Professor James Brudney shared his expert opinion with Law360 on guidelines and regulations that could be created for workplace safety due to coronavirus.
As the novel coronavirus pandemic keeps much of the U.S. on lockdown, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is taking fire for not using its power to issue emergency rules making employers adopt infectious disease plans for the workplace. But experts say because of legal hurdles and resource constraints, the chance of OSHA flexing its regulatory muscles is slim to none.
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia has said that nonbinding guidance OSHA has issued related to COVID-19 is sufficient, but Democratic lawmakers and labor advocates want the federal worker safety watchdog to do something it hasn’t done in decades: issue an “emergency temporary standard.”
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James Brudney, a Fordham University Law School professor who previously served as chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor, said it’s not clear what the agency’s resource power is or whether the agency has enough specialists, but that drafting a standard “would not necessarily have to be rocket science.”
“There’s quite a bit that has been put out in the way of CDC guidelines and state judgments by governors and state agencies,” Brudney said, referring to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.