On March 29, OSHA issued its final rule governing the worker walkaround representative designation process. The rule allows third parties to accompany OSHA safety and health officers on facility inspections, ignoring the significant concerns raised by CWS and the 74 other organizations that joined our comments.
The rule will serve to distract OSHA from its core mission–ensuring safe and healthy workplaces–as third party accompanying OSHA inspectors will be able to redirect attention to their own agendas. The rule also will put OSHA inspectors in the middle of labor disputes and organizing drives and force them to police the behavior of these representatives who are pursuing their own goals. The rule is short on guidance for how to implement the changes and protect the inspection process. Moreover, it violates workers’ right to choose their own representation by allowing a single employee to choose representation for the entire workforce.
These are serious flaws that will do a disservice to OSHA and its mission of ensuring workplace safety and health. CWS strongly urges Congress or the courts to nullify this rule.