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WASHINGTON - Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) sent a letter to Department of Labor (DOL) Acting Secretary Julie Su urging the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to abandon its proposed federal heat rule.
 
Not only does the proposed rule adopt one-size-fits-all mandates that are unworkable, but it also imposes massive paperwork burdens that will unnecessarily harm small businesses. In the end, the proposed rule will take resources away from actually keeping workers safe.
 
In the letter Foxx writes: “This proposed rule, pushed by climate activists and other Democrat special interest groups, is yet another example of the out-of-touch, top down federal mandates that have come from the Biden-Harris DOL. Regulating the complex hazard of heat at the federal level without taking into account regional differences in climate make little sense. … It is common sense that climate varies from region to region, and therefore, what may be considered extreme temperatures in one part of the country would be considered moderate in another. For example, a construction worker in Florida will be more acclimated to working in temperatures above 80 degrees than a construction worker in Maine and would, therefore, have a lower occupational risk. … The proposed rule fails to take these factors into account. OSHA’s one-size-fits-all, national approach to heat ignores science and fails to address occupational risks sensibly."
 
The letter continues: “[S]mall business entities reported that they may be forced to hire additional staff or take time away from other safety initiatives in order to complete the paperwork required by the proposed rule. They also said that the recordkeeping requirements were unnecessary and that they would rather spend time communicating with employees than recording information on paper. With this proposed rule, OSHA ignored their concerns.”
 
The letter concludes: “Occupational exposure to heat is not a new hazard. OSHA has been addressing the risks of excessive heat for decades pursuant to the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s General Duty Clause, and employers have long adopted measures that are best tailored to their individual workplaces to keep workers safe. With this proposed rule, the Biden-Harris DOL uses climate change as a pretext to impose one-size-fits-all federal mandates that will burden job creators and workers alike. The proposed rule’s prescriptive requirements will also impose a massive paperwork burden and unnecessarily harm small businesses. For these reasons, DOL should abandon the overly burdensome proposed rule.”
 
To read the full letter, click here.
 

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