior and Environment Appropriations budget bill today and it fully funds the Chemical Safety Board. The Trump administration had recommended that the Board be eliminated. The sub-committee will vote on the bill tomorrow House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen stated that “This legislation responsibly supports the…
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services will vote Thursday on OSHA’s FY 2018 budget. Most of the OSHA budget remains flat, but there’s one devastating exception. The budget calls for the elimination of OSHA’s 40 year old Susan Harwood Worker Training Grant Program. Originally created in 1978 as the “New Directions”…
The House Appropriations Committee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies will hold a mark-up on Wednesday, July 12 on the FY 2018 budget which includes the budget for the Chemical Safety Board. You may remember that the President’s proposed budget calls for the elimination of the CSB. A mark-up is where they take the proposed bill and…