The Department of Labor recently announced strategic changes to the structure of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regional operations designed to direct its resources effectively and make the agency more resilient, according to OSHA.
The changes include creating a new OSHA regional office in Birmingham, Ala., to oversee agency operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, as well as the Florida Panhandle. The Birmingham Region will address the area’s growing worker population and the hazardous work performed by people employed in food processing, construction, heavy manufacturing and chemical processing.
OSHA also plans to merge Regions 9 and 10 into a new San Francisco Region to improve operations and reduce operating costs.
In addition, the agency will rename its regions according to geography rather than its current practice of assigning numbers to regions. Region 4 will be renamed the Atlanta Region with jurisdiction over Florida (excluding the Panhandle), Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Region 6 will be renamed the Dallas Region and have jurisdiction over workplace safety issues in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. The composition of OSHA’s remaining regions will be unchanged. View the list of new regional designations and a map of the new regional structures and boundaries.
OSHA plans to fully transition to its new regional structure later in fiscal year 2024.
