The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is shifting gears from trying to force the nation's employees to wear a face mask to trying to "protect" them against climate change on the jobsite.
The federal agency claims that climate change poses a serious threat to the nation's workers both now and in the future, and that new restrictions need to be imposed as a remedy.
"The current situation will worsen as the United States gets hotter, so heat standards must protect workers from current heat hazards and the future effects of climate change," said the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
"Heat hurts outdoor and indoor workers across every major industry, so OSHA's heat safety standard needs to protect all workers – not just those at the hottest outdoor worksites," the agency explained in an announcement.
The NRDC went on in a statement to explain that:
"After many years of advocacy by labor, faith, health, environmental, and other leaders, the Biden administration announced last September that OSHA would begin working on a federal heat injury and illness prevention standard."
Will climate change become the new covid?
It turns out that excess heat on the jobsite is already loosely regulated by OSHA under a vague part of federal law called the General Duty Clause. This is why there is already a federal occupational heat safety standard in place.
Now, the Biden regime wants to create new federal heat injury and illness prevention standards that include a legally enforceable set of heat-related requirements for employers to follow.
Employees in hot and humid Florida, for instance, would require special heat remediation accommodations while winter workers in Maine would need special warmth accommodations. These kinds of things make sense, right?
The problem is that the sky is the limit in terms of what would constitute a climate change-related job injury or death, much like how many deaths over the past two years were categorized as "covid" deaths even when they were caused by something else.
It is not far-fetched to assume that any time the climate is deemed to be "changing," under new proposed rules, an employer would need to make special accommodations or else be held liable for a climate-related injury or death on the job site.
The regime is already claiming that global warming is causing workers to miss wages, for instance, suffer debilitating injuries, and prematurely die. To "fix" this, OSHA under Biden, plans to use multiple data sources to come up with solutions.
"Given how the wacky world of government bureaucracy works, it may not be long before OSHA will be monitoring 'climate change' illness in workers and recording 'climate change as a cause on death certificates for workers compensation," commented Marc Morano of Climate Depot.
"Or OSHA could morph into implementing personal carbon footprint limits on all employees by monitoring their energy usage."
It turns out that the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, a research agency created by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, first recommended heat safety standards in 1972. These standards are not necessarily a bad thing, as they aimed to:
"... prevent acute or chronic heat disorders and illnesses and heat induced unsafe acts, and will reduce the risk of harmful effects due to the interactions between excessive heat and toxic chemicals and physical agents."
What is a bad thing are the next steps under Biden, which will politicize OSHA even more and steer its policies towards embracing the politics of global warming and climate change – and imposing those politics on America's employers.
More related news about the bloated federal government and its pet projects can be found at Corruption.news.
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