OSHA Official Reviews ‘Difficult’ Year, Discusses Upcoming Plans and Projects

“It’s been a difficult year,” Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, told an American Bar Association audience March 13.

“We had sequestration. We had the government shutdown. That was the most difficult part,” he said at the ABA Occupational Safety and Health Law Committee’s 2014 Midwinter Meeting in Tucson, Ariz.

Barab said that on the third day of the partial government shutdown last fall, he received a call from one of the regional offices of the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Inspectors from that office had spotted employees on a roof who ...