If you closed your eyes and cleared you mind…you might think we were experiencing a typical Republican administration over at OSHA. We have a fairly moderate, moderately pro-labor Secretary of Labor, and a health and safety professional nominated to head OSHA. OSHA’s Deputy (and current acting Assistant Secretary) is also a health and safety person, having served at the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
And so far, no RIFS, no standards or proposals withdrawn. Several documents were disappeared, but most have resurfaced again.
But don’t let down our guard, because all that may be about to change…and drastically.
Walberg to DOL: Please Stop Doing Anything
On Wednesday, House Education and Labor Chairman Tim Walberg sent a letter to newly confirmed Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer urging her to engage the DOL time machine to take us back to January 19, 2017. The letter requests that Chavez DeRemer “rescind or withdraw” several “burdensome regulations.” All in the spirit of “improv[ing] the lives of workers, job seekers, and retirees.”
What are the “burdensome” OSHA regulations?” Basically every final regulation and proposed health and safety standard issued by the Biden administration.
The regulations that Walberg and Congressional Republicans would like to eliminate are the walkaround regulation, which allows workers — even non-union workers — to choose their own walkaround representatives as long as they are “reasonably necessary to the conduct of an effective and thorough physical inspection of the workplace,” even when the walkaround representative is not an employee of the establishment. Previously, with a few exceptions, only unionized workers could choose non-employees to be their walkaround representatives.
The Congressional letter requests that Chavez DeRemer “rescind or withdraw” several “burdensome regulations.”
The other regulation that Walberg would like to disappear is OSHA’s Recordkeeping rule that was originally issued in 2015 (rescinded by Trump and then re-issued by Biden) that requires larger employers in certain high-hazard industries to electronically submit detailed information on workplace injuries and deaths to OSHA. OSHA has begun to release this data to the public, recently posting data from almost 900,000 injuries and illnesses recorded and reported by more than 350 000 establishments in 2023. Former OSHA Assistant Secretary David Michaels and former MSHA Deputy Assistant Secretary Greg Wagner published an article recently explaining how “the new OSHA data sets provide an important opportunity to improve our understanding and prevention of work injuries.”
Walberg is also calling on Chavez-DeRemer to rescind OSHA’s proposal to protect emergency responders and OSHA’s proposal to protect workers against excessive heat. As I’ve discussed before, the Biden administration issued no new health or safety standards, but they did issue a couple of proposals. One was to protect emergency response workers, and the other to protect workers against excessive heat.
Resistance to the Emergency Response rule has been furious, focusing mainly on the allegation that the rule will put small rural volunteer fire departments out of business. In reality, the rule would affect very few volunteer fire departments. And, it’s only a proposal. If public comment convinces OSHA that covering volunteers isn’t feasible, that provision will be dropped.
The business community has also opposed OSHA’s heat standard because…[fill in ridiculous reasons here:________]
(The letter also requests the withdrawal of numerous regulations issued by DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, the Office of Workers Compensation Programs, the Employee Benefits Security Administration and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.)
Downsize the Downsized
As I’ve reported over and over and over again, OSHA is a tiny, under-resourced and understaffed agency with the enormous mission of assuring the health and safety of 158 million workers at more than 10.9 million workplaces. If OSHA were to visit every workplace in the country just once, it would take 185 years.
But the DOGE philosophy is that no agency is so small or underequipped to fulfil its mission that it can’t be made even smaller and more impotent.
On February 26, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent a memo to all federal agencies directing them to develop “Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans” (AARPs). The ARRPs are intended to significantly reduce the number of agency employees by eliminating positions that are not required, getting rid of buildings and reducing their budgets — all with the goal of “increased efficiency” and “better service for the American people.” Agencies were also encouraged to reduce layers of management and the use of consultants and contractors.
Phase One was due March 13 to describe the planned RIFS and proposed budget cuts.
Assuming DOL follows the law (which is a big assumption these days), there are a number of requirements to implement “Reeducations in Force” (RIFS) as NPR describes:
The first step in a RIF is identifying positions and areas that may be affected, which OPM in this case says should have been done by Thursday.
From there, agencies are supposed to consider other strategies, like voluntary early retirement authority (VERA) and voluntary separation incentive payment (VSIP), to find employees who choose to leave, before a RIF takes place.
VERA allows agencies to temporarily lower age or years-of-service thresholds to qualify for retirement, while VSIP is a buyout of up to $25,000 for employees who choose to leave.
For agencies that move forward with a RIF, they may need to notify unions or Congress, and then they must draft official notices to send to affected employees. These notices must include certain information like the reasons for the RIF and the effective date.
Employees must be given 60 days’ notice of their end date, unless OPM grants a waiver to shorten that period to 30 days.
Interestingly, the OPM memo directs agencies to “confirm statutes have not been interpreted in a way that expands requirements beyond what the statute actually requires. Instead, statutes should be interpreted to cover only what functions they explicitly require.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Act authorizes OSHA to issue standards and requires the agency to enforce those standards. The OSHAct does not require compliance assistance nor the industry-favorite Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP). So will DOGE plus up enforcement and eliminate VPP? I wouldn’t put too much money own on that proposition. Hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug in this administration.
Staff with “public safety responsibilities” are exempted from RIFFs.” But is worker safety considered public safety?
Also, staff with “public safety responsibilities” are exempted from RIFFs.” But is worker safety considered public safety?
Phase 2 AARPs, to “outline a positive vision for more productive, efficient agency operations going forward,” are due on April 14. In short, more RIFS, relocations and downsizing. And in case a rogue agency thinks it may need to hire someone, they are reminded that “no more than one employee should be hired for every four employees that depart.”
Oh, and agency heads also need to explain “how the ARRPs will improve services for Americans and advance the President’s policy priorities.”
At this point it’s unclear what will happen with OSHA or MSHA. So far, nothing has leaked out about the Department of Labor’s plan to fulfil Elon’s wet dream. But we know that it can’t be good.
We’ve seen the total (illegal) destruction of USAID and the Department of Education, and the proposed dismantling of the IRS, VA and Social Security Administration, as well as a number of small agencies. Will OSHA be spared so as not to anger Trump’s only labor friend, Teamster President Sean O’Brien?
OSHA’s Starvation Budget
The FY 2025 budget is finally history (thanks Chuck Schumer). OSHA will move forward, yet again, with a flat budget, which — factoring in inflation — means yet another budget cut. And the FY 2026 budget is coming up right around the corner. Will the OSHA budget see major cuts? Will the Susan Harwood Worker Training Grant Program survive?
Stay tuned.
Thanks very much for this update on OSHA under Trump
Thanks very much for this update on OSHA under Trump.