On April 19, the House Committee on Education Workforce Protections Subcommittee held a hearing on the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) recently finalized crystalline silica rule and the impact it will have on the nation’s workplaces.
On April 12, AFS hosted a Silica webinar to help the metalcasting industry navigate OSHA’s new crystalline silica rule.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) formally released its final silica rule on March 24. The core provisions of the rule as it was originally proposed in 2013 have remained relatively unchanged. The rule will lower the permissible exposure for crystalline silica to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air (50 µg/cu.m), averaged over an eight-hour shift, from the current 100 µg/cu.m.
Congressman Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) is circulating a Dear Colleague letter in the House of Representatives urging lawmakers to sign a letter to the House Appropriations Committee requesting the Fiscal Year 2017 (FY17) Labor funding bill include language that would prohibit funding for OSHA to promulgate or implement a silica rule until additional studies and reports are completed.
On Tuesday, February 9, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) landmark carbon rule for power plants while it's being challenged in court.
On January 29, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) unveiled a new proposed rule which would require companies with more than 100 employees to submit employee W-2 earnings and hours worked.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently issued Notice 2016-4, which extends the deadlines for the 2015 information reporting requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The House approved an AFS supported measure on Jan. 7 requiring retrospective reviews of federal regulations to eliminate burdensome rules and preventing new regulations from being enacted without repeal of an existing regulation.
In early January, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act (H.R. 712) by a vote of 244 – 173.
A group of business associations, including the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recently filed a petition for review to challenge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rule that significantly lowered the primary ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) standard from 75 ppb to 70 ppb.