New Year’s Workplace Safety (and other) Resolutions for 2024

With great power comes great responsibility.  Americans of all stripes — from powerful political and economic leaders to the common workers who make this country function — have besieged the offices of Confined Space for ideas about New Year’s Resolutions for 2024.  Happily, Confined Space Deputy Fearless Leader Kathleen Rest has come to the rescue. And stay tuned tomorrow for the annual (sort of) Confined Space Year in Review.

Ah, the beginning of a new year.  A time for reflections on the past and resolutions for the future.  Be more/be less; do more/do less; start/stop/finish, etc.  Ideally, resolutions that are achievable, necessary, and gratifying. I’m still in the process of thinking through mine for 2024. But to save them some time, I did craft some resolutions for the agencies, organizations, people, parties, and partners that have roles and responsibilities for worker safety and health.

2024 OSH Resolutions To Advance Worker Safety, Health, and Wellbeing

Recognizing that many proposed resolutions are budget and resource dependent, and that many of our elected Representatives need our help to focus their efforts next year,  I focus first on the U.S. Congress.

Congress resolves to:

• Stop attacking OSHA, MSHA, and the EPA and recognize that the government has a critical role protecting workers, the environment, and consumers.
• Significantly increase funding for Department of Labor workplace health and safety entities (OSHA, MSHA, DOL Wage and Hour Division), EPA, CDC/NIOSH. And the National Labor Relations Board
• Pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act)
• Pass the Protecting America’s Workers Act
• Increase employer penalties for fatalities and serious violations of health and safety, child labor, environmental and wage & hour laws.
• Update the nation’s antiquated child labor laws.

OSHA resolves to:

• Issue final standards for heat, violence, and infectious diseases
• Issue a final rule related to employee walkaround representation during inspections
• Use and enforce the General Duty clause more vigorously
• Increase the number of inspectors and inspections
• Strengthen oversight of OSHA state plans

MSHA resolves to:

• Issue final standard on miners’ exposure to respirable crystalline silica
• Issue final rule on Safety Programs for Surface Mobile Equipment
• Fully enforce the coal dust rule

EPA resolves to:

• Conduct more and more timely chemical risk assessments
• Issue the final Risk Management Program rule
• Fully implement the Toxic Substances Control Act
• Stand up to pressure from agrochemical companies and prioritize worker and public health
• Increase and ensure robust enforcement of environmental laws and regulations
• Strengthen oversight of state environmental programs
• Continue efforts to develop and implement regulations to mitigate Greenhouse Gas emissions

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) resolves to:

• Issue comprehensive guidelines that protect workers against COVID-19 and other airborne infectious agents. Guidelines that recommend improved ventilation, air filtration, and the use of N95 respirators for staff exposed to airborne infections
• Appoint occupational health and safety and worker experts to its Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC)
• Defer to the expertise of NIOSH on worker health and safety issues
• Increase the number and reach of NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluations (HHEs)

National Labor Relations Board resolves to:

• Prosecute more unfair labor practices violations

Federal and State Courts resolve to:

• Ensure that workers and/or their representatives are included and heard in all OSH and labor cases and proceedings
• Firmly support the federal government’s role and responsibilities to protect workers, consumers, and the environment
• Retain and/or strengthen application of the Chevron Doctrine that allows agencies the discretion to issue regulations and enforce the law.
• Reverse decisions on the so-called Major Questions Doctrine that take legislated authority away from regulatory agencies.
• Reverse SCOTUS decision on Roe v Wade (I can dream, right?)

States resolve to:

• Vigorously enforce occupational safety and health laws/regulations and strengthen child labor laws instead of weakening them
• Become places where workers and their families want to reside and work
• Set a living wage rate that exceeds the required minimum wage
• Issue heat protections for workers in the absence of a federal OSHA standard.’
• Pass laws providing OSHA coverage to public employees in the 23 states where government workers still have no right to a safe workplace.

Employers resolve to:

• Put worker safety first by providing a safe workplace and complying with all workplace safety and health regulations and guidelines.
• Provide safety training and give workers a voice in developing safe work practices, processes, and procedures
• Allow workers to organize unions

Unions resolve to:

• Build on the momentum and recent organizing/contract negotiation successes
• Launch more creative and ambitious organizing and strike/walkout strategies to build power and make gains for workers
• Increase union health and safety staff and make safety and health an integral part of organizing campaigns

Workers resolve to:

• Exercise their right to refuse hazardous and unsafe work
• Participate in or otherwise support an existing worker safety committee in their place of employment

You, Me, and Other Members of the Public:

• Become or continue to be vocal advocates for worker health and safety
• Participate in public hearings; provide comments or information for relevant proposed rulemaking processes
• Support and vote for pro-labor, pro-worker candidates for public office
• Make our displeasure known when elected officials are silent or oppose policies that advance worker safety, health, and well-being
• Smile and say thank you to the workers you encounter in the course of your day. You know: the ones who ring up your purchases; stock the shelves; serve you a meal; fill you tank; provide your transport; deliver your mail; pick up your trash; provide your health care, your child care, & care for your aging parent/partner/friend; and those who keep the power on and maintain the roads
• Come November, support democracy and turn back authoritarianism once and for all.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Cover photo by Earl Dotter