Is Biden Ditching His Promise to Protect Workers From Covid-19? [View all]

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://newrepublic.com/article/162040/covid-osha-standards-workplace-safety

Among the various ways President Donald Trump caused more Americans to die needlessly from Covid-19 was by failing to issue a legally enforceable “emergency temporary standard” to protect workers. The 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act permits the Labor Department to impose such a standard without consulting Congress, a move that the AFL-CIO strenuously urged, but the Trump administration wouldn’t budge. Then-candidate Joe Biden attacked Trump mercilessly for this negligence, and on his first day in office President Biden issued an executive order to initiate prompt action.

Now the Labor Department is ready to go with two emergency standards—one for health care workers and another for everybody else—but the White House, fearful of setting off angry protests, is dithering.

Under the January 21 executive order, the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration was supposed to issue its emergency temporary standard by March 15. (The executive order said the standard would be issued on that date only if judged “necessary,” but that was a formality.) The Ides of March came and went. Now it’s mid-April and OSHA still hasn’t issued the promised standard—a costly delay for any government order that includes the words “emergency” and “temporary.” To make matters worse, there are whisperings abroad that the White House may drop the whole idea.

“OSHA has been working diligently, as appropriate, to consider what standards may be necessary,” a Labor Department spokesperson told Bloomberg News on April 12, “and is taking the time to get this right.” That sounded ominous. A Labor Department spokesperson told Bloomberg Law the previous week that Labor Secretary Marty Walsh “reviewed the materials, and determined that they should be updated to reflect the latest scientific analysis of the state of the disease.” But Walsh is actually quite impatient, I’m told, to get the rule out. The holdup is at the White House.