Michigan OSHA Aligns With Feds on Walkaround Rule

• Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) has aligned its rules with federal OSHA’s newly finalized Worker Walkaround Representative Designation Process Rule.
• It amended Administrative Rule Part 13 – Inspections and Investigations, Citations, and Proposed Penalties, in order to no longer require that employee walkaround representatives be employees of the company being inspected.
• Union representatives, attorneys, community organizers, and others can now potentially participate in inspections—even at non-union workplaces—if OSHA or MIOSHA determines they bring relevant skills, knowledge of hazards, or even language fluency needed for the inspection.
• “Employers must now walk a fine line between compliance and protecting their workplace from unnecessary disruption,” lawyers at Conn Maciel Carey said in a recent blog post on the change.
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Washington State Growers Group Warns on Worker Illness With NIOSH Closure

• The deputy director of Pacific Northwest Agriculture Safety and Health Center (PNASH) has warned that agricultural workers could be at serious risk if two NIOSH-funded research centers at the University of Washington are shut down.
• PNAHS receives more than $1 million annually to support research and training in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors.
• “More and more workers are going to get sick on the job, are going to get injured on the job and more and more workers are going to die on the job if this funding goes away,” Dr. Christopher Simpson, deputy director of PNASH, said.
• “They were also instrumental in looking at cholinesterase monitoring to help us monitor what kind of exposures people were getting to a particular kind of pesticide, organophosphate pesticide and how to apply that to our industry. All this was done to make pesticide use safer,” Mike Gempler, President of Washington Growers League, said.
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Morton Salt Louisiana Mine Gets Off Violation Pattern List

• Morton Salt’s Weeks Island Mine and Mill has been removed from the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s pattern of violations designation, according to a Labor Department announcement.
• POV designations are assigned to mines when a high number of significant and substantial violations and other safety and health compliance problems are found.
• MSHA originally issued the designation on the New Iberia, Louisiana, operator in December 2022.
• In a February 2025 follow-up inspection, MSHA did not issue a citation or order designated as significant and substantial.
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