Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.
OSHA Out of Time?|WHD’s Thinning Ranks
Bruce Rolfsen: OSHA’s plans to resurrect its Covid-19 standard for health-care workers may encounter stiff legal resistance as employer groups ask whether the agency missed its deadline for issuing a permanent measure.
That issue arose repeatedly during the written public comment period preceding the April 27 start of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s online public hearings about the standard. The proceedings are scheduled to last for four days.
David Addington, general counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business, told the agency he doubts the legality of OSHA’s health-care rulemaking. The attorney was among the successful challengers to the agency’s Covid-19 shot-or-test rule.
“OSHA no longer has the authority to promulgate a final standard,” Addington wrote in a comment letter. “That authority expired in December 2021. Accordingly, the notice is void and OSHA should withdraw it.”
The regulator wants to issue the permanent rule as a follow-on to its emergency temporary standard for health care issued on June 21. But the law creating OSHA—the Occupational Safety and Health Act—gives the agency just six months to issue a permanent version of a rule after enactment of an emergency standard, meaning the time to do so arguably expired four months ago.
“That six-month date was December 21, 2021. With no final standard issued, by then the effective period for...
A Raleigh professor has agreed to pay $152,500 to resolve allegedly false national science grant claims. According to the Department of Justice of ENC, Dr. Michael Harrington and his company, Geno...