Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

Among President Biden’s flurry of first-week executive orders (EOs) is one entitled “Protecting the Federal Workplace and Requiring Mask-Wearing” (EO 13991). This EO states the administration’s policy “It is the policy of my Administration to halt the spread of … COVID–19 by relying on the best available data and science-based public health measures. Such measures include wearing masks when around others, physical distancing, and other related precautions recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).” The EO, and guidance to agencies issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), provide directions to federal agencies. They can also provide useful guidance to non-federal organizations in which most employees work in office settings. The rest of this note discusses a January 24, 2021 OMB memorandum to agency heads entitled “COVID-19 Safe Federal Workplace: Agency Model Safety Principles,” which incorporates CDC guidance.

For nearly a year now, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other agencies have been issuing guidance to employers regarding COIVD-19, including identification, protection, and back-to-work procedures. One of incoming President Biden’s first Executive Orders (EO 13999 of January 21, 2021) directs OSHA to issue updated worker protection guidance to employers within two weeks. On January 29, OSHA met this requirement by publishing “Protecting Workers: Guidance on Mitigating and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in the Workplace,” which it explains is intended for employers and workers to use to identify risks and plan responses. The remainder of this note summarizes OSHA’s new guidance.

Now that vaccinations against COVID-19 infections are becoming available, employer responses to the pandemic will include when to recommend, support, or even require employee vaccinations. While workplace safety considerations might support all these efforts, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has just issued a reminder that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 require employers to craft their vaccination policies in ways that won’t violate anti-discrimination provisions. The remainder of this note discusses EEOC guidance published on December 16, 2020.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires employers to ensure workplace air quality, as part of the agency’s broad mission to protect workers’ safety and health. Instead of a single comprehensive standard, OSHA incorporates air-related issues into standards requiring employers to consider whether workplace conditions might require respiratory protections (which I discussed HERE), and additional standards addressing routine workplace air contaminants (which I discussed HERE), and special hazards of confined spaces (which I discussed HERE). OSHA also applies specific ventilation standards in workplaces that involve abrasive blasting; grinding, polishing, and buffing operations; and spray finishing operations.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires that employees wear personal protective equipment (PPE) necessary to help protect them against identified workplace hazards. This equipment may protect against physical hazards—hard hats, safety glasses, tinted goggles, steel-toed shoes—or may protect against health hazards—respirators, self-contained breathing apparatus, gloves. OSHA does not formally consider cloth facemasks to be PPE, but does consider them “source control” that may prevent an infected person from spreading the virus – which means that they do provide protection to co-workers. OSHA and most other health and safety agencies therefore do at least recommend masks, and some require them in specified settings. The remainder of this note discusses agencies’ formal provisions regarding masks.

During the COIVD-19 pandemic, there have been many reports of angry arguments between people who don’t want to wear masks or practice social distance and retail staff members trying to enforce local requirements. Some of these confrontations escalate to violence. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide formal guidelines to retail businesses, offering ways for protecting workers by “Limiting Workplace Violence Associated with COVID-19 Prevention Policies in Retail and Services Businesses.” The remainder of this note describes CDC’s latest guidance. 

The federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board – which usually refers to itself as the Chemical Safety Board or CSB -- has issued guidance on the hazards of explosive and combustible dust. The report is intended to identify the key barriers to improvement in the control and mitigation of combustible dust hazards. The report was developed by a contractor to CSB, after a fatal 2017 dust explosion at the Didion Milling facility in Cambria, Wisconsin. In October 2018, CSB issued a “Call to Action” to gather comments on the management, control and understanding of combustible dust (which I wrote about HERE). The objective of this project was to make sense of comments submitted in response to the Call to Action. CSB ultimately received 57 responses, which its contractor reviewed and supplemented with additional research. 

During 2020, the Trump Administration has seized on the economic disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic as the latest of its many rationales for easing environmental regulations. In May, the President issued an executive order (EO) directing agencies to “support the economic response to the COVID–19 outbreak” (EO 13924 “Regulatory Relief To Support Economic Recovery”; I discussed it HERE). That EO included directions to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to receive reports from individual federal agencies about their regulatory and enforcement responses, and authorized OMB to issue guidance. On August 31, 2020, OMB issued a “Memorandum for the Deputy Secretaries of Executive Departments and Agencies – Implementation of Section 6 of Executive Order 13924” (Memorandum M-20-31; called “the Memo” below) offering this guidance. 

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulates thousands of chemicals, through regulatory standards directing employers to reduce worker exposures. For a small number of especially hazardous chemicals, OSHA provides a detailed standard applicable to a single chemical—examples include asbestos, benzene, and lead. Another single-chemical standard covers beryllium (29 CFR 1910.1024), which OSHA has revised effective September 14, 2020. OSHA describes the revisions as meant “to clarify certain provisions and simplify or improve compliance … to maintain or enhance worker protections overall by ensuring that the rule is well understood and compliance is more straightforward.” The agency notes that none of the changes impose new costs on employers, and some will reduce compliance costs.

In recent months, worker protection and public health agencies have issued increasingly stringent and detailed guidelines for employers to follow to reduce worker exposures to COVID-19. I’ve written about a number of these, including HERE and HERE. Over the same months, many workplaces have also been affected by state and local government mandates designed to protect public health in places the public (at least previously) frequent – these include temporary closures of many types of organizations, and restrictions such as masks at others.