On December 10, 2019, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) notified the Office of Advocacy that it plans to convene a small business panel on a possible OSHA Tree Care Operations safety standard in early 2020. OSHA’s potential tree care standard could cover employees who perform tree care operations, such as pruning, maintaining, repairing, or removing trees, as well as establish safe work practices for such operations. Potentially regulated entities would include employers who engage in daily tree care operations, as well as companies, municipalities, and organizations that occasionally perform tree care and removal as part of their primary operations (e.g., residential and commercial construction and remodeling, landscaping, golf course maintenance, power and pipeline clearing, certain agricultural operations, etc.).
The Office of Advocacy is seeking small entity representatives from the potentially regulated sectors to assist the OSHA panel in its review of this possible regulation. Small entity representatives, or SERS, may include small businesses, small non-profit organizations, and small governmental jurisdictions. If you are an employer who would be affected by this potential regulation, please contact Bruce Lundegren at (202) 205-6144 or Bruce.Lundegren@sba.gov.
- Please see OSHA’s webpage for detailed information about this small business panel and rulemaking at https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/treecare/index.html
- Advocacy contact: Bruce Lundegren at (202) 205-6144