NAW, NAM Strongly Oppose OSHA Worker Walkaround Rule

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following the release of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s recent rulemaking on the Worker Walkaround Representative Designation Process, National Association of Manufacturers Chief Legal Officer Linda Kelly released the following statement:

“Today’s rule does nothing to advance OSHA’s mission of ensuring safe working conditions. Forcing businesses to accommodate third parties with no safety expertise in their facilities infringes on employers’ property rights, invites new liabilities and introduces elements of chaos and disruption to safety inspections.

“By unlawfully expanding third-party access to manufacturers’ worksites, this proposal clearly violates OSHA’s statutory mandate to conduct inspections within ‘reasonable limits and in a reasonable manner’ with ‘minimum burden’ on employers, and potentially violates manufacturers’ constitutional rights. And, for the first time, OSHA would determine who qualifies as an ‘authorized representative’ of employees, which until now has been exclusively recognized as the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board.

“This is another clear example of the federal regulatory onslaught—a proposal that upends settled precedent and ignores the reasoned decision-making required by the Administrative Procedure Act. For these reasons, the NAM will be considering legal action to reverse this incredibly destabilizing decision.”

In response to the recently released OSHA Final Rule on the Worker Walkaround Representative Designation Process, Brian Wild, Chief Government Affairs Officer at NAW, issued the following statement:

“In yet another instance of favoring big labor’s agenda, the Biden Administration revived the failed Obama era policy under the guise of improving worker safety. This rule does nothing to improve workplace safety, instead it allows third-party individuals access to warehouses during OSHA inspections for potentially their own personal benefit, including union organizing, without any real safeguard for employers and employees.”