SBA Recommends OSHA Revisit Proposed Heat Standard

SBA Recommends OSHA Revisit Proposed Heat Standard

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BY Clarette

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The Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy (OA) in a September 8, 2026 letter to the Secretary of the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health submitted recommendations relating to a dozen Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulatory and deregulatory actions.

OA is responsible for monitoring compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which seeks to minimize the regulatory burden on small entities. Small entities consist of small businesses, small governmental jurisdictions, and small organizations-the latter of which are generally defined as any not-for-profit enterprise which is independently owned and operated and is not dominant in its field.

Among the regulatory actions that OA highlighted was OSHA's proposed heat injury and illness prevention standard, which LeadingAge opposed on the basis that OSHA was seeking to apply the same requirement to all employers, in all industries and locations, despite the fact that not all work settings are the same. In our comments to the proposed rule, we requested that the standard provide greater flexibility when possible, given the challenges of implementing the proposed standard where aging services are provided to individuals in their home.

In its letter, OA expressed similar concerns, recommending that OSHA avoid a one-size-fits-all rule and consider a more flexible, performance-oriented approach.

OA also recommended that OSHA consider and provide for work environments and situations that are not currently addressed in the proposed rule, including hybrid or mixed outdoor/indoor work environments, situations where compliance would be impracticable, infeasible, or would create a greater hazard, and provide for employee vulnerabilities, susceptibilities or confounding factors.

OSHA announced in July that is it planning to issue a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking on the heat standard later this year, and OA noted that it plans to actively engage the small business community when the supplemental proposed rule is published.