Following another close national election, President Trump returns to the White House for a second term, and resumes control over the vast Executive Branch bureaucracy, including the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Now we turn the page from four extraordinary years at OSHA under a Biden/Harris Administration, where we saw record-setting enforcement and a flurry of new rulemaking, and watch the pendulum swing as control at OSHA transitions to the Trump/Vance Administration. However, just how much, how quickly, and in what ways OSHA’s priorities will swing remain to be seen. So, now is the perfect time to take a close look at what we learned from and about OSHA during the last few very eventful years, and more importantly, look ahead and assess what we can expect from OSHA the next four years, as President Trump installs his own team at the Department of Labor.
One thing is for sure, change is coming at OSHA. Accordingly, it is more important now than ever for employers to keep a close watch on developments at OSHA. Conn Maciel Carey LLP’s complimentary 2025 OSHA Webinar Series, which includes monthly programs (sometimes more often) put on by the OSHA-specialist attorneys in the firm’s national OSHA Practice Group, is designed to give employers insight into developments at OSHA during this period of unpredictability and significant change. To register for an individual webinar in the series, click on the registration link within the individual program descriptions below, Continue reading
OSHA violations characterized as Repeat or Willful can now carry penalties as high as $156,259 per citation. You may be wondering, however, what exactly leads OSHA to characterize a violation as Repeat or Willful, and why are they important beyond their high-dollar cost? No doubt, you heard that OSHA changed the Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP) in September 2022, making it easier to place employers into the program and saddle them with all the negative consequences associated with it even though the citations which prompted the referral are not yet final orders. Raising the stakes even higher, OSHA announced changes to its “Instance-By-Instance” or “Egregious” enforcement policy in January 2023 that will undoubtedly lead to a significant increase in the number of multi-million-dollar enforcement actions.
