A (Brief) Preview of the Future of Workplace Safety & Health: Trump’s Nominee to Lead OSHA Appears Before the Senate HELP Committee

June 9, 2025June 11, 2025Theresa Jordan Leave a comment

By Aaron Gelb, Eric J. Conn, Kate McMahon, and Rachel Conn

On Thursday, June 5, David Keeling, President Trump’s nominee to serve as Assistant Secretary of Labor (OSHA), appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (the “HELP Committee”). After starting his career as a package handler, and member of the Teamsters union, at United Parcel Service (UPS) in 1985, held a variety of safety-focused roles, eventually serving as the global head of safety for the package handling giant. After his long and distinguished career in safety at UPS, Keeling served as the Director of Road and Transportation Safety at Amazon from 2021 to 2023, during which time the company was working to resolve OSHA investigations through improved ergonomic safety procedures.

Regular readers of the OSHA Defense Report no doubt recall that during the first Trump Administration (2017-2021), for the first time in OSHA’s history, the agency went four years without a Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary at the helm. The second Trump Administration appears to be taking a very different approach by quickly nominating Keeling and ensuring that he gets his turn before the Senate HELP Committee before the Summer begins, increasing the odds that there will be a Trump-appointed Head of OSHA before the Fall of the first year of President’s Trump second term.

Keeling prefaced his remarks by stating Continue reading →

The Pendulum Swings: Early Executive Actions by Trump Portend a Major Contraction at OSHA

February 3, 2025July 10, 2025Eric J. Conn Leave a comment

By Eric J. Conn and Darius Rohani-Shukla

President Trump was sworn in for a second term the morning of January 20^th, and he spent the rest of that day setting a record for the most ever Day 1 executive actions (i.e., Executive Orders, Proclamations, pardons, etc.). Among those Day 1 executive actions (and a couple others that followed later in his first week back in the White House), was a series of Executive Orders (EOs) and directives targeting staffing, budgeting, and rulemaking, which are designed to drastically shrink regulatory and enforcement agencies, like OSHA. These executive actions – including a hiring freeze, budget cuts, return-to-office mandates, buyouts, and reclassification of career positions into political appointments – are part of a systematic strategy to diminish regulatory agencies.

This effort to shrink OSHA and other executive agencies should come as no surprise to anyone. Dismantling the administrative state was a stated goal of the first Trump Administration and again from the campaign trail this time, and that was one campaign promise President Trump delivered on the last go around. By the end of the first Trump Administration, federal OSHA had shrunk to the fewest number of compliance officers in the agency’s history (dropping from 952 compliance officers at the start of the Trump Administration in 2016 to 761 by January 2020), and the agency had a record number of vacancies in “middle management” positions throughout the Area and Regional field offices.

The Biden Administration focused on rebuilding the ranks at OSHA. Biden had a Deputy Assistant Secretary for OSHA sworn in just a couple of hours after himself on Day 1, and then dedicated the next four years to hiring more than a hundred new compliance officers and filling vacancies through the agency. By the end of 2023, the Biden Administration had built the number of OSHA inspectors back up to 878.

Starting on Day 1 of the second Trump Administration, the writing has been on the wall for OSHA that it is about to experience another major contraction. A smaller OSHA means less resources to conduct inspections (OSHA conducted thousands of fewer inspections during the first Trump Administration than during the Obama or Biden Administrations), engage in robust enforcement (the total number of citations and significant enforcement actions decreased during the first Trump Administration), and to work on or promulgate new standards (there was essentially no new rulemaking, other than deregulatory rulemaking, during the first Trump Administration). We predict similar effects on the work of OSHA during this term.

Here is a breakdown of the key Day 1 and Week 1 executive actions that are designed to weaken federal agencies like OSHA: Continue reading →

Trump 2.0, OSHA: Expect Shifts in Federal Enforcement and Rulemaking Priorities As Well As More Aggressive State Plan Enforcement

November 12, 2024July 10, 2025Scott Hecker 5 Comments

By Scott Hecker, Rachel L. Conn, Eric J. Conn, and Aaron R. Gelb

As the dust settles on the 2024 Election Cycle and the pundits continue analyzing and dissecting the results, the OSHA/MSHA Team at Conn Maciel Carey draws from decades of experience representing employers during Republican and Democratic administrations to forecast how the workplace safety and health landscape may change with respect to enforcement, compliance assistance, and rulemaking under a second Trump Administration.

Enforcement Resources and Priorities

At the federal level, history can provide insight into the likely priorities of a second Trump term. As loyal readers of this blog know, OSHA operated without a confirmed Assistant Secretary for the entirety of the first Trump Administration. While agencies lacking Senate-confirmed leaders can feel adrift and directionless, with confusion about roles, responsibilities, and priorities, it was essentially business as usual at OSHA under Trump—at least until COVID-19 hit—with other agencies facing more focused efforts to deregulate. While it is not yet clear how quickly the second Trump Administration will turn its sights to OSHA, we’re unlikely to see a push to increase OSHA’s budget or even to backfill enforcement personnel who leave the agency. OSHA had the fewest compliance officers in its history during the Trump Administration, and despite efforts by President Biden to increase staffing levels, the number of enforcement personnel is sure to ebb again. Fewer compliance officers will lead to decreased enforcement activity, as well as overwhelming workloads for remaining employees, and such a combination often results in reduced morale.

OSHA under Trump 2.0 is likely to adopt more employer-friendly policies than President Biden’s current administration and could: Continue reading →

Trump Announces Nomination of Scott Mugno to Lead OSHA as Assistant Secretary of Labor

October 30, 2017August 11, 2025Eric J. Conn 2 Comments

By Eric J. Conn

After months of rumors and speculation, this morning, October 30, 2017, the White House finally announced its choice for the role of Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA. I am personally very pleased that nomination was Scott A. Mugno.

Scott presently serves as the Vice President of Safety, Vehicle Maintenance, and Sustainability for FedEx Ground. In that position, he has been in charge of the safety and health mission for an organization with nearly 90,000 workers, across more than 588 workplaces, and a fleet of more than 58,000 trailers. He has an impeccable reputation in the safety space as a great leader, a tremendous motivator for safety, a faithful believer in the safety mission, and a true safety professional. For the past six years, Mr. Mugno has successfully curated FedEx Ground’s core principle of “Safety Above All,” which means that:

“no package [FedEx] could ever carry is worth jeopardizing the safety of one employee.”

The White House touted Scott’s qualifications for the position of OSHA’s chief administrator in a press release announcing his nomination:

“His responsibilities in both [of his Safety leadership positions at FedEx] included developing, promoting and facilitating the safety and health program and culture. Mr. Mugno was twice awarded FedEx’s highest honor, the FedEx Five Star Award, for his safety leadership….”

Scott has been a friend and professional associate for many years, and I believe his diverse background puts him in a unique position to be a dynamic and successful leader at OSHA. In his current job, Scott is a Corporate Safety Director. Previous to his FedEx Ground position, Scott was the Corporate Safety Director at FedEx Express in Memphis. Prior to that, he had been a practicing regulatory attorney for both private employers and law firms. Before that, he spent six years serving our nation as an attorney in the Army JAG corps. The combination of all of these past experiences puts Scott in a unique position to successfully execute OSHA’s safety mission.

OSHA’s chief administrator has typically come from the ranks of other government roles, academia, or private law firms. In OSHA’s history, rarely has the agency been led by someone who has served as Continue reading →