Lawsuit fights union access to OSHA inspections

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) safety inspections at workplaces should not facilitate union recruitment of employees at those facilities, a business group argues in a lawsuit filed against the agency late last week in federal court in Dallas.  The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) contends that OSHA’s recent expansion of the “walk-around” right, established by law in 1970 to allow employee representatives to participate in OSHA inspections, is illegal because it has lowered the standards for qualified participants and facilitated union access to open-shop workplaces. NFIB says the expansion, known as the Fairfax Memo, conflicts with Congress’s purpose behind the original walk-around provision, which originally held that an employee representative must be an employee of the employer whose workplace was the subject of the inspection. It also allowed for an OSHA compliance officer to tab third-party specialists (i.e. industrial hygienists and safety engineers) when their presence would be “reasonably necessary.”