President Biden has issued an Executive Order focused on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (“OSHA”) and the Mine Safety and Health Act’s (“MSHA”) approach to managing the COVID-19 crises in the workplace. The President directed OSHA to revisit its overall strategy for regulating and enforcing issues associated with workplace spread of COVID-19. Soon after, on January 29th, OSHA issued stronger workplace health and safety guidance for protecting employees from COVID-19 exposures.
The guidance includes a recommendation to provide COVID-19 vaccinations at no cost to employees. Other essential elements of a prevention program under the new guidelines include conducting a workplace hazard assessment, identifying control measures to limit the spread of the virus, adopting policies for employee absences that do not punish workers so that potentially infected workers are encouraged to remain home, ensuring that COVID-19 policies and procedures are clearly communicated to both English and non-English speaking workers, and implementing protections from retaliation for workers who raise COVID-19 related concerns.
Further key measures presented in the guidance for limiting the spread of COVID-19 included implementing physical distancing, installing barriers when physical distancing cannot be maintained, and using face masks. The guidance further covers use of personal protective equipment (“PPE”) and providing hand-washing supplies, routine cleaning and disinfection, and ventilation Improvements. OSHA’s updated guidance recommends that employers also assign a workplace coordinator who will be responsible for all COVID-19 issues, educate and train workers on COVID-19 symptoms and hazards, as well as the policies and procedures established and implemented for their protection. OSHA’s guidance also recommends employers to identify precautions in line with the hierarchy of controls, which generally labels and prioritizes controls in the following order, from most to lease effective: (i) elimination, (ii) substitution, (iii) engineering controls such as the PPE, (iv) workplace administrative policies, and (v) physical barriers.
The new guidance applies to industries outside of healthcare and contains additional detail in implementing OSHA’s recommendations. If you would like more information on implementing and following OSHA’s new COVID-19 guidance, please contact the attorneys at Rock Fusco & Connelly, LLC.