Fall is in the air, so it’s high time for the Trump administration to issue its Spring 2025 Regulatory Agenda which details all the regulatory activities — good and bad — that the administration is working on. Or decided to kill.
The Regulatory Agenda lays out what standards and regulations agencies are working on, and the schedule for the next steps (if any).
According to the Labor Department, “the agenda reflects President Trump’s ongoing commitment to protect workers, support business growth, and ultimately put American workers and businesses first.”
Yeah….Not really.
The Death Penalty
A couple of important OSHA standard have received the death penalty.
The main standard that has been disappeared by Trump’s OSHA is a standard covering infectious diseases. The explanation was that “In accordance with Executive Order 14192 (Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation), the agency has concluded that rulemaking on infectious disease is no longer an agency priority and is withdrawing this rulemaking from the regulatory agenda.”
Why was this standard important?
The nation’s healthcare workers are on the frontlines of every infectious disease outbreak and pandemic. We don’t have the exact numbers, but we do know that thousands of healthcare workers died during the COVID pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes guidance for preventing infectious diseases among healthcare workers. But those guidelines are essentially recommendations. CDC has no enforcement capacity and healthcare facilities are not required to comply with them — unless there’s a mandatory OSHA standard.
OSHA has only one standard that addresses infectious diseases: the Bloodborne Pathogens standard issued in 1991 that addresses HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C and other bloodborne pathogens that healthcare workers may be exposed to. Over thirty years later, there is still no other infectious disease standard on the books. (There were two Emergency Temporary Standards issued during the COVID pandemic, but one expired and the other was overturned by the Supreme Court.)
OSHA put an overall infectious disease standard on the regulatory agenda in 2009 during the H1N1 flu pandemic. The purpose was to make all CDC infectious disease guidelines enforceable by OSHA.
EO 14192, which the Labor Department is using as an excuse to deep-six this standard, states that it is the policy of the Trump Administration to “significantly reduce the private expenditures required to comply with Federal regulations to secure America’s economic prosperity and national security and the highest possible quality of life for each citizen.”
How does OSHA’s failure to protect this country’s frontline caregivers secure “the highest possible quality of life for each citizen,” as EO 14192 promises? It’s a mystery.
How does OSHA’s failure to protect this country’s frontline caregivers secure “the highest possible quality of life for each citizen,” as EO 14192 promises? It’s a mystery.
Also missing is OSHA’s Blood Lead Level for Medical Removal which would have lowered the current antiquated level of lead in workers’ blood that would trigger requirements for medical surveillance and medical removal protection. New science has shown that workers suffer serious health effects such as hypertension, cognitive dysfunction, and effects on renal function and reproductive systems at the current level. No explanation was given for its removal.
Long Term Limbo
Other standard regulatory projects have been put on into a self-induced coma on the “Long Term” Regulatory Agenda. The Long Term agenda is basically regulatory limbo — standards that the Administration has decided not to kill, but also not to really work on.
OSHA’s Workplace Violence in Health Care and Social Assistance standard, which was put on the agenda in 2016, has been relegated to the long term agenda. That standard would have protected healthcare and social service workers. Workplace violence is the third-leading cause of death on the job. The House of Representative has passed two bills on a bipartisan basis that directed OSHA to issue a standard. No action was ever taken on those bills in the Senate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 740 workers were killed due to violent acts in 2023. There were 458 homicides which accounted for 61.9 percent of violent acts and 8.7 percent of all work-related fatalities.
The AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job report summarizes the risk that healthcare workers face:
Workers in the health care and social service industries are particularly affected. The nature of their front-line work—direct contact with patients and clients—makes these workers at great risk for job-related violence. In 2023, there were 16 homicides among workers in health care and social assistance, but this figure has otherwise not been reported by BLS since 2019, when there were 32, compared with 24 in 2018 and 31 in 2017.
Over time, nonfatal injury rates in health care and social services that lead to days away from work, job transfer or restriction (DART) have increased exponentially and continue to be well above the rate for all industries (6.2 per 10,000 workers). In 2021 and 2022 combined, the workplace violence DART rates were 46.3 per 10,000 workers for nursing and residential care facilities, 32.7 per 10,000 workers for hospitals, 8.7 per 10,000 workers for home health services, 15.3 per 10,000 workers for all social assistance and 20.6 per 10,000 workers for all health care and social assistance combined. These rates for psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals continue to be off the charts at 229.3 per 10,000 workers.
In the last 15 years of BLS data available, the workplace violence injury rate in private hospitals and home health services has increased more than 100%.
Process Safety Management standard (PSM) modernization has also been put on the long-term agenda. The PSM standard protects workers in chemical plants and refineries. It has been a very effective standard, saving hundreds of lives, but it’s over 30 years old and in dire need of updating. President Obama ordered OSHA to modernize the standard following the 2013 West, Texas ammonium nitrate fertilizer explosion that killed 15 people (mostly first responders) and destroyed much of the city.
Another standard relegated to the Long Term Agenda is the Silica (Medical Removal Protection) standard. This stems from the 2016 issuance of OSHA’s silica standard. The industry (as usual) sued OSHA contending that the standard should be overturned. Labor unions sued arguing that the standard should include medical removal protection where workers are allowed time off when a substance (like silica) is making them sick. Instead of killing the standard as industry wanted, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered OSHA to add medical removal protection, or explain better why they didn’t. The Fall 2024 Regulatory Agenda predicted issuance of a proposal this month. But the Trump administration has taken the silica standard revision off of the active agenda and demoted it to the long term agenda.
Still On The Agenda
Meanwhile, there are still important standards remaining on the Regulatory Agenda. OSHA continues work on its Heat standard. Hearings ended last month, but no next step is listed. The Labor Department says that it is “continuing to examine how to establish standards specifically related to heat-related injury and illness prevention.”
The Tree Care standard, which the tree care industry has been advocating for is still on the agenda, but the date for issuing a proposal has been delayed from April 2025 to April 2026. We’ll see…
A standard to protect Communication Tower workers, who suffer a high fatality rate from falls, now has no future action predicted, although last year’s agenda planned to issue a proposal next month. When putting the action on the regulatory agenda in 2015, OSHA “concluded that current OSHA requirements such as those for fall protection and personnel hoisting, may not adequately cover all hazards of communication tower construction and maintenance activities.” OSHA seems less concerned about these workers now, stating that “To the extent a new standard or changes to existing OSHA safety standards are needed to address these hazards, this rulemaking will implement the necessary regulatory requirements.”
And the controversial Emergency Response standard remains on the agenda. That standard has come under withering criticism for allegedly threatening the existence of volunteer fire departments. On the other hand, the increasing amount of evidence emerging about the health effect of wildfire smoke on firefighters may keep the standard alive. No next steps are listed as the agency considers input from the public comment period and hearings.
The Golden Age
We’ll see what will happen. As I often remind people, Republicans generally don’t issue OSHA standards. No Republican administration has issued a major OSHA standard since January 1993, except when ordered by the courts. It’s possible we’ll see some action in this administration. OSHA is moving forward on a heat standard, but most people expect the administration to either kill the standard or severely weaken it. The tree care industry, as I’ve written before, is strongly lobbying for a tree care standard, but it’s unclear, considering OSHA budget cuts, whether OSHA even has the resources to finish the standard, especially considering the deregulatory actions that OSHA has been ordered to take by the White House.
In a clear reference to Trump’s unique decorating style, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer said that this “bold regulatory agenda” shows that ““Eliminating red tape and crafting smart regulations that spur job creation will bring us even closer to reaching the Golden Age of the American Worker.”
I think more accurate would be the Golden Age of the American employer.