January 15, 2025 What Employers Should Expect from OSHA Under a Second Trump Administration

Description

To start off 2025, we will review the enforcement and rulemaking landscape at OSHA during this period of transition, and look into his firm’s crystal ball in an effort to predict what employers can expect from OSHA over the next several years, including: 

• Who will be the key decisionmakers at the Department of Labor and OSHA 
• What will become of OSHA’s new final Worker Walkaround Representative Designation Process Rule and the expanded E-Recordkeeping Rule 
• What are the prospects for OSHA’s recently released Heat Illness Prevention Rule, the Emergency Response Rule, and the much-anticipated revisions to the Hazardous Energy Control (LOTO)Rule 
• The likely fate of OSHA’s newest enforcement tools, including the expanded Instance-by-Instance Citation Policy and Severe Violator Enforcement Program Goals and objectives to consider pursuing during the next 4 years

In January 2025, Donald Trump will return to the White House to begin his second term as POTUS, the first person to serve non-consecutive terms since Grover Cleveland. Once he is sworn in a second time, President Trump will take control of the vast Executive Branch bureaucracy, including the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Coming off the heels of a remarkable period of record-setting enforcement and a flurry of new rulemaking under the Biden/Harris Administration, OSHA faces an uncertain future as the Trump/Vance Administration takes shape. Change is a given, but just how much, how quickly, and in what ways OSHA will change remains to be seen. 

While manufacturers may be tempted to search for clues in how OSHA functioned during the Trump/Pence Administration, and try to interpret promises made during the 2024 campaign, there are reasons to doubt that past behavior is a predictor of future outcomes; President Trump has proven to be unpredictable and perhaps more importantly, the Senate failed to confirm an Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA during his first term, and given statements about the use of recess appointments, we have to assume that a political appointee will take the reins at OSHA sooner rather than later. 

Presented by Aaron Gelb, Conn Maciel Carey, LLC