House Falls in Marine Terminals

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <SUBAGY>Occupational Safety and Health Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>29 CFR Part 1917</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. OSHA-2025-0008]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1218-AD52</RIN> <SUBJECT>House Falls in Marine Terminals</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule removes OSHA's House Falls in Marine Terminals Standard from the Code of Federal Regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments and other information, including requests for a hearing, must be received on or before September 2, 2025. <E T="03">Informal public hearing:</E> OSHA will schedule an informal public hearing on the rule if requested during the comment period. If a hearing is requested, the location and date of the hearing, procedures for interested parties to notify the agency of their intention to participate, and procedures for participants to submit their testimony and documentary evidence will be announced in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Written comments:</E> You may submit comments and attachments, identified by Docket No. OSHA-2025-0008, electronically at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> which is the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Follow the instructions online for making electronic submissions. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency's name and the docket number for this rulemaking (Docket No. OSHA-2025-0008). When uploading multiple attachments to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> please number all of your attachments because <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> will not automatically number the attachments. This will be very useful in identifying all attachments. For example, Attachment 1—title of your document, Attachment 2—title of your document, Attachment 3—title of your document. For assistance with commenting and uploading documents, please see the Frequently Asked Questions on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> All comments, including any personal information you provide, are placed in the public docket without change and may be made available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, OSHA cautions commenters about submitting information they do not want made available to the public or submitting materials that contain personal information (either about themselves or others), such as Social Security Numbers and birthdates. <E T="03">Docket:</E> The docket for this rulemaking (Docket No. OSHA-2025-0008) is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Most exhibits are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov;</E> some exhibits ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> copyrighted material) are not available to download from that web page. However, all materials in the dockets are available for inspection at the OSHA Docket Office. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">For press inquiries:</E> Contact Frank Meilinger, Director, OSHA Office of Communications, Occupational Safety and Health Administration; telephone: (202) 693-1999; email: <E T="03">meilinger.francis2@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">General information and technical inquiries:</E> Contact Andrew Levinson, Director, OSHA Directorate of Standards and Guidance, Occupational Safety and Health Administration; telephone: (202) 693-1950; email: <E T="03">osha.dsg@dol.gov.</E> <E T="03">Copies of this</E> <E T="7462">Federal Register</E> <E T="03"> notice:</E> Electronic copies are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> This <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice, as well as news releases and other relevant information, also are available at OSHA's web page at <E T="03">https://www.osha.gov.</E> A “100-word summary” is also available on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Legal Authority and Preliminary Findings</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Explanation of the Proposed Removal of the House Falls in Marine Terminals Standard From the Code of Federal Regulations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Preliminary Economic Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Additional Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Authority and Signature</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> The intent of this proposed rule is to remove the House Falls in Marine Terminals Standard, 29 CFR 1917.41 (“House Falls Standard”), from the Code of Federal Regulations because that standard is no longer necessary to protect employees working in marine terminals from occupational safety and health hazards. This is a deregulatory action per Executive Order 14192, “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation” (90 FR 9065, Feb. 6, 2025). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Legal Authority and Preliminary Findings</HD> The purpose of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (29 U.S.C. 651 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) (“the Act” or “the OSH Act”) is “to assure so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions and to preserve our human resources” (29 U.S.C. 651(b)). To achieve this goal Congress authorized the Secretary of Labor (“the Secretary”) to promulgate standards to protect workers, including the authority “to set mandatory occupational safety and health standards applicable to businesses affecting interstate commerce” (29 U.S.C. 651(b)(3); see also 29 U.S.C. 654(a)(2) requiring employers to comply with OSHA standards), 29 U.S.C. 655(a) (authorizing summary adoption of existing consensus and established federal standards within two years of the Act's enactment), and 29 U.S.C. 655(b) (authorizing promulgation, modification or revocation of standards pursuant to notice and comment)). An occupational safety and health standard is “. . . a standard which requires conditions, or the adoption or use of one or more practices, means, methods, operations, or processes, reasonably necessary or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment and places of employment” (29 U.S.C. 652(8)). Before OSHA may promulgate a health or safety standard, it must find that a standard is reasonably necessary or appropriate within the meaning of section 652(8) of the OSH Act. As required by the OSH Act, OSHA originally determined that the Standards for Marine Terminals would substantially reduce a significant risk of material harm when promulgating those standards (see 48 FR 30886, 30887 (July 5, 1983)). Once OSHA makes a general significant risk finding in support of a standard, the next question is whether a particular requirement is reasonably related to the purpose of the standard as a whole. See <E T="03">Asbestos Info. Ass'n/N. Am.</E> v. <E T="03">Reich,</E> 117 F.3d 891, 894 (5th Cir. 1997); <E T="03">Forging Indus. Ass'n</E> v. <E T="03">Sec'y of Labor,</E> 773 F.2d 1436, 1447 (4th Cir. 1985); <E T="03">United Steelworkers of Am., AFL-CIO-CLC</E> v. <E T="03">Marshall,</E> 647 F.2d 1189, 1237-38 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (“ <E T="03">Lead I</E> ”). A standard is technologically feasible if the protective measures it requires already exist, can be brought into existence with available technology, or can be created with technology that is reasonably expected to be developed (see <E T="03">Am. Iron and Steel Inst.</E> v. <E T="03">OSHA,</E> 939 F.2d 975, 980 (D.C. Cir. 1991)). Courts have also interpreted technological feasibility to mean that a typical firm in each affected industry or application group will reasonably be able to implement the requirements of the standard in most operations most of the time ( <E T="03">see, e.g., Public Citizen</E> v. <E T="03">OSHA,</E> 557 F.3d 165, 170-71 (3d Cir. 2009) (citing <E T="03">Lead I,</E> 647 F.2d at 1272)). Because this proposed rule would remove an existing OSHA requirement from the CFR, OSHA anticipates employers would have no technological issues complying with the rule. Accordingly, the agency preliminarily finds that the proposed rule is technologically feasible for affected employers. In determining economic feasibility, OSHA must consider the cost of compliance in an industry rather than on individual employers. In its economic analyses, OSHA “must construct a reasonable estimate of compliance costs and demonstrate a reasonable likelihood that these costs will not threaten the existence or competitive structure of an industry, even if it does portend disaster for some marginal firms” ( <E T="03">Am. Iron and Steel Inst.,</E> 939 F.2d at 980, quoting <E T="03">Lead I,</E> 647 F.2d at 1272). OSHA has preliminarily determined that this proposed rule is economically feasible because this action is deregulatory and imposes no additional costs. OSHA's economic analysis of the cost savings are presented in Section V. The Administrative Procedures Act directs agencies to include in each rule adopted “a concise general statement of [the rule's] basis and purpose” (5 U.S.C. 553(c)); cf. 29 U.S.C. 655(e) (requiring the Secretary to publish a “statement of reasons” for any standard promulgated)). This notice satisfies this concise statement requirement. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> OSHA first adopted the House Falls Standard in 1983, as part of its Marine Terminals rulemaking, to address serious occupational safety and health hazards in the marine terminals industry (see 48 FR 30886 (July 5, 1983)). The House Falls Standard requires that: span beams be secured to prevent accidental disl ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━