The U.S. Department of Labor announced that its Wage and Hour Division is seeking to add 100 investigators to its team to support its enforcement efforts including the protection of workers’ wages, migrant and seasonal workers, rights to family and medical leave and prevailing wage requirements for workers on federal contracts.
Matthew Thibault, Construction Dive
OSHA has released another round of citations against companies that violate the agency's safety protocols, resulting in injuries and fatalities to workers. This latest roundup of offenses includes willful violations of fall protection standards, standards involving aerial lifts and more. Read on to see the largest violations by contractors this past quarter.
On Thursday, January 13 the United States Supreme Court issued two key rulings with regards to pending vaccination mandates from OSHA and CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services).
This is a mixed bag for construction employers.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a notice to remind employers that electronic submission of 2021 injury and illness data from OSHA Form 300A is due by March 2.
More information on the reporting requirements and instructions on how to submit data online is available via OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application website here.
Ryan Golden, Construction Dive
For a brief moment, large swaths of the U.S. employment law community have their eyes glued to one particularly lengthy court docket: BST Holdings, LLC, et al v. OSHA, et al, the consolidated proceedings on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's COVID-19 vaccination Emergency Temporary Standard.
Jeffrey Steele, Construction Dive
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently issued updated guidance to improve communication with family members of the deceased when the agency investigates a workplace fatality. While a similar 2012 directive improved communication for a time, it had fallen out of use over the years.
Today, President Biden moved back the date by which federal contractor employees must be “fully vaccinated.” The new deadline is January 4, 2022, which aligns the federal contractor rule with the OSHA ETS deadline.
Here’s the announcement from the White House:
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has released an emergency temporary standard (ETS) obligating employers with 100 or more employees to require vaccination or weekly testing and masking for their unvaccinated employees. The ETS requires covered employers to ensure all unvaccinated employees working in-person to begin wearing masks by Dec. 5, 2021, and provide a negative COVID-19 test on a weekly basis beginning Jan. 4, 2022.
Matthew Thibault, Construction Dive
OSHA has wrapped up its latest quarter of fines for the period from July through September. Some contractors were penalized hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the highest fine totaling over $1 million, for a variety of violations ranging from a failure to provide adequate protection to preventable deaths on a jobsite, according to the agency.
The White House announced on Tuesday, September 21 that OSHA plans to create a federal standard to help prevent a growing and largely under-reported hazard on construction sites: heat-related illness.
The advance notice of proposed rulemaking, set to be released next month, is the first step in the process for developing a workplace heat standard.
