President Donald Trump's lengthy history as a developer could lead to an unusual level of scrutiny on workplace safety regulations, according to a new report.
Trump repeatedly vowed to curb business regulations on the campaign trail last year, but Safety+Health Magazine recently noted his past run-ins with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The National Safety Council publication reported that Trump's companies, along with their contractors and subcontractors, received fines for OSHA violations. One contractor was fined more than $100,000 — later reduced to $44,000 — after a worker was killed in a fall at New York's Trump SoHo hotel condominium in 2008.
“Typically, OSHA is not the highest priority agency or one of the agencies that gets a lot of attention early in an administration,” Washington, D.C., attorney Eric Conn told S+H. "I think this could be a unique new administration that does pay some amount of attention to OSHA in the early days because he’s familiar with it."
Conn suggested that one OSHA rule likely in the crosshairs of the White House is a provision that requires companies to submit injury and illness reports electronically.
Industry groups contend that the rule is costly and unnecessary, S+H noted, but it also prohibits employers from retaliating against workers that report injuries.
Other prominent rules that could be on the chopping block include limits on silica dust exposure and the requirement that federal contract bids disclose previous labor law violations.
Proposals regarding combustible dust and process safety management, meanwhile, are likely to be stopped in their tracks prior to publication.
Analysts said that that workplace safety regulations, on the whole, would remain in place — especially since some noted that repealing rules is often just as complicated as crafting new ones.
Following the S+H report, however, Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to repeal two rules for each new proposal.
Critics argued that order could jeopardize protections for workers as well as consumers and the environment.
“Responsible companies want regulations,” David Michaels, the head of OSHA during the Obama administration, told the Los Angeles Times. “They want a level playing field with rules that everyone has to follow.”