In a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee today, Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta today refused to commit not to rescind OSHA’s electronic recordkeeping rule. The rule, issued in 2016, requires employers to send injury and illness information into OSHA and prohibits employers from retaliating against workers for reporting injuries.

The eternal battle is production versus safety, and at the very center of this is lockout, or better – avoiding lockout. The complaint, by both production and maintenance is that locking out equipment takes too long, or if they lockout, getting the machine back on line could be difficult.

On Feb. 26, the National Labor Relations Board reversed its previous ruling on the controversial Browning-Ferris case, a stunning backtrack of its December decision to undo the Obama-era rule aimed at protecting working people from unaccountable corporations.

A $168 billion budget agreed upon last week by the New York State legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo includes measures that address workplace sexual harassment in both the private and public sectors. If signed into law by Cuomo, the measures will:

Why are we still talking and writing about confined space training a quarter century after OSHA issued its confined space standard for general industry in 1993?

The Kentucky legislature this week passed a bill to exclude radiologists from the types of doctors who can diagnose black lung disease among miners seeking workers’ compensation for their illness. A radiologist uses x-rays to diagnose disease. Black lung disease is diagnosed through x-rays and an occupational history.

New York City may ban those after-hours work emails, congressional funding for public health programs gets a nod of approval and regulatory moves on premium cigars and e-cigarettes don’t. These were among the top stories featured on ISHN.com this week.

A group of U.S. senators are hoping that the 16th attempt will be the charm for legislation that would include more workers in federally mandated protections, increase OSHA civil penalties and toughen criminal penalties for unsafe employers.

A bill proposed in New York City would prohibit employers from emailing or texting their workers during non-work hours. The effects of an increasingly connected workplace have been a frequent focus of psychological studies.