Advocacy’s Assistant Chief Counsel for Safety, Security, and Transportation Bruce Lundegren attended the American Bar Association’s annual Workplace and Occupational Safety and Health Law Section meeting, held from March 7-10, 2023, in San Diego, CA. As in the past few years, the conference began with a day-long program dedicated exclusively to mine safety and health related issues. This year, key issues included an update on Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) injury/fatality and enforcement statistics, MSHA regulatory priorities (such as its silica rule that is under review), litigation, and other topics on the MSHA regulatory and judicial front. Christopher J. Williamson, MSHA’s Assistant Secretary, who was appointed by President Biden effective Monday, April 11, 2022, addressed the conference for the first time as head of MSHA and outlined some of his key priorities for the agency.
The following three days of the conference focused more Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issues, and, as always, there were a number of issues of interest to small businesses.?These included OSHA’s emergency response to COVID-19, priorities for OSHA and the Solicitor of Labor, OSHA injury/fatality and enforcement statistics, OSHA’s SBREFA panel on Workplace Violence in Healthcare and Social Assistance and the planned SBREFA panel on Heat Injury and Illness, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, and construction safety and health. Douglas L. Parker, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, addressed the group and laid out an ambitious agenda for OSHA, paralleling a similar set of regulatory actions from his time as head of California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA).
Advocacy will have a full recap of the ABA Workplace and Occupational Safety and Health Law Section meeting at its regular Small Business Labor Safety (OSHA/MSHA) roundtable that will be held on Friday, March 24, 2023, from 10:00 a.m. until 12:00 Noon (ET) via Teams webinar. Please contact Bruce Lundegren at bruce.lundegren@sba.gov if you would like the Teams access information to that roundtable.