1.27.2014  

  Bloomberg BNA's Occupational Safety & Health Daily  

 

Eric J. Conn, Kathryn M. McMahon, Amanda R. Strainis-Walker, and Lindsay A. Smith co-wrote an article titled "OSHA Forecast: Top 5 OSHA Developments to Track in 2014."

 

An excerpt:

 

OSHA Will Have a Busy Rulemaking Calendar

 

Although OSHA's enforcement efforts have reached record levels in essentially every measurable metric, its rulemaking activities under the Obama Administration have been somewhat stagnant. Many have claimed that the Agency is broken and that its rulemaking process is "mired in bureaucracy." During President Obama's first term, OSHA laid out a number of rulemaking initiatives in its periodic Regulatory Agenda updates, including rules for combustible dust, Crystalline Silica, Beryllium, and an Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP or I2P2) rule. All of these proposed rulemaking initiatives, however, missed key rulemaking deadlines or were expressly set-aside. We expect that to change in 2014 and throughout the balance of this Administration.

 

Just as we saw a typical move to deemphasize rulemaking in the year leading up to the 2012 Presidential election, we are already seeing signs of a typical post-election, second term, very aggressive rulemaking docket from OSHA. The first signs of a new surge of Rulemaking came in the form of speeches by OSHA's Administrator, Dr. David Michaels, who characterized the development of an I2P2 rule as his and the Agency's "highest priority." Second, the Department of Labor and OSHA recently issued its Fall 2013 Regulatory Agenda, which, as we expected, returned several OSHA rulemaking initiatives, including the I2P2 rule, from the backburner, where they were deposited prior to the 2012 Presidential Election, back to the active rulemaking calendar.