With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and input from business and labor stakeholders, Cal/OSHA is looking at potential adjustments to the Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) that they passed last November.
Potential changes include outbreak and quarantine protocols. While the state has regularly updated the FAQs for the ETS, these would be the first changes to the text of the regulations.
“I think what led to actually making changes to the text was the sense that Cal/OSHA wanted to make certain changes that were too large in scale to be done via FAQs,” Robert Moutrie, policy advocate with the California Chamber of Commerce, told the Northern California Record.
“The biggest single change that I think everyone is watching for is the change related to vaccines,” Moutrie said.
The ETS were passed in late November, a few weeks before the FDA’s first emergency authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine, and Moutrie noted that the CDC has recently released guidance saying fully vaccinated individuals can refrain from quarantine. Proposed changes to the ETS reflect those updates.
“This would be consistent with CDC guidance and will allow essential workplaces (where vaccination will be increasingly common in the coming months) to continue to operate with minimal disruption,” Moutrie wrote in a follow-up letter to Douglas Parker, Chief, Cal/OSHA / Division of Occupational Safety and Health.
“That's the biggest piece that everyone is looking for and that employers are glad to see,” Moutrie told the Record.
A Standards Board vote on the ETS changes could take place later this spring.
“As requested by the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, Cal/OSHA held a series of advisory meetings to gather input on changes to the ETS,” Frank Polizzi, spokesman for the state Department of Industrial Relations, told the Record by email. “The discussion draft was discussed and further changes were suggested by stakeholders. Cal/OSHA will also consider feedback from the California Department of Public Health in the update to the ETS. Cal/OSHA and the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board will announce when any changes to the ETS will be considered by the Board and when they are expected to take effect.”
Another key change under consideration relates to outbreaks, specifically limiting them to COVID-19 cases involving workers, and not other people visiting a workplace.
“That's an area where we also are looking for favorable change,” Moutrie said.
Other proposed changes concern housing and transportation for the agricultural industry. Currently the ETS requires a certain amount of spacing between beds that has led to agricultural employers needing to buy twice as much housing immediately. The proposed change would require bed placement to be greater than normal but less than the original text.
“Which will give agricultural employers a little bit of relief in being able to house their workforce,” Moutrie said.
Since the quick adoption of the ETS in November, Cal/OSHA has been in discussions with business and labor groups about needed changes.