Watchdog Faults OSHA for Lack of Covid Enforcement Cooperation

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, OSHA and other federal agencies failed to share information that could have led to more worker safety inspections in high-hazard industries, the Labor Department’s watchdog agency said Tuesday.

“By not identifying federal partners in a position to assist during a large-scale safety and health crisis and not having or creating collaborative agreements with those partners, OSHA lost a valuable opportunity to better protect U.S. workers,” a report from the Officer of Inspector General Larry Turner said.

Because the agency already had a “historically low number” of inspectors at the outset of the pandemic ...