OSHA Inspections Down 20% in 2025; Keeling Promises More Hiring
A group of Democratic Senators has send a letter to OSHA Assistant Secretary David Keeling and Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer citing a 20% decline in OSHA inspections comparing the months of April through September 2025 with the same period in 2024. The statistics also showed a also show a 42 percent decrease in the number of “willful violations” issued by OSHA. Willful violations are issued when OSHA can show that an employer acted with intentional disregard of worker safety, or acted with “plain indifference” to employee safety and legal regulations. According to Senators, the reduction in willful violations allows “employers who commit serious safety violations to avoid facing proportional consequences.”
The letter was sent by Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA), Richard Blumenthal (CT), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Ron Wyden (OR), Angela D. Alsobrooks (MD) and Alex Padilla (CA). The Senators stated that “Your agency has tried to
cloak your deregulatory agenda in the language of ‘putting workers first,’ but the reality is that the Labor Department is prioritizing the interests of unscrupulous employers over Americans who work hard in dangerous environments to provide for their families.”
Trump Makes Workers Less Safe
Confirming the allegations in the letter from Democratic Senators that the Labor Department is ” prioritizing the interests of unscrupulous employers over Americans who work hard in dangerous environments,” a recent report published by Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center, found that under the second Trump Administration, there has been a significant drop in the federal enforcement of wage and workplace safety regulations.
Between 2009 and 2024, the report found that federal labor law enforcement remained constant, with an annual average of $385 million collected in restitution, damages, and civil penalties. But since Trump took office in 2025, workplace enforcement by the federal Wage and Hour Division (WHD) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the U.S Department of Labor has only collected $130 million in combined wage and hour and safety penalties, a 66% drop compared to the previous years.
Confronted with a record low number of OSHA inspectors and 180 open position, Keeling has said that he wants to make hiring a priority. OSHA has currently one inspector for every 84,000 US workers. “Workplace safety is a national health crisis, and we need to approach it like that….We’re going to be looking for the right people in the right spots, and we’ll be looking at actively hiring,” Keeling promised. We shall see…
OSHA Cites Dairy for Death of 6 Workers
Farm work is dangerous. Agriculture workers suffered an death rate almost 7 times the national average in 2024. And dairy farms hold particular dangers. Last August, six workers in Weld County, Colorado, were killed, overcome by hydrogen sulfide in a manure pit. Last week, OSHA issued a citation totaling almost a quarter million dollars to Prospect Farms and two contractors. Two workers were initially overcome by the gas, and then four others entered the space to rescue them. All died.
Because OSHA has no confined space standard that covers agricultural workers, the agency was forced to use its General Duty Clause, which requires all employers to provide a safe workplace for their employees. All of the violations were determined to be “serious,” which carry a maximum fine of $16,550 per violation., as opposed to “willful,” which carries a penalty of $165,514 per violation. But willful violation require OSHA to prove that the employer acted with intentional disregard of worker safety, or acted with “plain indifference” to employee safety and legal regulations. Given that confined space hazards are well recognized in manure pits, it’s hard to see why this incident did not incur willful violations.
Earlier that same months two sewer workers were killed from a confined space incident involving hydrogen sulfide. OSHA cited Construction Labor Services Inc. with 16 serious violations and proposed penalties of $257,707. And the week after the Colorado tragedy, three workers, three workers died in a manhole in Trinity, Texas, Wednesday night after two rescuers were overcome climbing into a manhole filled with sewage to rescue the original worker. No citation has been issued in that case yet.
Getting Away With Farm Worker Abuse
Farm labor contractors, hired by farm owners to recruit and supervise foreign workers, are exploiting an abusing farm workers, according to an article by Max Blau writing for ProPublica. Prosecutors in Georgia have likened the abuse to a form of modern-day slavery. Contractors have forced workers to labor in unsafe conditions and suffer other abuses “including stealing their wages, charging them illegal fees, forcing them to live in substandard housing, and even physically and sexually abusing them.”
But despite prosecutors’ efforts to crack down on the exploitation of workers by labor contractors, there has been little to no movement at the state or federal level to make the changes that can stop it. There are laws and regulations that could curb exploitation, but reports from farmworker advocates and labor experts have shown that enforcement has long been lax….Experts told ProPublica there aren’t enough state and federal inspectors to adequately vet whether the contractors are following the rules. Nor is there broad political support to invest more resources to protect foreign workers, who themselves have little incentive for reporting abuse given the fear of retribution.
These foreign workers enter the country under H-2A visas, but federal regulators are able to inspect less than 1% of farm employers are investigated every year, fewer agricultural investigations than at any point since the turn of the millennium. The Biden administration issued a rule in 2024 “that sought to increase protections for H-2A workers and hold their employers more accountable. But after numerous states filed lawsuits challenging the rule, the Trump administration decided to suspend all enforcement.”
Good Union News
It’s not all bad news out there, as described by Celine McNicholas at the Economic Policy Institute:
In 2025, 16.5 million workers in the United States were represented by a union—an increase of 463,000 from 2024 and the highest number of unionized workers in the U.S. in 16 years. These 16.5 million unionized workers account for 11.2% of all wage and salary workers, up from 11.1% in 2024. The increase is a departure from prior years’ downward trend in union density.
Public employees continue to be better represented than workers in the private sector.
In 2025, 36.4% of public-sector workers were covered by a union contract, compared with 6.8% of private-sector workers. Both the public and the private sectors saw increases in unionization in 2025.
And although unions are less common in the future South, the South accounted for close to half (46%) of all net gains nationwide.
Get in the Regulatory Action
Angry watching Trump roll back regulations that protect the environment, your workplace rights and consumer protections? Feeling frustrated and helpless that you can’t do anything to stop them?
Well cheer up. The National Employment Law Project (NELP) has published on its website Defend Against Deregulation: A How-to Guide on Writing and Submitting Federal Comments which will help you little old you participate in the regulatory process.
The guide provides straightforward guidance on how the federal rulemaking process works and how to write a comment that can support challenges against unlawful agency action. It also contains a sample comment and detailed instructions on how comments can be submitted online.
Faster Line Speeds, Injured Workers
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is proposing to permanently increase line-speed for poultry and pork processing plants. Billed as part of an effort to improve efficiency and affordability, the proposal neglects the damage line speed increases pose for worker and food safety.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that workers in meatpacking plants already have higher than average rates of workplace injury, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has published studies that documented extensive repetitive motion injury, and recommended frequent breaks. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) said in a release “The Trump administration’s proposed rule endangers hard-working union and non-union workers alike, all in service to the bottom line of big meatpackers.”
And in case your thinking, “I don’t care, I don’t work in one of those plants,” Trump’s USDA has also withdrawn a Biden-era rule to reduce salmonella in poultry and has reduced its number of slaughterhouse inspectors. Workers report that “they simply cannot check for contamination, defects, or improperly processed meat when items pass by them in a blur.”
USDA is a “captured agency,” acting as an advocate for the food industry in both Democratic and Republican administrations. During the Obama administration, when USDA first attempted to increase line speeds, USDA never failed to complain to the White House when OSHA objected to actions that would hurt workers. (And USDA never hesitated to complain to the White House when OSHA took any action that offended the agriculture industry.) With friends like that…
Job Opening: Do Good, Get Paid
Congress Watch at Public Citizen is looking for a Worker Health and Safety Advocate in Washington DC to help manage advocacy on occupational health and safety– including in the topic areas of strengthening and enforcing workplace safety protections, whistleblower rights, heat stress impacts on worker health, appropriations implications, and other topics as necessary– and manage related public education and outreach. Great pay and benefits. Send cover letter, resume, and writing sample to sharley@citizen.org. You can find the job description here.