New Report Highlights Worker Safety Actions Under Trump, Biden Administrations
Ahead of Workers’ Memorial Day on April 28, the BlueGreen Alliance has released a report exploring efforts to protect or undermine worker health and safety under the current Biden administration and previous Trump administration. The report, Then and Now: Worker Safety Under Trump and Biden, considers administrative actions in several areas: capacity at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); protecting miners from black lung-causing silica dust; regulation of hazardous chemical facilities; worker injury reporting requirements; and COVID-19 response.
“Workers’ Memorial Day honors the workers who didn’t come home at the end of their shift,” said BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director Jason Walsh. “It’s also the day we can commit ourselves to a future where every worker is able to say goodbye to their families before their shift with the safe assumption that they will be returning home healthy at the end of the day. We should expect our leaders to prioritize that.”
The new report builds on a September 2020 BlueGreen Alliance report—Misled: The Impact of the Trump Administration’s Agenda on Working Families and the Environment—which provided an analysis of a range of policy actions made by the Trump administration. In the new report the organization revisits those policy actions related to worker health and safety and sets them alongside actions from the Biden administration.