Washington — OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration both face “significant challenges” in ensuring workers’ safety and health, according to a report from the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General.
In its annual U.S. Department of Labor’s Top Management and Performance Challenges report, published Jan. 29, OIG says the challenges are particularly acute for high-risk industries such as mining, health care, agriculture, construction, meatpacking, fishing, forestry and manufacturing.
Other challenges facing OSHA:
- Ensuring employers report injuries and illnesses
- Inspecting workplaces with a “limited” corps of inspectors
- Addressing workplace violence
MSHA’s challenges:
- Completing mandatory inspections
- Writing violations and verifying operators abated hazards in a timely fashion
- Protecting miners from high levels of silica exposure
- Reducing incidents involving powered haulage and machinery
The OIG report notes that OSHA had 736 investigators as of June 2025, down from 846 in February 2024 – a 13% decline.
“OSHA anticipates in 2026 it, along with its state partners, will have approximately 1,720 inspectors covering 144 million workers. This translates to about one inspector for every 84,000 workers,” the report states.
OIG adds that it’s planning an audit on the effectiveness of the General Duty Clause on OSHA enforcement. The agency uses the clause for workplace violence incidents because it doesn’t have a specific standard on the topic.
For MSHA, OIG says the agency changed its mandatory inspection requirements for when a mine is initially inaccessible by investigators. This led to MSHA not inspecting 176 mines for at least two consecutive years and, in some cases, as many as four consecutive years.
“In November 2024, the OIG issued an alert memorandum on miner safety and health notifying leadership that MSHA had failed to sufficiently identify its own jurisdiction and had never conducted mandatory mine inspections in at least three U.S. territories where mining activity has occurred,” the report states.
Another note: Powered haulage incidents accounted for more than half of the mining deaths from 2018 to 2025.
For silica, MSHA published a final rule in April 2024 that reduced its permissible exposure limit to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air over a time-weighted 8-hour shift. However, the enforcement of that rule is currently delayed because of a lawsuit in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In December, MSHA announced that it would “engage in limited rulemaking to reconsider” parts of its final rule.
The OIG report includes suggested improvements for OSHA:
- Complete agency initiatives to improve employer reporting of severe injuries and illnesses.
- Consider actions to address and prevent workplace violence.
For MSHA, the suggested improvements are:
- Improve the internal control system for the mandatory inspections program.
- Improve internal controls related to its violation process.
- Implement the silica final rule once the temporary court order is resolved and enhance the agency’s sampling program to increase the frequency of inspector samples where needed.
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Original article published by Safety+Health an NSC publication