Last week, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) sent a COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard rulemaking to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget for review. This is the next step in the process before the rule is officially published in the Federal Register, making it final and effective.
At this time, neither OIRA nor OSHA have made the contents of the ETS public. Generally, OIRA allows organizations to request meetings to discuss concerns about the rulemaking before it is issued. Meetings were held when the Healthcare COVID-19 ETS was issued. However, it is unclear if OIRA will hold meetings on this ETS.
When the ETS is published in the Federal Register as an interim final rule, it will be effective immediately in states where OSHA has direct jurisdiction. States with their own authorized program will have to adopt the ETS rule or something very similar within 30 days.
The ETS rulemaking is a different process than normal rulemaking in that a draft regulation is not published, and the public is not able to comment on the draft rule. The public will have an opportunity to submit comments on the ETS after it is published. The comments will then be used by OSHA to draft a final rule, which OSHA is expected to issue within six months after the ETS is published.
PRINTING United Alliance will continue to follow the Emergency OSHA rule and will report back on the developments. For more information, or if you have questions on this or any other state regulatory program, please contact Marci Kinter, mkinter@printing.org; Gary Jones, gjones@printing.org, or Adriane Harrison, aharrison@printing.org.