News & Media

September 19, 2017 For clients and friends of Jackson Kelly PLLC Volume 13, Number 17 ©2017 Jackson Kelly PLLC On September 23, 2017, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA") will begin enforcing its silica standard in the construction industry. The standard requires employers to limit worker exposures to respirable crystalline silica and take other steps to protect workers.                The standard provides flexible alternatives for employers to comply. Employers can either use a control method set forth in Table 1 of the construction standard found at 29 C.F.R. § 1926.1153, or employers can measure workers' exposure to silica and independently decide which dust controls work best to limit exposures to the Permissible Exposure Limits ("PEL") in their workplaces (referred to as alternative exposure control methods).               Employers who fully implement the control measures in Table ...

September 19, 2017 by: Courtney O'Brien Right to work legislation is safe and sound in West Virginia despite a circuit court's attempt to upend it. In a vote of 3-1, the state Supreme Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's preliminary injunction. With their decision, the law stands and employers do not have to force employees to pay union fees.  The right-to-work victory was only half the fun. The cherry on top was the opinion written by Chief Justice Allen H. Loughry II. Not only was the circuit court ruling "imprudent," he said, it was "profoundly legally incorrect." The respondents have demonstrated no likelihood of success and their failure was abetted by the circuit court's use of an overruled, effectively meaningless standard for issuance of a preliminary injunction. This monumental failure of legal reasoning was compounded by extraordinary and baseless delay occasioned by the circuit court. Accordingly, I respectfully concur in the majority's reversal of the preliminary ...