Thread by @grace_panetta

NEW from me on OSHA:
Legal challenges to Biden's vaccine/test mandate aside, experts described the federal agency tasked with enforcing them to me as "woefully understaffed" and "rather toothless" when it comes to exacting fines from offending employers
businessinsider.com/how-underfunde…

OSHA has an estimated 1 inspector per 82,881 workers, nowhere near the resources to proactively enforce the vax/test mandate everywhere —this means it'll fall to 1) employers voluntarily complying and 2) employees actively filing complaints
businessinsider.com/how-underfunde…

"Over the four years of that administration, they just let OSHA shrink and shrink. And the enforcement that they did was fairly pitiful," said Judy Conti of @NelpNews. "So this Department of Labor had a lot to catch up on and a lot of making up to do."
businessinsider.com/how-underfunde…

@NelpNews And when they do find violations.."OSHA is rather toothless, in a lot of ways, in the fines that it can implement," Conti told me.
Not only are the amounts relatively small, but employers routinely spend lots of $$ fighting in court to avoid paying up businessinsider.com/how-underfunde…

@NelpNews But OSHA does have a powerful tool in the toolkit: old-fashioned public shaming via press release for noncompliant employers
"The threat of bad publicity is a really big deterrent to get companies to comply with OSHA regulations," @mslater_johnson said businessinsider.com/how-underfunde…