Can OSHA, never beloved by many businesses, survive this onslaught?

• The U.S. Department of Education announced March 11 that it’s cutting its workforce nearly in half — 1,300 workers -- a move that Education Secretary Linda McMahon said is a first step toward eliminating the department. (There are 1,865 federal OSHA employees.)

• The Trump administration has laid off thousands of probationary workers — typically, employees who have been in their roles for less than two years. This includes workers at the Forest Service, the Office of Personnel Management, Small Business Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Education, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Internal Revenue Service, Veterans Affairs, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

• Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been working to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. Musk said it was a "criminal organization" and said he "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper."

• Trump has threatened to overhaul, or entirely scrap, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which provides aid to Americans following natural disasters. FEMA employs more than 20,000 staff (more than ten times the size of OSHA staff) around the U.S.  The President called FEMA a "very big disappointment" that is "very bureaucratic," "very slow," and costs "a tremendous amount of money (budget = $33 billion)."

• Musk has repeatedly called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has about 1,700 employees and a budget of $684.9 million. Hmmm… OSHA’s has those 1,865 employees and a budget of about $632 million.

• In the Trump administration's efforts to restructure the Social Security Agency, the SSA banned its workers from reading the news on their work devices.

• The Trump administration emailed a buyout offer to around two million government employees. The deal: employees get their full salary and benefits through September, without the need to work during that time, in exchange for their resignation. One Washington law firm said, “the prospect of an eight-month paid vacation is likely to result in a fairly significant exodus from federal agencies, including OSHA.”

• An executive order issued in January requires agencies to identify at least ten existing regulations for repeal when proposing a new regulation. This “10 for 1” tradeoff goes well beyond the “2 for 1” order issued during the first Trump administration. 

Troubling signs

Is the past prologue? As expected, OSHA did not fare well in the first Trump administration but lived to see the Biden presidency. By the end of Trump’s first term OSHA had the fewest number of inspectors in its history – 761. The agency also had a record number of vacancies in “middle management” positions throughout Area and Regional field offices. Forty-two percent of the leadership positions at OSHA were left vacant, including the job of chief administrator.  Scott Mungo, a safety leader at FedEx Ground was nominated but his confirmation by the Senate stalled. The temporary acting head of the agency was Loren Sweatt, formerly a senior policy advisor on Capitol Hill. She is now a member of the National Mediation Board.

Who’s minding the store? As of mid-March 2025, the OSHA organization chart looks like Swiss cheese. Vacant are the top job, the chief of staff, one deputy assistant secretary, the senior policy advisor, and the policy advisor position. Three of the ten regional administrators are temporarily “acting.” Keeping the lights on for now is Scott Ketcham, a deputy assistant secretary who has worked at OSHA for two decades, most recently as director of enforcement.

This time around an OSHA chief will be in place. David Keeling worked his way up at United Parcel Service (UPS) through numerous environmental health and safety positions starting in 1985, capped by a three-year stint as vice president for global health and safety. He then spent about two years as director of global road and transportation safety for Amazon, leaving to become a global EHS consultant. A grassroots group of activist Teamster members have stated concerns about his UPS and Amazon connections, two companies that have been accused of unsafe practices. The National Safety Council has endorsed his nomination.

A wasted year

It probably will be months before Keeling sits at his desk in the Labor Department. Unfortunately, this is business as usual. Former OSHA chief Dr. David Micheals, nominated by the Obama administration, did not take office until December of the year following the election. Doug Parker, OSHA chief in the Biden White House, was not sworn in until November of the following year.

The slow-moving wheels of the bureaucracy also explain why it will take more than a year to fill those currently vacant top leadership positions at OSHA — if indeed all are to be filled.

No signs of life on OSHA’s website. As of March 13, the homepage appeared unchanged since the inauguration.

The last news release was posted January 16, four days before the inauguration — “OSHA, National Safety Council, Road to Zero Coalition join initiative to prevent fatal workplace motor vehicle incidents.” This seems standard operating procedure during presidential transitions, particularly for smaller agencies. The last news posted on the Mine Safety and Health Administration website is also from January 16. The Environmental Protection Agency is another story. EPA has posted more than 100 news releases since January 20.  It only took ten days for Lee M. Zeldin to be sworn in as EPA administrator.

18 OSHA publications destroyed. Based on an internal February 7 email obtained by the newsletter Popular Information, “the purge appears to be part of the Trump administration's effort to terminate any activities associated with ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,’ or DEIA, reported Popular Information. The email advises OSHA staff that "[i]f you have wallet cards that include language, or can be interpreted, on DEIA or gender ideology, please dispose of them as well."

Popular Information obtained archived versions of most of the deleted publications. Almost all are not associated with DEIA topics but include a DEIA-related keyword used in a completely different context. That’s apparently how “Safety and Health Programs – Construction” and “Small Entity Compliance for the Respiratory Protection Standard” ended up on the list.

Cutting to the chase

Despite early post-inauguration headlines such as “Republican Pressure to Disband OSHA Rises Amid Sweeping Trump Orders,” Time magazine reporting “the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) may be next on the chopping block” and an Arizona congressman proposing an 18-word bill called the “Nullify Occupational Safety and Health Act” or “NOSHA,” (which has zero cosponsors) OSHA is not headed to Musk’s wood chipper.

Still, OSHA will be shrunk, contracted, downsized with fewer inspections, fewer citations, staff shortages, significant vacancies, and no realistic timetable for new regs, according to many Washington OSHA insiders. But it won’t be abolished.

First, that takes an act of Congress. Both houses of Congress would have to give approval, and that won’t happen. Why? Workplace safety and health is a sacred cow, not up there with the environment but still occupying the moral high ground. Throw OSHA in the wood chipper and many companies will invest less in safety and health, leading to more injuries and fatalities. No lawmaker or administration wants that blood on their hands.

Workplace safety and health is also a political card to play. The New Yorker reported: “Dismantling the Department of Labor would be an audacious undertaking for a President who owes his second term, in no small part, to the support of working-class voters.”

OSHA will carry on investigating serious injuries and fatalities, targeting enforcement on high-hazard industries, responding to whistleblower complaints, perhaps pumping up Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) as it did during George Bush’s two terms in office, and emphasizing education and outreach and voluntary compliance. It might have one arm tied behind its back, but OSHA’s committed compliance officers and mission-driven careerists will manage the best they can.