LANSING, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – As Michigan lifts its in-person work ban later this month, state lawmakers are still concerned about long-term COVID 19 health restrictions.
Late last month, the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration requested the Michigan Office of Administrative Hearing and Rules make permanent workplace rules that requires employers to adhere to directives, first enacted during the novel coronavirus outbreak, requiring employees to wear masks at all times, enforcing social distancing, and creating a policy prohibiting in-person work which could be feasibly completed remotely.
State lawmakers are weighing in on this. “MIOSHA does a fine job in many different areas,” second-term House Republican Luke Meerman of Coopersville, a co-chair of the legislature’s Joint Committee of Administrative Rules, said on “WHTC Talk of the Town” during his monthly appearance last week, “but at some point, you have to come to the table before the legislature. The good part in this is, I do think, is that this is one of the places that the legislature already has some built-in pieces that we can keep this from happening long-term.”
Majority Republicans in the legislature has set up a website seeking public input in these proposed workplace rules changes ahead of a May 26th public hearing on the matter by MIOSHA.