Biden Picks Union Official to Undo Trump’s Gutting of Workplace Safety Rules

The Biden administration is taking immediate action on its first day in office to install a former union safety official, Jim Frederick, at the helm of Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). The Trump administration gutted the agency, leaving workers without protections against COVID-19 on the job. 

Frederick—a former health and safety director of the United Steelworkers union whose appointment has been lauded by unions—is expected to take swift action to enforce new rules, regulations, and enforcement mechanisms to address the workplace crisis driven by the pandemic that has killed hundreds of workers in industries such as meat-packing and healthcare. 

At the top of the agenda, Frederick is expected to implement an emergency temporary standard on infectious diseases that requires employers to take certain measures to protect their employees from exposure to COVID-19. 

During the pandemic so far, OSHA refused to issue COVID-19-related safety standards to employers. Instead the agency has offered guidance to be followed "if feasible." According to the OSHA website as of January 20, guidance issued related to COVID-19 is "not a standard or regulation, and create[s] no new legal obligations.” The fallout of this lack of regulation has been deadly; hundreds of workers in healthcare, meat-packing, food-processing, and farming, which have been hotbeds for the spread of COVID-19, have died from COVID-19, and tens of thousands more have been infected. OSHA has barely acknowledged any of these deaths or issued citations to companies that have failed to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

At the same time, the Trump administration has embarked on an agenda of systemic deregulation of the agency, leaving more and more workers vulnerable to injuries at work. OSHA, which was founded in 1971 to protect workers from health and safety hazards at work, has had fewer inspectors under Trump than at any point since the 1970s. Inspectors are crucial as they respond to complaints (often anonymous) filed by workers with concerns about their health and safety at work. For many workers, this is the only mechanism for having serious and potentially fatal hazards addressed. 

Between 2016 and August 2020, the number of inspectors fell from 952 to 761. As of October, more than half of the agency's senior positions remained vacant, and Trump had never nominated a leader for  the agency. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration has drawn back drastically on the number of inspections it conducts. 

The Biden administration campaigned on the promise to double the number of inspectors. These immediate changes will likely be part of a larger agenda to reverse the direction of the Department of Labor in favor of workers. What remains unclear is how far the Biden administration, which has already begun forging ties with and asking for guidance from Uber, Lyft, Amazon, and AirBnB executives, will go in undoing the damage.