Late last week, Federal OSHA published new guidelines at the direction of the Biden Administration. Below is a summary of the Protecting Workers: Guidance on Mitigating and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in the Workplace. The new guidelines provide updated guidance and recommendations and outline existing safety and health standards. OSHA is providing the recommendations to “assist employers in providing a safe and healthful workplace.”
It is important to note that this is new OSHA guidance that does not introduce any new standard or regulation and it creates no new legal obligations.
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, employers are responsible for providing safe and healthful workplaces for their employees including hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm. This includes protecting employees from COVID-19 infection.
Many employers have already implemented some or most of these guidelines and recommendations. For instance, most Oregon employers are subject to Oregon OSHA’s temporary standard for addressing COVID-19 workplace risks which contains requirements similar to this Federal OSHA guidance.
There is some speculation that this guidance may be the basis for a forthcoming OSHA emergency temporary standard, which President Biden instructed OSHA to consider issuing in a recent Executive Order.
Below are some of the recommendations that OSHA’s newly published guidance suggest employers implement, with full details available here:
- Identification of where and how workers might be exposed to COVID-19 at work. This includes a thorough hazard assessment to identify potential workplace hazards related to COVID-19. This assessment will be most effective if it involves workers (and their representatives) because they are often the people most familiar with the conditions they face.
- Identification of a combination of measures that will limit the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace, in line with the principles of the hierarchy of controls. This should include a combination of eliminating the hazard, engineering controls, workplace administrative policies, personal protective equipment (PPE), and other measures, prioritizing controls from most to least effective, to protect workers from COVID-19 hazards.
- Educate and train workers on your COVID-19 policies and procedures using accessible formats and in a language they understand.
- Instruct workers who are infected or potentially infected to stay home and isolate or quarantine to prevent or reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19.
- Performing enhanced cleaning and disinfection after people with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 have been in the facility.
- Recording and reporting COVID-19 infections and deaths: Employers are responsible for recording work-related cases of COVID-19 illness on their Form 300 logs if the following requirements are met: (1) the case is a confirmed case of COVID-19; (2) the case is work-related (as defined by 29 CFR 1904.5); and (3) the case involves one or more relevant recording criteria (set forth in 29 CFR 1904.7) (e.g., medical treatment, days away from work).
- Implementing protections from retaliation and setting up an anonymous process for workers to voice concerns about COVID-19-related hazards.
- Not distinguishing between workers who are vaccinated and those who are not: Workers who are vaccinated must continue to follow protective measures, such as wearing a face covering and remaining physically distant, because at this time, there is not evidence that COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission of the virus from person-to-person.