Workforce Bulletin

By Valerie Butera

OSHA requires employers to provide safe jobs and workplaces for their employees. And generally employers can rely upon established OSHA standards to guide them in reaching that goal. But faced with employers’ numerous questions and concerns regarding Ebola hemorrhagic fever (Ebola) now that several patients with Ebola have been treated in the United States, OSHA has been slow to provide answers.

To date, OSHA has advised employers that certain established standards may apply in the event of possible worker exposure to Ebola. The agency has also issued ...

The national OSHA Practice Group at Epstein Becker Green co-authored an article in BioFuels Journal entitled “Railcar Fall Protection: What OSHA Requires from Ethanol Plant Operators.”  Although the article principally addresses OSHA's enforcement landscape related to work on top of railcars at ethanol plants, the analysis carries over to work on top of any rolling stock (e.g., tanker trucks, railcars, rigs, etc.) in any industry.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Addressing fall hazards is always among the OSHA's top enforcement priorities.  Indeed ...

By Paul H. Burmeister

The OSHA/Hyatt Hotels saga continued with a recent exchange of letters between OSHA and the hotel chain’s attorney.  In April, OSHA issued a “5(a)(1) letter” to the CEO of Hyatt Hotels, indicating that OSHA believed there were ergonomic risks associated with the daily work activities of the company’s housekeeping staff.  The letter put the hotel chain “on notice” that while OSHA did not believe that a “recognized hazard” existed at the  time of the inspection, such that a General Duty Clause citation should issue, if the same hazard was later ...

by Margaret C. Thering and Lauri F. Rasnick

Violence against women has been in the headlines lately – the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act is engendering vigorous debate, and as of last month, federal agencies were ordered to implement policies to assist their employees who are victims of domestic violence.  Also last month, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Injury Control Research Center at West Virginia University published a paper entitled “Workplace Homicides Among U.S. Women: The Role of Intimate Partner Violence” in the ...

By Amanda R. Strainis-Walker and Eric J. Conn

With the dog days of summer around the corner, OSHA just put out a press release reminding employers with outside workplaces about OSHA’s focus on the hazards of working in high heat.  The press release reinvigorates OSHA’s heat-related illness campaign that began leading into last summer, when OSHA produced a great deal of public information about heat-related illness, including a dedicated heat illness information page on OSHA’s website, a YouTube video, public press statements, speeches by senior Department of Labor and OSHA ...

By Kara M. Maciel

Sadly, workplace violence continues to be a topic that challenges many organizations.  Indeed, as the news reports continue to remind us, employees and non-employees often take out their aggression and violent acts within the workplace.  As the recent attacks at hospitals in Pittsburgh and in Washington, D.C. demonstrate, there remains a high rate of fatal and non-fatal assaults and violent acts committed within the workplace, and, in particular, within the healthcare industry.  One of the struggles that employers face is trying to prevent violent conduct by ...

By Casey M. Cosentino and Eric J. Conn

“Texting while driving” is an epidemic in America, which has prompted forty-two states and the District of Columbia to ban (completely or partially) this conduct for drivers.  Here's a map of the U.S. states that have enacted some ban on texting while driving.  Studies suggest that texting while driving distracts drivers’ cognitive focus and removes their eyes from the road and hands from the wheel.  It is not surprising, therefore, that distracted driving is attributed with sixteen percent (16%) of all traffic fatalities in 2009.

The ...

By Paul H. Burmeister and Eric J. Conn

At the end of January 2012, OSHA finally released its Fall 2011 regulatory agenda, which is intended to be an overview of what OSHA plans to accomplish in the next few months.  The agenda includes updates about the status of several major OSHA rulemaking efforts.  Below is a brief summary of the Reg Agenda.

This Reg Agenda was far less ambitious than each of the previous agendas set forth by the Obama Administration’s OSHA, but it does reveal the agency’s top priorities that will continue to be pressed even during an election year.  The highlights ...

By Alexis M. Downs and Eric J. Conn

Employers who operate laboratories are suddenly receiving a high level of attention from federal safety and health regulators.  Following a string of serious laboratory accidents, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (the “CSB”) posted an informational video on its website detailing hazards at chemical laboratories, based on a study of 120 explosions, fires, and chemical releases at university and other research laboratories (view the CSB’s Lab Safety Video here).  At the same time, federal OSHA just published a ...