OSHA & MSHA Get Leaders: A Good Thing?

OSHA and MSHA finally have leaders.  David Keeling was confirmed by the Senate earlier this week to be the new Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. At the same time, Wayne Palmer was confirmed as Assistant Secretary for MSHA. This will be the first OSHA Assistant Secretary appointed by a Republican President since Ed Foulke was confirmed in the second term of the George W. Bush administration.  No assistant secretary was ever confirmed during the first Trump administration.

What do these appointments mean for workplace safety and health? Hard to say at this point. Probably nothing good. The question is how terrible they will be.

On one hand, these appointments are pretty typical of Republican administrations who tend to appoint corporate health and safety directors. Keeling served as Vice President for Global Health and Safety at Amazon and held several positions at UPS, ending his work there as Vice President for Global Safety. Palmer has less real health and safety, or mining experience. He was deputy assistant secretary for MSHA during the first Trump administration.  Before that, he was chief of staff to Trump’s first Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta. Prior to being nominated by Trump to head MSHA, he was executive vice president at the Essential Minerals Association, which “represents the interests of companies that mine or process minerals that are critical to manufacturing, energy, agriculture, infrastructure, transportation, and technology industries. ”

What Does Everyone Think?

Industry groups are, of course, delighted, looking forward to less rulemaking and a more “friendly” OSHA that doesn’t focus on all that “confrontational” enforcement. Fisher-Philips, an employer-focused law firm, declared Keeling’s confirmation “a new day for employers across the country.” (No mention of the accompanying new night(mares) for employees across the country….)

Some of the major institutional workplace safety and health organizations seem pleased. National Safety Council CEO Lorraine M. Martin called Keeling a “a proven safety leader who will help continue the agency’s long legacy of protecting the health and wellbeing of our workers.” (Let’s hope.)

She added that the NSC “looks forward to partnering with OSHA to continue to exert strong leadership on issues impacting workplace safety.”

National Safety Council CEO Lorraine M. Martin called Keeling a “a proven safety leader who will help continue the agency’s long legacy of protecting the health and wellbeing of our workers.”

And the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) calls Keeling “a strong proponent of protecting workers,” and “is encouraged by Keeling’s commitment and vision to modernize regulatory oversight and rulemaking through the implementation of cutting-edge technologies, predictive analytics and informed design, which can significantly reduce workplace injuries, illnesses and fatalities.”

The American Industrial Hygiene Association has not commented on Keeling’s confirmation.

Neither seems to be a MAGA ideologue dedicated to the destruction of the agencies they now head — at least for now. Labor unions are not pleased with Trump’s treatment of workplace safety and health, or general labor issues, although most have so far remained silent on the confirmations. Keeling does have some support from the Teamster leadership. “He’s someone we feel we are able to have a conversation with,”  according to Kara Deniz, a spokeswoman for the Teamsters, which represents 340,000 UPS drivers and package handlers.

On the other hand, Keeling hardly has a sterling health and safety record, having opposed union requests to put air conditioning in UPS vehicles.  Anastasia Christman, senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, said that she understands  “that people who come from running big businesses might have some real experience in health and safety. That said, I don’t think his track record would indicate he’s a real champion on these issues.”

And, as the NY Time reports, Keeling’s record at Amazon wasn’t much better:

Mr. Keeling’s brief time at Amazon, as director of global road and transportation safety from 2021 to 2023, coincided with heightened criticism over worker deaths and injuries under extreme heat, as well as the company’s opposition to workers’ attempts to unionize. Amazon delivery drivers and others have started to organize in some locations.

Amazon said it has received just three heat-related OSHA citations for inadequate safety protections since 2019, one of which was withdrawn, another which was downgraded, and one which the company was contesting.

The Warehouse Worker Resource Center also opposed Keeling.

While Keeling was a key workplace safety executive at Amazon, we saw that Amazon’s push for speed came at the expense of worker safety and health. Injuries are disturbingly common in Amazon warehouses and Amazon has frequently contested even the smallest citation. Keeling also worked at UPS as a top safety executive at a time when drivers documented heat illness and other hazards at work. In fact, OSHA cited Amazon and UPS for over 300 safety violations combined during Keeling’s respective tenures at each company.

What Can We Expect?

So, under a normal Republican administration, we would see more emphasis on programs like OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Programs and Alliances, and less emphasis on “confrontational” enforcement which should only be focused on the “worst of the worst.”  The prioritization of “voluntary” programs like VPP does not inspire confidence. The last Administration that declared VPP the wave of the future (the George W. Bush administration) saw a stark deterioration in the integrity of the program.  OSHA field staff were given quotas to sharply grow VPP, but the effort resulted a severe backlog in VPP reevaluations and allowed VPP participants to remain in the program even after workers had been killed on their sites and some had received willful OSHA violations.

We can’t expect much in the way of new regulatory protections. No Republican administration has issued a major health and safety standard since the 1993, during the George H.W. Bush administration (except when ordered by the courts).

We can’t expect much in the way of new regulatory protections. No Republican administration has issued a major health and safety standard since the 1993, during the George H.W. Bush administration (except when ordered by the courts).

But, of course, these are not normal times. These are Trump times.  There was hope that his appointed of the labor-adjacent Lori Chavez DeRemer as Secretary of Labor would signal moderation on the labor front, only to see her become an acolyte of the Trump-MAGA cult — adorning the Department of Labor with a gigantic (and expensive) smiling face of dear leader — while at the same time eliminating or drastically downsizing the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the Woman’s Bureau and Labor’s international office (ILAB) and eliminating requirements to pay home care workers at least the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage or pay overtime.  Her goal is to restore “American prosperity through deregulation and marking the most ambitious proposal to slash worker protections red tape of any department across the federal government.”

All DOL agencies have seen significant downsizing, and DOL has issued proposed regulations weakening OSHA, Wage & Hour and other workplace protections. Trump’s FY 2026 budget proposal calls for an 8% cut in OSHA’s overall budget, a 24% cut in standards, a 10% cut in enforcement (and 10,000 fewer 2026 workplace inspections) and elimination of the Susan Harwood Worker Training Grant program. MSHA would also face a 10% cut under the President’s proposed budget.

We’ve already seen proposals to weaken OSHA’s General Duty Clause and other standards and undermine enforcement and other protections. We’ve also seen the disappearance or mothballing of several OSHA regulatory initiatives.  In addition, OSHA, under the Obama and Biden administrations, increased the amount of injury and illness information employers were required to send to OSHA, and published that data on OSHA’s website.  The publication of their injury and illness data was opposed by industry representatives and we can expect the agency to roll those back. See no evil…..

Meanwhile, over at MSHA, the agency is still refusing to enforce MSHA’s new silica standard which the Biden administration issued to prevent the growing number of severe black lung cases that miners are suffering.  That standard was supposed to come into effect almost 6 months ago, while miners continue to inhale deadly amounts of silica dust. The agency is also weakening MSHA’s enforcement ability by proposing to revoke the authority of MSHA District Managers to require mine operators to improve protections for miners in the roof control and ventilation plans of individual mines.

Although OSHA allowed the hearings on an OSHA heat standard to proceed, it is unclear whether the Trump administration will continue to move forward on a heat standard. Given the nationwide pressure to protect workers from growing heat hazards, there is also the possibility that OSHA will decide to issue a weak, unenforceable shadow of the Biden administration’s strong proposal.

Keeling’s record is not great when it comes to protecting workers against heat:

A recent review of federal records by investigative outlet the Lever found that during Keeling’s tenure, OSHA fined the two companies a combined $2 million for more than 300 workplace safety citations, including for heat-related incidents.

In the past decade, more than 170 UPS workers have been hospitalized due to heat exposure, including more than 50 during Keeling’s tenure. And at Amazon and UPS, at least seven workers died after extreme heat exposure in recent years with at least three of those deaths occurring when Keeling was at the companies. Both companies denied any of the deaths were both heat-related and job-related.

“These are companies that are known to be not that great when it comes to dealing with extreme heat,” said Juley Fulcher, a worker health and safety advocate at consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.

Tree Care is another standard that OSHA could conceivably issue — under pressure from the Tree Care Industry Association which sees a standard as a way to force small landscaping companies out of the tree care business. But most of the agency’s regulatory efforts are like to be focused to deregulation, rather than increasing much needed protections for American workers. reprioritization

Conclusion

At best, we’ll see a typical Republican OSHA and MSHA that deprioritize enforcement and standards and focus instead on compliance assistance and “voluntary” programs. But there are also fears that the agencies have been saving their worst until they have confirmed leadership. What their “worst” might be, we can only imagine. This administration has been hard to predict, and we still have well over a year before we can expect any effective Congressional oversight.  So, are we left only with hopes and prayers or will workers, unions, public health advocates and sympathetic lawmakers rise up to oppose any significant weakening of workplace health and safety protections?

Watch this space.