Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Workplace safety review commission to downsize Atlanta office, shift employees to D.C.

Reprints
Workplace safety review commission to downsize Atlanta office, shift employees to D.C.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission will revamp and reduce the size of its Atlanta office to comply with a directive from President Donald Trump on reforming and reorganizing the federal government.

The review commission will retain all current Atlanta-region employees but reduce the total square footage of its physical office space, resulting in a “significant” cost savings in rent, according to a statement released on Monday. A review commission spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment about the exact amount of savings.

The planned completion date for the space reduction is Dec. 16.

Atlanta’s three administrative law judges and attorney-adviser will have the option to telework on a full-time basis from their Atlanta region residences or relocate to the agency’s national office in Washington. A current legal assistant will continue working in the Atlanta office, while a second legal assistant will be hired and assigned to the national office and a third legal assistant position will be eliminated.

“These changes will enable OSHRC to operate more effectively and efficiently while minimizing the impact upon affected employees who further our sole and important statutory mandate of serving as an administrative court providing fair and expeditious resolution of disputes involving the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, employers charged with violations of federal safety and health standards and employees or their representatives,” OSHRC Chairman Heather L. MacDougall said in the statement.

The review commission previously had more than a half dozen regional offices, but technology changes and the ease of air travel have reduced the need for a regional presence in Atlanta, according to the statement. The long-term strategy, through attrition, is to reshape the review commission’s physical footprint and consolidate the Atlanta regional office’s operations into the national office, leaving one regional office in Denver, which remains “mission-critical to best serving the parties appearing before the agency in the Western United States,” according to the statement.

As vacancies occur in the Atlanta region, these positions will be filled in the national office, according to the statement.

On March 13, 2017, the president issued an executive order to create a comprehensive plan to reorganize the executive branch, along with a budget blueprint to eliminate “outdated, unnecessary, or dysfunctional programs across the government.” 

 

 

Read Next

  • Trump administration’s impact on OSHA minimal so far: Experts

    The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not pulled back from conducting inspections and imposing rising penalties against employers for workplace safety violations despite the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda, according to legal experts.