Aimee Delaney Anticipates Changes to Worker Safety Regulations

Hinshaw attorney Aimee Delaney was part of a panel employment lawyers interviewed by Safety + Health magazine regarding potential changes to worker safety regulation under the new Trump administration.

“Worker safety regulations as a general matter are not likely to disappear – OSHA and its regulations have been around for a long time and have survived administration changes,” said Delaney. “Additionally, Trump’s victory was in no small part due to his appeal to the Rust Belt, blue-collar workers, so taking too aggressive an approach may conflict with the pro-employee message that helped win the election.

Delaney said she expects OSHA to shift from an enforcement-based strategy toward more compliance assistance – the opposite of what was seen during former President Barack Obama’s eight years in office. “A policy example of this in action may see the Severe Violator Enforcement Program, which created OSHA’s ‘bad actor’ list, taking a back seat to the Voluntary Protection Program,” Delaney noted.