Biden’s OSHA Virus Plan Promises Frontline Enforcement Boost

President Joe Biden‘s call for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to launch an enforcement program focused on Covid-19 violations is likely to ramp up inspections of businesses that employ frontline essential workers, practitioners say.

Biden’s Jan. 21 executive order that tasked OSHA with determining the necessity of an emergency temporary rule to protect workers from on-the-job Covid-19 infection also assigned the agency with creating a national program to zero in on enforcement of “violations that put the largest number of workers at serious risk.”

In effect, a national emphasis program could help enforce a Covid-19 emergency temporary standard, ...