President-elect Biden vows to beef up OSHA
Under President Trump, the federal agency that enforces workplace safety hasn’t done much enforcing. Rather than mandate coronavirus-specific rules and standards, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has encouraged employers to self-police and voluntarily follow Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines. It’s closed thousands of worker complaints without investigations. And it’s issued meager fines to billion-dollar meat companies. That’s likely to end under a Joe Biden administration. The President-elect has vowed to issue mandatory workplace safety rules, and Politico points out it could happen quickly, given that he doesn’t need Senate approval to push them through. Business groups, predictably, say that’s a bad idea, because they need “flexibility.”
