Rep. Andy Levin Challenges OSHA To Do Its Job and Protect Workers from COVID-19

WASHINGTON – During today’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections hearing, Rep. Andy Levin (MI-09) challenged Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Loren Sweatt over the agency’s refusal to proactively issue an emergency standard amid the worst worker safety crisis in OSHA’s 50-year history.

“If your agency inspects workplaces only after a worker has died, you are not preventing workplace infections.” 

To date, federal OSHA has received roughly 5,000 complaints and referrals related to COVID-19 and has conducted inspections for fewer than 1 percent of all worker complaints it has received. Three-quarters of OSHA’s coronavirus-related inspections are fatality investigations, meaning a worker has already died from a COVID-19 infection.

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