President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the nation’s workplace safety agency is a former safety executive for companies that were repeatedly cited by the same agency for worker illnesses and deaths amid extreme heat, according to federal records reviewed by the Lever.
If confirmed, David Keeling would be empowered to help his former employers’ multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to kill state and federal heat protections — including a first-of-its-kind federal standard designed to protect workers from heat death amid rising global temperatures.
David Keeling, the nominee to lead the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), previously helped oversee health and safety operations at companies including United Parcel Service (UPS) and Amazon, where workplace injuries and heat-related illnesses are common. In the six years that Keeling worked as a top safety executive at the two companies, OSHA fined the businesses a collective $2 million for more than three hundred workplace safety citations, including for heat-related illnesses as well as deaths that occurred amid extreme temperatures, the Lever found.
Keeling, whose nomination has not yet been approved by Congress, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
If appointed, Keeling could decide whether to save or scrap what would be the first federal standard to regulate the dangers of rising temperatures, which could otherwise go into effect in the next year. The rules, developed by Joe Biden’s regulators, would require employers to grant workers access to cooling areas and establish limitations on the amount of time employees can be exposed to heat.
UPS, the $80 billion package delivery company where Keeling served over ten years as a top safety…
Auteur: Sam Pollak
