State-Level Regulations Are on the Rise

At PRINTING United Expo in Las Vegas Sept 23-25, a group of experts came together to discuss some of the biggest trends, truths, and takeaways the print industry is facing right now. The packed panel, moderated by Ashley Roberts, content director of Printing Impressions, covered everything from economics, to OSHA, to HR — and beyond.

On the topic of state-level challenges, Gary Jones, VP of environmental, health, and safety affairs at PRINTING United Alliance, dove deep, noting that as the federal government pulls back on regulations, many states are looking to step in. This can make for a more challenging business environment, where laws and regulations vary from state to state, and printers that do business across state lines will need to stay on top of.

Jones stressed, “Pay attention to what's happening in your state. Because of the vacuum that was created from the federal government in the in the activity to deregulate, a lot of states are stepping in and putting in place regulations that the federal government may have been working on. So pay attention to what's happening at the state level with a sharper eye, because you have states that are very active and they're not hampered by all the other type of requirements that go on with issuing a federal regulation.”

That is a fairly typical pattern when it comes to administrations, he noted, with Democratic administrations tending to seek to add regulations, while Republican administrations tend to seek deregulation.

“And we're seeing that pattern emerge with this administration,” he said. “So what's happening typically at the federal level is that at the end of 2024, it was absolutely crazy because that administration was trying to push as many regulations as they could out the door, and then we got a change in administration, and they want to pull many of those back. So you have this process that's like a pendulum, it's going back and forth.”

He dove deeper into the process from an OSHA perspective, nothing that while regulation may have ground to a halt in that area for now, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still an enforcement agency. How it approaches enforcement might shift, but that doesn’t mean shops can afford to just ignore it.

Jones explained, “they're looking at more data-driven enforcement. For example, you may or may not know, but if you have more than 20 employees, every March 2nd you have to submit to OSHA your injury and illness data. It's a mandatory requirement. They're using that data to identify industries, segments, and companies that require their attention, which means they're going to send out inspectors.

“But what's interesting with the new OSHA administrator is he's working with his inspectors to make it more of an education process and not necessarily just a hammer enforcement. However, I do want to stress that we were coming off a really hot summer, and OSHA is focused on heat illness prevention. [With] the federal government stepping back from regulatory development, it kind of creates a regulatory vacuum, and so you have states that step in, and so we have now seven states that have put in place heat illness prevention regulations. The problem is you have seven states and seven different programs, whereas if you have one federal program, it's pretty uniform.”