The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is formally withdrawing its emergency temporary standard requiring large companies to require their employees to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, the agency announced Jan. 25.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has remanded the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test law for large businesses back to a lower court, trucking industry experts said the high court’s action likely spells defeat for the proposal.

The Biden administration on Nov. 23 asked a federal court to let it move ahead with a workplace rule that would require employees at larger companies to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or face weekly testing.

American Trucking Associations has sent a letter to the Biden administration expressing “grave concern” over the potential damage that the president’s plans for a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for many businesses — including trucking companies — could cause for the country.

Tesla Inc. factory employees spent almost three times as many days off the job because of work-related injuries and illness in 2018 as the year before, an indication of just how much strain they were under as they manufactured electric cars at scale for the first time.

In 2016, the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available nationally, 41 individuals were killed in work-related incidents in New Mexico.

Officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had scheduled a two-hour public hearing June 12 for trucking and rail industry stakeholders to disclose issues facing the agency’s whistleblower protection program — but the hearing only lasted an hour.

Raising awareness of OSHA’s whistleblower rules would improve the agency’s enforcement of laws banning retaliation against employees in the rail and trucking industries, business and worker representatives said.

Scott Mugno, the behind-the-scenes coach credited with much of the success of FedEx drivers at the National Truck Driving Championships and for FedEx’s safety record overall, has been nominated to be the next Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.